1. INTRODUCTION
Intercultural understanding is the ability to participate and negotiate with people in a variety of contexts. Participating and negotiating with people requires an ability to know and understand ‘your’ culture, ‘another's’ culture and have skill in working between your own and another's culture. (Cloonan, Spencer and Saunders Reference Cloonan, Spencer and Saunders2005: 13)
The Imaginary Space: Developing models for an emergent Malaysian/Western electroacoustic music is a Fundamental Research Grant Scheme project funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education. It is a multifaceted intercultural investigation centred within an electroacoustic performance environment, comprising a number of major sub-projects, each based around the creation of new works: The Curse of the Screaming Serunai for tape (cd), Western flute and live electronics by Affendi Ramli; Two Improvisations for flute and electronics based on pensol nose flute melodies; Synergies of Breath (i & ii) for fixed sound, Western flute and live electronics by Valerie Ross;Footnote 1 Memento Memori, a Malaysian Circus on The Garden of Evening Mists, a theatrical presentation prepared by Warren Burt, Catherine Schieve and Andrew Blackburn based on John Cage's instructions for Roaratorio (1978); and the creation and performance of a canon of Malaysian organ music. This paper considers the first two projects: The Curse of the Screaming Serunai and Two Improvisations. The intention is to discover the bi-directional cultural connections which occur in this environment and frame the findings within the philosophical ideas of Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty and Ingold. The performer/creators in the improvisations are Jean Penny and Andrew Blackburn.
Exploring intercultural connections through electroacoustic music demands definition as it provokes discussion. As researchers and performers, responding to the acquired knowledge and perceived challenges of working at this cultural interface, clarifying our purpose and methodology has been evolutionary. What is intercultural and what are the conditions necessary for its presence? Interculturality is a form of communication, strongly associated with interdisciplinarity – as Allwood observes:
Intercultural communication or communication between people of different cultural backgrounds has always been and will probably remain an important precondition of human co-existence on earth. … It is not cultures that communicate, whatever that might imply, but people (and possibly social institutions) with different cultural backgrounds that do. (Allwood Reference Allwood1995: 1)
On ‘communication’ between cultures we adopt Allwood's idea:
sharing … information between people on different levels of awareness and control. … In an intercultural context, this can become a problem particularly with features in communication about which people have low degree of awareness and find difficult to control. (Allwood Reference Allwood1995: 3)
Here an important caveat is noted: the mindfulness of awareness and control. A dialogical view of culture sees it as dynamic, vibrant and ever-changing. Culture can be perceived as something that is ordinary, everyday, but having the ability to see beyond and about itself (Bostad, Brandist, Evensen and Faber Reference Bostad, Brandist, Evensen and Faber2004: 3). One composition under discussion here, The Curse of the Screaming Serunai, manifests as a work grounded in the everyday sounds of Malaysia, yet made anew with the addition of Western concert flute and live DSP,Footnote 2 reflecting a primary intent of this study: to explore how these two sound sets may be culturally understood, and what is occurring in the minds of creators, performers, technologists and listeners as the sounds interact together. In interdisciplinary artistic contexts, interculturality desires and is nurtured by the contribution and possibilities of different forms of expression, generating unspoken, intuitive and embodied knowledge. An intercultural artistic engagement creates a space for imaginative response, for connection and experiential exchange.
There can be an idealism in this that assumes a cultural equality; but equality alters in different contexts. Our activity and creativity is not limited to Malay, but rather the broader multicultural Malaysian community – in other words, Malay, Chinese, Indian and Orang Asli (the original or first peoples of Malaysia). When considering artistic work, culture and the spaces between, we are forced to question our own position and approach, as ‘Westerners’, as we negotiate intercultural communication with our artistic colleagues in Malaysia. In this state of continual dialogic negotiation, we have identified several frameworks for our approach that assist us to signify the work and to reach an understanding of ‘intercultural’ as both a term and concept. Gadamer's assertion that ‘understanding is always interpretation’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1975: 307) is particularly important, guiding us through the meanings and dialogues of interculturality. Understanding will always be coloured by a person's experience, knowledge and preconceptions, leading to interpretation. In the process of unravelling our (Western) hermeneutical understanding of art, the conditions of understanding itself are clarified by Gadamer:
Intercultural dialogue is reliant on hermeneutics, which ‘clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1975: 263).
and it has the
ability to disrupt and challenge customary expectations … [attributing] an ethical significance to art as being able to reveal the limitations of fixed cultural expectancy and to open the spectator towards the other and the different (Davey Reference Davey2011: para. 8).
