Page 47 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

36 The topography of composing work

Karlheinz Essl employs a small MIDI controller (KORG nanoControl),
whose controls and buttons are laid out in such a way that he can operate
several controls at the same time with one hand. That requires experience
playing with the controls, which have to be appropriated to such an extent
that the desired actions can be carried out seamlessly. Hands need to learn the
anatomy of the material object and internalise it sufficiently to be able to
work the controls only by touch. The importance of such buttons and con-
trols for physical touch becomes evident in their absence. Essl contrasts the
ease of use of MIDI controllers with touchscreens as follows: “They may be
called touchscreens, but they only work if you’re looking at them. That’s very,
very problematic. I mean, you can touch them, but you can’t touch them
blind. You always need the visual feedback. And that makes the whole thing
extremely unintuitive. Because you can’t feel them. Now the controls, they’re
tactile, I can hold them in my hand, and I know them.” As he suggests, an
intuitive work mode results from the way the respective apparatus is used:
“Of course, there are some things you can do with a mouse too. But with a
mouse you can only control one parameter at a time. With a controller you
can do up to eight parameters at the same time, depending on how good you
are. But that’s quite a manual challenge, it needs regular practice.”
The ongoing digitization of sound generation and music production is
changing the interaction between people and machines. Composers can work
intuitively once they have rehearsed certain processes and manipulations to
the point of internalising them. They can then withdraw their attention from
the operational level (e.g. controls for volume, sound mixing, switching algo-
rithms) and instead concentrate on musical aspects (e.g. sound quality,
rhythm, transitions). To reach this level of internalisation, Essl uses several
sensory and sensorimotor abilities – sight, hearing, tactile senses and movement
memorisation – and practised for a long time. This is an exemplary illustration
of implicit knowledge. Michael Polanyi (1958: 49–59; 1966: 15–19) stresses
that the relation between person and machine is strongly structured by an
implicit directionality of thought. The movement of focal awareness goes from
the controls (the proximal term: “proximus”–“close to the middle of the
body”) towards the realisation-as-sound (the distal term: “distare”– “distant
from the body”). To be able to accomplish this directionality of thought,
composers must incorporate the proximal-term sequences to such an extent
that they become self-evident and no longer need any mental representation
in the sense of a consciously controlled process. That is the necessary pre-
condition for being able to concentrate on the distal term and carry out the
sequence of events.
The regular use of instruments and technical apparatus creates an affective
familiarity with them – an almost humanised relationship, even. We have
already quoted Katharina Klement in the section on workplaces saying that
her PA boxes “might be a bit oversized”, but that she “really like[s] them”
because she has used “them for years”. Similarly, Karlheinz Essl considered
taking his “Bose L1 column loudspeakers” to the performance of “Herbecks