An agent-orientated interpretation would look for interactions enjoyed between players and/or machines, by regarding the sound materials themselves as agents that work together in the wider landscape of the music (e.g. how one musical behaviour appears to instigate or respond to another). This is sonic evidence of a quasi-social praxis, to the extent that musical actions can be readily mapped to a particular human or machine contributor (Young, 2016: 97).
Michael Young describes exactly what this analytical framework intends to discover: the interactions enjoyed between players. While his perspective begins from an analysis of social interaction evidenced in the form of sound, the analytical perspective developed here goes further to give insight into more forms of interaction, such as the evidence found in code, gestural or visual actions. I am
able to develop this perspective from the privileged position of the practitioner who is able to look 'behind the screen' of the apparatus. To perform this analysis with the informed view of my conceptual framework of dialogue may help to bring out the tacit knowledge contained in the 'doing-thinking' of Dialogic Coding practice. Buber's understanding of dialogue is used as a method to identify the quality of a dialogic relation in any interaction, while the understanding of Bakhtin may function as an indicator whether the relation is generally of dialogic or monologic nature. Flusser's adaption of the principle toward the interaction of human-apparatus entanglements intends to highlight the ethical dimensions in the dialogic interaction regarding the freedom of both partners, the human and nonhuman. And further this perspective examines the role and responsibility of the human entangled with the apparatus (to program/envision or to function).
Lastly the reflexive aspects of Dialogic Coding practice point to the fact that an answer to this must be assessed on an individual basis. Any possibility for immersive and challenging experiences will always be dependent on individual knowledge and abilities as well as the intentions of the participating performer. Therefore it needs to be stressed that – even if I propose generalised conclusions from the analysis of my practice – these are limited and cannot simply be applied out of context. Nevertheless, the insights gained through analysis may still be informative to other practitioners or researchers.
2.5.1 Questions Towards the Dialogic in the Situation
The following questions were developed from the framework and used to critically review my own performance experiences and analyse recordings of rehearsals and performances in the course of this research. They approximately follow the main three aspects of Dialogic Coding practice: (1) improvised group performance, (2) dialogic code improvisation with an apparatus, and (3) the production of transformations for the performer through a reflexive practice.
1) Bakhtin's Dialogue: Dialogism of the utterances (Intertextuality) • Who are the speakers? Who are the listeners?
• Does the interaction take place sequentially or simultaneously? • How does an interaction correspond to each other?
• What voices are articulated and what knowledges and identities (self and others) are constructed in the different voices?
• What are the relations between the different voices?
• To what extent, when and how is there an opening up for voices that articulate plurality (or singularity), or: how is the 'freedom' for any of these voices?
2) Buber's Dialogue: Dialogic Intersubjectivity
• Can we identify dialogic moments in concrete instances of social interaction whereby an 'I-You' (subject-subject) relating occurs?
• How is the confirmation of otherness performed: to accept and affirm the difference of the other without completely giving up one's own standpoint? • How does a qualitative dialogic interaction change one's self-conception
and identity?
• What kind of dialogic space, the between, does this dialogic interaction create? Where can we locate it?
2.5.2 Questions Towards the Apparatus (the nonhuman agent)
From Flusser's Dialogic Programming • How is the apparatus programmed?
• Does the performer operate or play the apparatus?
• How does the apparatus 'program' the performer? How is the interface structured? Is the computer code easy to use?
• Does the interaction and musical result surprise the performer? Or the listeners?
• Does interaction and musical result expose novelty or predictability?
• Does the performance allow for and encourage machine autonomy (freedom)?
• Does the practice give hands-on access to the performer?
• Does a performance question authority? In musical, organisational or technical terms.
• Does it allow for an enjoyable experience of sound and technological interaction? For a performer and the listeners??
2.5.3 Performance & Musical Questions relating to Re flexivity
• Does the practice make the performer's thinking or the computational processes transparent to an outsider?
• Does a performance create ambiguous action-perception relations? (provide a perceptual challenge & difference, a dialogic experience)
• Are the performative gestures legible?
Does the performance allow for ambiguous interpretations?
• What is the structural complexity in the music? Does it allow for a multiplicity of voices?
• How transparent are music and interaction?
2.6. Summary
In this chapter I introduced the leading methodology of this research project: Practice-as-Research. I highlighted the methods which I have used in the development of my own practice such as critical reflection, analysis of field notes and audiovisual recordings throughout the process. The development was interleaved with periods of conceptual reading and reflection on my practice to develop both, the practice and the framework further.
In the second section I identified how I have developed my research practice under the PaR methodology: from session-based coding to more structured collaborations in laptop duets to performing with pre-programmed interactive systems. The practice does not comprise a unified coherent approach. Rather each case developed in response to individual circumstances and concepts with the intention to realise different human-apparatus relations – from trivial, directly controllable systems to nontrivial and alienating ones. In my overview of these different approaches I have demonstrated how the 'knowings' associated with the practice have successively emerged and related them to my methodological framework. This was complemented by an overview of selected examples in the form of 'information sheets' with descriptions and references to online repositories/websites to make the projects more accessible to the reader.
In the last section I introduce the conceptual framework used to discuss and contextualize my practice within the domain. This framework is centred around the principle of dialogue as introduced by Martin Buber in a context of encounters between 'whole beings' and then extended by Mikhail Bakhtin for the analysis of language, particularly the relationships between spoken as well as written words or utterances. This is complemented by a media theoretical interpretation of dialogue found at the basis of the theory of 'telematics' by Vilém Flusser. From Flusser's conceptual world I adopt the terminology of 'programmer', 'functionary'
and 'apparatus' to describe the central actors in my inquiry. Flusser also suggests the term 'dialogical programming' which influenced the naming of the practice to 'dialogic coding'.
The developing 'knowings' of my practice will, in the following chapters, be placed in resonance to the conceptual framework above. The dialogic interplay between the practice and these discourses serves to identify the distinct aspects of Dialogic Coding practice in order to make clear the substantial new insights this research through its practice may give to the field.