An ability, then, to achieve flexibility in participation and negotiation, and to nurture differences in the artistic context may lead to new expression, and may generate unspoken, intuitive and embodied knowledge, and an open engagement in the spaces of the imagination, the connections and experiential change. Among these conditions are, crucially, prejudices and previously held understandings in the mind of the interpreter. Understanding these conditions and interpretations, which are brought about and validated by the hermeneutics, we have found a dynamic and meaningful process for intercultural dialogue.
Expanding the approach of Gadamer, a theoretical framing through the phenomenological writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty offers further philosophical context. Providing a practical application for these in this context, Fred Dallmayr asserts the ‘relevance of hermeneutics for cross-cultural or inter-cultural understanding and dialog’ (Dallmayr Reference Dallmayr2009: 24), emphasising a necessary tie between interactive dialogue and concrete embodied engagement. This tie suggests mutual compatibility between Gadamerian hermeneutics and existential phenomenology, and encourages interpretative multiplicity, which we have found helpful to understand different responses we, as researchers, have encountered.
The researchers’ approach to the whole project is, as far as it is possible, neutral in assessment of the different cultures and practices we meet. There are significant and unresolved paradoxes, inconsistencies, contradictions and ironies within and between all cultures, but attempts at wider or rational explanation are well outside the parameters of this study. We therefore restrict observation and interaction to refinement and focus of dialogue and discussion to new music, containing Malaysian and Western elements. Our parameters permit us to search for a space with intercultural linkages that might occur in the realms of the artistic, creative, performative and audience reception of works being commissioned, performed and observed. The space can be mediated, becoming aurally identifiable using music technology. They are sounds of one culture which have crossed into the lexicon of another culture, in particular the music of the East to the art music of the West, creating a form of ‘hybridised’ music. As Frederick Lau observes:
When referring to the so–called Eastern music characteristics, musicians in the West immediately equate them with an unusual tuning system, pentatonic melodies, static harmony, and unconventional instrumental timbre. As evident in the music of Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Colin McPhee, and John Cage, these sonic features have been utilised as the salient markers of Eastern music and its aesthetics, despite the ambiguity of where the East is. (Lau Reference Lau2004: 25)
2. CREATIVE INTERCULTURALITY: TWO CASE STUDIES
These two case studies elucidate the dynamics of practice-led and -based research. Their value as exemplars of intercultural investigation processes may be seen as an uncovering of experience, collaborative processes and knowledge sharing, creation and realisation, reflection and knowledge generation. One of these works was composed by a Malaysian; the other is a structured improvisation by Australians (flautist and sound technologist) working in Malaysia. The composed work uses fixed sound sources, to which live instrument and live electronics were added; the improvisation is based on Malaysian indigenous flute melodies.
2.1. The Curse of the Screaming Serunai (Ramli 2011/rev. 2012)
This work is the second iteration of a previously composed acousmatic work which incorporates sounds from the Malaysian environment and traditional instruments – serunai and bonang. The serunai of peninsular Malaysia is a quadruple reed wind instrument that originated in Persia, probably arriving in Malaysia at the same time as Islam (Montague Reference Montague2007: 78); the bonang is a small horizontal knobbed gong instrument originating in Javanese gamelan. Western flute and live electronics were incorporated into a pre-existing soundscape, creating an innovative dialogical and dynamic space, and a process for investigating culture and connection. The second version also introduces a brief narrative based on Hindu chant, expanding the use of cultural artefacts, and further reflecting the diversity of Malaysian antiquity. These evolutions of the work point to an increasing interest by composer Affendi Ramli to share his cultural knowledge, and provide a site for cultural discourse. The three collaborators (Ramli, Penny and Blackburn) undertook this project as a test case, to discover information about the viability of these processes for knowledge creation from their individual perspectives.
