Always preparing for spontaneity
Echo Ho, Hannes Hoelzl, Alberto de Campo · 2023
This chapter is a nonlinear conversation weaving threads between sound, music, performance, and cybernetics/artificial agency, nourished by both Daoist and Western schools of thought. We work in assemblages of artists/(non)humans and machines/algorithms/code/AIs, equally deploying instruments, scores, and machinery with the performative agency. For our practice of cultivation of algorithms, complex audiovisual processes and artistic collaborations in iterative cycles, interwoven on micro and macro timescales, gardening is our guiding metaphor. Hence, our experience in making art implies and proposes a model of slow transformation. On our joint journey spanning over two decades, we encountered traces of virtuosity in a multitude of flavours, including traditional virtuosity, virtuosity of unknowing, virtuosity of listening, virtuosity of cultivation, virtuosity of collaboration/conversation, virtuosity with coding, virtuosity of intuition, virtuosity of possibilities, Second Order Virtuosity, social virtuosity. Meditating on how these concepts continuously evolve and consequently change the way we listen to, think about, and make music, we believe these strands have the potential to shape emerging branches of possible music-making in the post-digital future.