I listened to an interview with Francisco López at the Red Bull music academy that opened me to new ideas and resonated feelings I have about sound and reality. López is described as a sonicist, composer and bioligist. So I ask, what is sonicism?
In ‘Sonicism I: Against Instrumentalism’, academic Julian Todd writes “Sonicism holds that works are identical just in case they sound exactly alike.” To a sonicist, timbre holds more value in individuating a composition that the instrumentation or instrument used. To an instrumentalist, a piece is different when played with a different instrument, even if the pieces are sonically indistinguishable. To me it seems clear that a difference between sonicism and instrumentalism is the value of sound or sound source: a sonicist values the sound over the source of the sound which proposes a radically new way of seeing/hearing. In agreement, I would add that we make a presumption in considering what the source of the sound is… Does the sound not exist in the perception rather than the instrument ‘out there’? Sonicism is criticising the belief in an external reality being the fundamental or reality, which leads me to one of López’ philosophies behind his work.
López is interested in the sound of a composition. He proposes that a fictional piece aka compositon, can be a more real representation of experience than the material world. He is not interested in recreating the sounds of the material world but instead distorting/adjusting them creatively to reflect a personal reality, one that is subjective, emotional and being perceived. He calls this “the surprise and the unexpected.”
He says that a sound piece is “an open gate into a territory of exploration. It is the resonsibility of the listener to create within that terrain… The most fundamental act of creation when it comes to sound or music is not producing sound, it is listening to sound.” Wowee! A composition is a blank canvas for the listener to interact with and create… This ‘territory of exploration’ is the sound piece created by López. I think the soundscape of the material reality is also a ‘territory of exploration’ and there is constant creative value in our engagement with this world. An ephiphany I had in López’ philosophy is that is it difficult to distinguish the creative value between our perception of the ‘real world’ and art. Perhaps the border is conceptual and unnecessary, the real value or real world is actually in the perception, not in what is being percieved.
Hereby ends some confusion I had about my creative practice. A few months ago I started to hear the environmental soundscape as an artpiece. I became confused in the idea of <em>adding</em> to this soundscape with my music and sound because it already had total value. López’ philosophy makes me feel that the value is not in the materiality but in how it is percieved, so whatever the world is, a sound art composition or walking down a street listening to traffic, the value is applied in the perception. A unique value in created art or compositon is the expression of subjectivity can be shared with other humans.
López has concluded a momentary confusion by proposing new questions, and new confusions emerge. As I place the tips of my fingers on knowing, it is again refuted, I am again lost and unsure about the world.