2.1.1. The composer: Affendi Ramli
The composer's aim in this work was to study the potential acceptance and appreciation of culturally familiar sounds in the context of electroacoustic music by a Malaysian audience. Affendi states, ‘The Curse of the Screaming Serunai is a journey of metaphor that has shaped the sound of a serunai to reflect a hatred of human arrogance’, and that, he considers, is a particularly Islamic approach (personal communication, October 2012). Its symbolism derives from the traditional Malay use of this musical instrument as played in the leather puppet show the Wayang Kulit (Figure 1). In this metaphorical way, the composer attempts to bring the listener into a soundworld created by the processing of serunai sound-sources (breath, physical movement, finger slaps and normal sonority) electronically. He depends on the listener's recognition of various sound elements as a key factor to derive meaning and symbolism from the semiotics of sound. The addition of the live flute line creates a dialogue, an embodiment of connection; the transformation and expansions afforded by the live electronic processing facilitate the space for the performers (sound technologist and flautist) to initiate connections, provoke and respond.
Figure 1 Wayang Kulit with serunai. Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia.
2.1.2. The sound technologist: Andrew Blackburn
The collaborative preparation of the DSP for The Curse of the Screaming Serunai required a different approach from that usually followed in the creation of such pieces. Commonly, the process evolves in tandem. For the technologist, the first part of the process for this work meant developing an intuitive and intellectual understanding of the musical conception of the original soundscape. Affendi clearly wants us to perceive the serunai in a new way, without losing sight of its cultural origin. This could be another metaphor for the piece itself, due to the Malaysian audience's immediate and warm recognition of the serunai within the soundscape at every performance of both versions of the work. There are other familiar sounds in the original too, including the bonang and local environmental sounds. Amongst some Malaysian composers there is a desire to explore and manipulate familiar sounds, rendering them new. This was articulated by Hasnizam Abdul Wahid at a recent conference:Footnote 3
I became interested in experimenting with sounds … utilizing gamelan instruments as well as a ‘detuned’ electric guitar. This exploration resulted in the creation of a composition… employing a series of repetitive notes from a popular gamelan piece called Timang Burung. … The final version was … a fusion of traditional musical instruments and western musical ideas. (Hasnizam Reference Hasnizam2013)
In the The Curse of the Screaming Serunai, adding the flute part is intended to highlight an intercultural interplay with ‘appropriated’ musical interactions, but the composer gave little clue of how he imagined this dialogic soundscape materialising. Developing the DSP thus became a process of discussion, interrogation, trial and error, using Hipno (www.cycling74) plugins, and a shell created in Plogue Bidule (www.plogue.com) that allowed experimentation with the fx. The specific plugins are visible in Figure 2. A guiding principle for this process came from Marco Stroppa, who describes the relationship between instrumentalist and electronics as a ‘dialectic relationship, where each realm remains what it is, yet, interacts with the others’ (quoted in Penny Reference Penny2009: 44). In The Curse of the Screaming Serunai, this dialectic musical relationship spreads beyond the work itself, and into the cultural domain, as the original iteration of the piece remains itself, yet creates a new ‘self’ through interaction with the flute – a Malaysian musical environment interacting with the Western flute environment.
Figure 2 Plogue Bidule screen shot.
2.1.3. The flautist: Jean Penny
From the instrumentalist's point of view, the dialogical nature of The Curse of the Screaming Serunai reflects a meeting of Malay and Western cultures, and East/West performance practices. Two distinct entities are presented by the serunai and flute in this work – at first tentatively interacting, but with a strong forward velocity of energy throughout the piece. The computer-generated soundscape brings to the foreground questions of difference and similarity for the flautist, stimulating a questioning of sonority and technique, and a desire for exchange. When it is played within this soundscape, reflections on the aesthetic and expression of the serunai are led by the perception of a sense of sonic density. This feeling transfers over into the flute performance – in the sensations and awareness evoked, the approaches to flute sonority and gesture these generate, the spatial and cultural distances created, and the potential power of the exchanges.
