Beyond the unnecessary self

the giving up of the self

June 27, 2024

Henrik Frisk - henrik.frisk@kmh.se

Introduction

The (un)necessary self (Frisk, Henrik, 2013)

giving up of the self

move the focus from the creator to what is created and to understand the roles of the various agents involved

The powers of commodification

  • the artistic output
  • the artist
  • the listeners

Freedom of art

The complexities of the freedom of art is threatened

Radicalization

in the radicalization of the role of the creator, both a new work concept and a review of the self is necessary, even beyond the notion of giving up of the self

Moral values

the moral values that are expressed through artistic practices in music, specifically improvisation, may complement traditional views on ethics

Foucault

The notion of the Care of the Self (Michel Foucault's Volume Three of the History of Sexuality) is used as a method to approach this complex area

The care of the self

The care of the self

a self that is rooted in "practices of freedom" (Foucault, M. and Rabinow, P. and Hurley, R., 1997 p. 283)

"Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection" (Foucault, M. and Rabinow, P. and Hurley, R., 1997 p. 284)

The care of the self

When you take care of the body you do not take care of the self. The self is not clothing, tools, or possessions; It is to be found in the principle that uses these tools, a principle not of the body of the soul.

The care of the self

You have to worry about your soul–that is the principal activity for caring for yourself. The care of the self is the care of the activity and not the care of the soul-as-substance.

The aesthetics of the creative act

The principle that uses the tools of artistic practice is in essence the aesthetics of the creative act: the practice itself.

Focus on relations between self and others

  • they exist
  • they matter
  • they need to be good and respctful

(though good and respectful can mean a lot of things in art practices)

Not an ethics of instruments…

…but a developed sense of ethics through a deep understanding for relations.

Deconstructs the subject/object.

Sounds of Future Past

DATATON-02.JPG

An ethics of instruments

is leaning on

  • the material aspects
  • mediations
  • telos

    of an instrument can provide grounds for an analysis of its ethics

Technologies of the Self

The use Foucault's creterias from the Technologies of the Self

Strange

to speak of an ethics of objects when not all human enjoy ethical rights

Dataton 3000

The Dataton

What is the difference between the traditional method for musical interpretation, rooted in Western musical practices (really art history), and the excavation of the technological and cultural significances of a particular electronic musical instrument of the past?

(see Roland Barthes in the famous essay The death of the Author)

Historically informed practice?

To attempt to understand the qualities and the particularity of this instrument a wide range of parameters need to be considered related.

Not only origin.

Media archaeology

by learning from early electronic instruments it is possible to better understand the complexities of these practices:

media archaeology

Design history

  • inventive design is commercialized
  • becomes mainstrem
  • originals forgotten

About the synthesizer

"from a flexible variety of possible control configurations, the synthesizer eventually stabilised into a keyboard instrument" (Pinch, T. and Trocco, F., 1998)

Market forces

.. exclude the loosers and standardize the winners.

Not the objects themselves

The free play

  • the interactions made possible by engaging in an artistically driven play with the objects
  • a free play that does not have a purpose and no particular meaning
  • though it may well develop in other directions in the future.

    Improvisation is part of the method that allows me to do this.

Deconstructing the originator

Difference?

What is the difference between the traditional method for musical interpretation and the excavation of the technological and cultural significances of a particular electronic musical instrument of the past?

  • the first has an originator at the centre
  • the second supports a network of relations

The added value?

  • it opens up for an expanded ethical dimension of artistic practices that value the larger context
  • the relationships between the various agents involved in their past and current practices

Preliminary conclusion

As long as I care about the relation between myself and the instrument, and the instruments relation to its context, I can be free to follow my artistic and ethically informed intentions, and these will develop into a sort of freedomm in and of themselves.

Giving up of the self

The giving up of the self along with the care of the self are not contradictions - they feed upon each other and allow for an approach and an epistemology of creativity that is more closely aligned with others than the solely the self.

Thank you!

Henrik Frisk