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Motivations behind Live 4 Life
Like the composer Francis Dhomont, my main concerns in music, art and life do not concern those of “pure music”, referring only to itself, but touch on extra-musical themes (capitalism, free parties, loneliness).
I could qualify my sound improvisations in the same way as Francis Dhomont does for his piece Phœnix XXI : “a music that is abstract in its realisation, but figurative in its intentionality”.
My improvisations thus question, via the tool and the way of creating, the most important themes in my life and offer my interpretation of society, as expressed by Luigi Nono, which is quoted by Joshua D. Parmenter (a long-time developer of SuperCollider) in every email on the SuperCollider mailing lists :
“Every composer – at all times and in all cases – gives his own interpretation of how modern society is structured : whether actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, he makes choices in this regard. He may be conservative or he may subject himself to continual renewal; or he may strive for a revolutionary, historical or social palingenesis.”
Due to the layer- and event-based spatialisation structure of the tool (see Spatial objectives), the tool allows to easily create a disjointed, unrelated, unstructured, individualistic space of events, in the same way I have experienced this modern society based on business and individualism, and life with its chaos.
Focus on DIY, free, immaterial and open source code : Avoid the use of commercial products as much as possible (Share open source or die !)
The project Live 4 Life, which is a form of resistance to this imposed world, was born from the desire to reconnect with life. It was created in response to the world and the environment (societal, family and personal) in which I lived. I thus reflect in my improvisations this individualistic world and my disillusioned way of facing it, by trying to use free code as much as possible, so as not to reproduce and encourage this commercial world. Without my personal experiences or traumas in my family or in the professional world, having worked in multinational companies in the fields of banking, industry and communication, my intention of wanting to create this project in open source might never have seen the light of day.
Not wishing to adapt my ideas to a commercial product, I chose in 2011 to develop my own spatialised sound performance tool on the open source SuperCollider platform, with the ultimate goal of going beyond the simple sharing of listening or looking. Indeed, the ultimate objective was to tend towards a liberalisation of modes of creations, focusing more on doing it together outside the market and the sharing of creative practices open to all, by giving all the code developed over the years, like many artists who distribute their codes in open source, such as Fredrik Olofsson or CHDH with egregore or vivarium projects.
To be able to share towards the whole world, I also tend to focus on code and its immateriality thanks to a generic computer. If I had focused on specific tools and machines or specific material modular systems, I would not have been able to share it easily with others, since they would have to buy a specific machine or brand.
So, I have nothing more to say about people or artists who only adapt themselves to the commercial world or tools and don't create their own open source worlds to be able to share it and try to give a free, personal example against this commercial world. I only have full admiration towards people that can propose and offer us a new free vision of this world.
I also have my contradictions and my development limits, in the sense that I also use commercial products, especially with controllers or the Mac computer. However, I try to tend towards free, at least in terms of software. Currently, I do not use Linux, because a lot of spatialisation systems I used were connected in ethernet with Dante, which does offer drivers only for Mac and Windows. The use of Linux would then have required the purchase of an expensive and bulky sound card. And, if I chose to use cheap and professional commercial physical controllers, it is so that anyone can make the tool their own, without having to build their own interfaces.
On the grave of Karl Marx, there is the following epitaph: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it”. The development, promotion and almost exclusive use of open source software represented my utopian way of changing my world, however small, like a little dust to stop the capitalist machine.
My series of performances on capitalism Free parties will survive, addresses the relationship to money, property and this desire to always want more. It represents my hatred for this inhuman system for me, by using and opposing it with hardcore sounds from the free parties of the 2000s, just as harsh, symbolising a certain desire for revolt, freedom, anarchy. In my opinion, the capitalist system exacerbates and uses the failings of man such as selfishness. Unlike Adam Smith, who relies in particular on this character trait to lay down the main principles of economic liberalism, I can only believe in a system that promotes and encourages the values of equity and sharing. In the same way as the composer Raphaël Cendo, I try to resist this capitalist system by taking little interest in the production of a (musical) object for an object or in the transmission of perception, but to the concrete way of realising a sharable object or transmitting an experience. However, I consider that the discourse has little scope without a voluntary act accompanying the thought. That is why my only way to deal with capitalism, was to offer improvisations from free and open source creation and production tools.
Once, I heard an engineer artist, telling that he does not care about what the audience thinks about its performance or its way of creating. This vision of an artist only preoccupied by its sonic world or expression, with no real engagement for the society in its art, does not interest me in the same way. I no longer seek the intelligence or the beauty of what artists do, but their goodness, generosity or example for the world.
According to Jacques T. Godbout, “the work of art is a gift because the gift, [...] is what confirms to one another that we are not things”.
- How then to express this gift in music, electronic performance or digital art ?
- Is showing or hearing an experience or a composition a sufficient form of expression or sharing ?
- How to transmit more and create stronger links with others, by making the barrier that separates the researcher artist from the public fade and that the latter exchange their roles ?
My tool and technology practice aims to focus not just on what is created and entertainment, but on the how and how the work is done through code sharing and future training workshops or participative performance installations.
By sharing this code, the aim was to: “make the mechanism visible so that people can understand how it works and get hold of it, so that we can rediscover the common good”, in a similar vein to Feda Werdak, who makes playful, mobile machine installations that move with the current of the water, with human power, with the wind, that are activated by the energies that exist.
Art should serve our liberation. However, by persevering in this radical position, I have also excluded myself from the “world“, because I no longer consider the profusion of electronic productions made with commercial software, even if I may like them, because they do not intrinsically transmit the idea of sharing and are not intended to put into questions dominant positions in society.
Xon - ChristOn - Live 4 Life
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