Questioning of approaches is generated: whether to incorporate tonal characteristics of the serunai in the flute, or to retain a differentiation of tonal colour and assertiveness of gesture; whether to become the antithesis of the angry and desolate sounds of the serunai, or to embrace the new context through the integration of emotional responses to connection with a musical synthesis of sound. Questions about the realisation of connectivity arise: is it possible to find a sense of the history and place of a Western flute in this Malaysian sound environment? Is the flute merely a visitor to this scene? With the addition of the electronic manipulation of the flute sound these issues are intensified, and given a new context in which the player encounters, responds and experiences a re-invented and perhaps disrupted, performative space.
The tools through which we interrogate these issues, our instruments, our performative processes, our technologies and our accumulated knowledge bring with them histories and cultures that serve to both distinguish each, and to connect with the other. The Western flute's capacity for sonic malleability and adaptability works easily in this environment, and, through the familiarity of the dialogical framework, provides a sense of integration acceptable and meaningful for audience reception. In the midst of performance one feels a strong push and pull – a melding of styles and techniques and a stepping in and out of familiar sound worlds and cultural habitats. A dialogical space between the cultures is created in which the experience of each becomes sharply defined as the encounter takes place – a clarification of ‘the conditions in which understanding takes place’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1975: 263). A keen sense of sonic collaboration emerges within the performance space, an interweaving and symbiosis of ontologies and histories.
2.1.4. Observations
The Curse of the Screaming Seruani is a metaphor expressing a ‘hatred of human arrogance’, drawing its intended Malaysian audience into a familiar sound-world – of serunai, bonang and Hindu chant, all now absorbed into (in the words of Affendi Ramli) a ‘traditional Malaysian’ cultural context. That these have their origin in older cultures does not lessen their significance to a Malaysian listener. For non-Malaysian audiences this sound world is exotic, connecting to the flute part by musical devices including imitative interplay. The DSP creates a virtual physical but imaginary space between the two culture sets, connecting and making them accessible to both groups of listeners. The intersecting musical elements of this work – the live flute, the live electronics and the fixed sound – with its plethora of familiar Malaysian audio artefacts – are the tools of intercultural negotiation; this intersection becomes the dialogical and virtual space which is created by electronic mediation. There is an opening of the performers and ‘the spectator towards the other and the different’ (Davey, Reference Davey2011). Tim Ingold speaks of ‘objects and things’ (Ingold Reference Ingold2008: 4):
The thing … is a ‘going on’, or better, a place where several goings on become entwined. To observe a thing is not to be locked out but to be invited in to the gathering. We participate, as Heidegger rather enigmatically put it, in the thing’ thinging in a worldling world’ (Ingold Reference Ingold2008: 6).
It is this entwining that establishes the anticipated connections in a performance of The Curse of the Screaming Serunai.
2.2 Two improvisations for flute and electronics
Two improvisations were included in the project to further investigate Western and Malaysian cultural and musical intersections – in this case, music for concert flute, electronics and indigenous Malaysian pensol nose flute melodies. These structured improvisations explored an East/West synthesis through melody, live electronics and the body's centrality in performance, as physical gestures created the setting and motivation for new sounds, and performance rituals shifted through intercultural dialogue. Ingold observes: ‘To improvise is to follow the ways of the world, as they unfold, rather than to connect up, in reverse, a series of points already traversed’ (Ingold Reference Ingold2008: 17). The perspective of the Western instrumentalist in the Eastern context was expressed in these works as an unfolding of musical responses to questions of sonority, movement and location. Exploring multiple performative identities in a quest to unravel elements of cross-medial synthesis, creative connectivity and the interactions of the musician with technology extends here into an intercultural context through the study of current and traditional Malaysian music performance.
Studies of traditional nose flute playing centred around a performance we recorded in an Orang Asli village outside Tanjong Malim, Perak, Malaysia in 2012. The invitation to attend this demonstration session as part of ethnographic studies being carried out in the field proved serendipitous, and inspired this phase of the research. The performance, which occurred on the verandah of a village house, demonstrated techniques (blowing and finger), tone colour, and melodic style and gesture (Figure 3). Numerous villagers gathered around to listen, and then talk. The expression on the villagers’ faces during the music showed an immense pride and love of the playing – although, we were told, nose flute playing is a music skill that few, if any, of them now have. The nature of the performer – a very quiet, modest man who showed a great deal of happiness in sharing his music – was an important aspect of the occasion, giving us a strong impression of the place of music in the community. The music of this nose flute player lingers a long time in the air and memory. The sounds – pure, direct and strikingly expressive – formed traditional melodies that inspired our improvisations. An interpretation of the melodies formed the basis of the improvisations, elaborated and extended through extended flute techniques and electronic sound manipulation.
Figure 3 Nose flute player, Perak, Malaysia.
2.2.1. [seruling perak] an improvisation for alto flute, computer, live DSP and VMotion
The following section recounts the flautist's experience of developing the first improvisation through auto-ethnographic narrative. The descriptive qualities of the writing serve to illuminate the self-observing and reflective performance journey. Ingold talks about the musical instrument ‘corresponding with sound’, the instrument as transducer, that ‘converts ductus into material flux’ (Ingold Reference Ingold2013: 128). He contends that musical instruments correspond with the sound in the way that materials correspond with the maker; that correspondence is a dialogue, carried forward through gestures and traces – a ‘telling’ that can occur through making. This analogy transfers into a music performance narrative, as the music becomes a way of thinking and telling. The telling, in this case, of imprints of mediations and linked understandings.
An improvisation is beginning to form in my head. Still hearing the electronically treated sounds of the bonang and the serunai, as well as the traditional bamboo nose flute, I begin exploring my silver alto flute for sonic links and signs. The melodies of the nose flute player form easily (see example in Figure 4); motifs and gestures emerge and connect to create a structure and flow. If the improviser responds to the moment and the composer works with patterns and structures (Knight Reference Knight2011) this work sits in the middle, between notation and improvisation: a play with sounds, a building of predetermined structure, an interaction between performers (flautist and sound technologist), computer and camera all blurring the processes of pre-conceived notions of music creation. There is no score – but a graphic representation of ideas develops. We work to achieve a synonymity of sounds and ethos, reflective of the mood and tone of the indigenous flute. Indistinct air sounds, percussion in and on the flute, builds of harmonics and multiphonics combine to elaborate the sense of place and perception of nature. The camera picks up movement, the gestures of performance, to trigger different combinations of sound treatments through the computer. The sound technologist operates the software – Plogue Bidule with VST plugins – manipulating the sounds I produce with my flute during performance. We work together to create a soundscape and structure generated through the memories of sounds and colours of new Malaysian encounters.
Figure 4 Pensol melody 1, transcribed Penny.
I start to think about interstices between the sounds of diverse flutes – similarities, differences and the implied and intuitive knowledge of performers. I think of the computer as creative cohort. I think of the moments of anticipation and freewheeling of previous improvisations. Will an inner logic unfold this time, an energetic complexity, an experience that expresses this East/West idea? Development of the piece heads towards the movement of sounds, the stasis and vibrancy of the melodies, the waves of sound and gesture. Breathing perspectives are explored: the edge of breath, the edge of the flute, the inner and outer merging of the sonic source. Questions arise: Should the rituals of performance be questioned and modified in this context? Will physical gesture define the musical expression, or create a setting for the sound? Will the new sounds evoke a recognisable Malaysian aesthetic or feeling, or create a connection through context and exchange?
Establishing the sonic characteristics of the work and simultaneously introducing movement-triggered effects created an environment of flux. Movement of the flute can be easily incorporated, as extensions of conventional emotionally and musically reflective movement. Entire body movements can produce a completely new sensation, quite foreign to art music performance conventions. Attempting to avoid any sense of dance, but still aiming for a smooth, almost imperceptible effect that may reflect the music, proved unsustainable. The effects would not pick up small, subtle movements, so substantial lunging and walking movements were called for. These movements are absolutely visible, they are attached to the sounds, they are integral to the whole work. Thus, an abandonment of ingrained cultural physical expectations was demanded.
I consider other ideas about intercultural music-making. Are we achieving understanding of cultures, creating a meaningful exchange? To achieve artistic validity a commitment to understanding cultures, developing meaningful exchange, and creating the space for a reflective, emergent music is vital. Awareness of aesthetic and sonic implications requires balance and sensitivity, and in performance audacity and definition. These questions contest for my head space along side the beauty and drive of the sounds developing in the rehearsal studio.
2.2.2. Improvisation 2 for flute, computer and Cyclops
Through a series of re-workings of the original improvisational structure, new sonic possibilities provided by different digital technologies in live performance were investigated. Changes adopted in this version included playing concert flute (not alto flute), using plugins from the Cyclops (not VMotion), a re-structure of the flute part, the addition of a second pensol melody and alterations in sound emphasis. Cyclops was placed within the Plogue Bidule shell to create a smoothly functional series of sound events. The fx included reverb, delay, harmonisations, spatialisation and pitch changing. Applied to the melodies, these were highly effective, but also indicated the need to work the flute lines into more powerful shapes and textures. An emphasis on multiple breath sounds was added to initiate a more defined focus on the perceived ethereal qualities of the music.
The Cyclops program captures live video from a QuickTime input source and outputs messages for analysed video frames for triggering any Max sound processes or to control patch parameters (http://cycling74.com/products/cyclops). The interactivity through video capturing required grand gestures throughout to activate the triggering. A decision to include an additional pensol flute melody during the extended techniques section was made to add a new layer and perspective; to forward the indigenous flute references and extend the dialogue. The characterisation of the melodies, around which the whole work revolves, anchors the music in a beauty of tone, adding a highly realisable and recognisable dimension for listeners and players.
The incorporation of new sonic textures and melody led to an expansion of the use of extended techniques, and the development of a new construction to reflect these new emphases. A freedom of sound developed and the shaping of phrases and motifs anticipated digital transformations. Reverberation effects created an ease with the playing, a sense of open spaces, expansions and contractions of sounds and distance. Dialogues with new textures and sonic units activated by the effects created a setting for connection, for exploring the spirit of the music and reflecting on the generation of playing ideas and interpretative styles. The piece was ultimately constructed as follows, with flute line and electronic effects:
Perak nose flute melodies [Crack Verb]
Extended techniques (breath tone, jet whistles, flutter tonguing and closed rolls, tongue rams, flute percussion, exaggerated articulations, harmonics, whistle tones, multiphonics, alternate fingerings and trills) [Not Subtle & Floating on the sea]
Pensol melodies [Not Subtle & Floating on the sea]
Extended techniques [Not Subtle & Floating on the sea]
Perak melodies (contracted) [Not Subtle & Floating on the sea]
These structures and effects created a beautiful and subtle soundscape. The melodies carried and generated the sonic flow, and electronic effects added colours and voices that complemented and extended the flute line.
The influence of the additional pensol flute melody (Figure 5) was significant. Its tonal colour was easy to emulate on the concert flute, and the spirit of the music was additionally captured through the emphasis on ornamentation, the repetitive shapes of motifs and a feeling for the breathing techniques. These musical gestures caught a sense of the style projected in indigenous flute playing, mixed with a sense of the grandeur of expression derived from simplicity and directness. At times the music flickered; at other times it was sustained and resonant. A knowledge of pensol flute construction and performance (Penny, Blackburn and Ross Reference Penny, Blackburn and Ross2013) enhanced this connection as the sounds transferred and became embodied in a new electroacoustic setting.
Figure 5 Pensol melody 2, transcribed Penny.
Combining the two indigenous pensol flute melodies, contemporary Western extended flute techniques and the use of Cyclops as gestural capture sound manipulator established a fruitful mode for discovery. The technology, first and foremost, amplifies sound and action. Movements are transformed into sound, microsounds are captured and recast into characters, and melodies are shaped and performed in anticipation of metamorphosis. The result is a freedom to explore, to develop timbral diversity and to mould sonic units into imaginative forms, capable of conveying an awareness, and perhaps a convergence of cultural dispositions.
The listener is drawn into an intimate sound world; expectations of sounds alter and new meanings and perceptions evolve as remodelled sounds enable explorations of unfamiliar ideas. The mix of cultural elements in this work was definitely unusual, and the result created a new way of thinking about and knowing these styles as conveyors of cultural information, and individual response.
2.2.3. Observations
As electroacoustic technologies forge new sounds, understandings and performances, performative identities shift and new interchanges develop through a fusion of practices and cultures. Differences in the relationship of Eastern and Western musicians to their instrument, the diverse rituals of each and cultural meanings of bodily engagement provide a rich exploratory field, as do the spaces of performance, and the devised spaces of electroacoustic performance. Assimilation of Eastern and Western aesthetics, sounds, musical gestures, melody and effects is more than a blending of elements, or a simple interchangeability. It is more than the collection of exotic sonic materials, and more than an adoption of various performative presentation techniques.
The primary purpose of this improvisation was to explore new elements brought to musical practice through connecting with the sound of the Malaysian nose flute. Flautist and sound technologist collaborated to construct a work with elements of each, aiming not so much for a fusion of styles, as to comment on and elaborate sonic memories transferred into a musical work that mixes up identities to create an unfamiliar aesthetic. Impressions of musical interchange emerged through melody, the sonic characteristics of extended flute techniques, an electronic sound environment and embodied understandings of the two distinct cultures. The knowledge of diverse traditions – our deep knowledge of Western art music, coupled with new knowledge of indigenous Malaysian music – both liberated and elevated the investigation. In an artistic practice-led research setting such as this, self-scrutiny also surfaces, as new gestures and meaning infiltrate both music and performance action – elements that may destabilise previous conventions and practice. An acceptance of difference is crucial.
3. FINALE
In considering all the works and elements within this project, exploring the sounds and connections between cultures, the same questions keep arising: how do we describe and define interculturality, and what do we understand as the ‘imaginary space’ that exists between? Answers are not clear-cut or definitive, but remain framed in the contexts and parameters outlined earlier in this article. We find that Allwood's explanation that it ‘is not cultures that communicate, whatever that might imply, but people (and possibly social institutions) with different cultural backgrounds that do’ (Allwood Reference Allwood1995) holds true, and that what we have found in the examples discussed here is communication and a growing understanding between individuals. Also, the two cultures have a meeting point, created by the DSP, which aurally locates the listeners and performers in a virtual space. Within this space the differing cultures engage dialogically, each losing and gaining identity in the warp and weft of the musical events. The connections, discussions and artistic interactions which have occurred (and continue to do so) between the authors and composers all validate this argument.
That this is intercultural, and that the space(s) between the cultures can be connected through new music, is supported by the hermeneutic conditions explained by Gadamer, who makes it clear that, to him, hermeneutics is not a method for understanding but an attempt ‘to clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1975: 263). When we view this in light of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological theories, we can correlate our personal experiences with Gadamer's explanation of the ‘true historical object’ – the phenomenology we have experienced in the creation and performance of works of differing cultural heritage – and in that phenomenology we can argue that what our ‘intercultural relationship’ determines is ‘worth enquiring about, but we also find that, by following the criterion of intelligibility, the other presents itself so much in terms of our own selves that there is no longer a question of self and other’ (Gadamer Reference Gadamer1975: 268, cited in Reference HoltorfHoltorf n.d.). Phenomenology concerns itself with the self and experience, and human relationships to provide the possibilities of interpretation and meaning. So, the phenomenological process of self and other in the creative process which leads to performance is integral to the evolution of a creative intercultural interaction, and that in turn provides some clarity of the spaces and connections we seek to identify. Nicolas Bourriaud writes:
The role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist. (Bourriaud Reference Bourriaud1998:13)
Our work in creating contexts for intercultural music explorations in Malaysia is striving to transform the space of performance into ‘models of action’, where the music becomes the space, and the action becomes the living reality.
