Play It Anew, Man! A Game-Theoretical Quartet about Relational Composing

Play It Anew, Man! A Game-Theoretical Quartet about Relational Composing Michel Roth (bio) Music1 is a social art, it demands participation.2 This applies not only to those who play and listen, but also to participatory compositional work. Its traditional functions of organizing material and designing musical scripts is becoming increasingly open and enriched by a process of guided collaboration within a community of practice and experience. Some disciplines may seem new.3 At the same time, contemporary composing is less and less “disciplinary,” and situates itself instead as part of a larger, interactive game. The following conversation between the four ghosts of the computer game Pac Man did not take place like this. However, similarities with existing spirits and flashes of inspiration are not accidental. This text defines a playground of different applications of game theory and concepts of play in composed music. All statements are numbered consecutively (e.g. “Machibuse99”) so that readers can find and contribute their own point of view in this discursive system of coordinates. [End Page 5] Oikake1: Composing is making and acting. Machibuse2: Are you a composer-performer? Oikake3: One thing at a time! Acting does not only mean performing, but every intentional change of condition in a system of presuppositions,4 and thus also composing. Otoboke4: But you make something, you create a work. Oikake5: I prefer to be at work—and that’s acting.5 I don’t just write notes. I rehearse, discover, discuss, adapt, change. Kimagure6: Seen in this way, the initial condition is the sharpened pencil, the final condition the sharp pen of criticism . . . Oikake7: . . . and in between, a long, circular causal chain of decisions and interactions with the environment—many things happen beyond the paper. Otoboke8: So it’s just about fun, just playfulness?6 Oikake9: Each phase of the creative process has its own counterparts7 and resistances.8 But the more I distance myself from my work, the more productive it becomes.9 Machibuse10: So the creation of music is a social act?10 Oikake11: . . . simply directed and rule-oriented,11 everything still happens in relation to an evolving script.12 Kimagure12: In fact it is a process, not an object.13 Machibuse13: Okay, then I shall call music production a game.14 Kimagure14: Very ingenious. You mean a sealed-off space of experience where social conditions encounter spontaneous behavior?15 Machibuse15: We shall see just how sealed-off it is . . . Otoboke16: Then composing would be a game with a game: a game of second-order.16 [End Page 6] Kimagure17: With the possibility of breaking innovatively with conventionalized action, creating new situations,17 and also testing alternative strategies on the part of the players . . .18 Machibuse18: . . . and new forms of participation in listening.19 Oikake19: I wish! Most of the music we experience every day is pseudo-contingent! One only pretends to communicate and to expose oneself to the environment.20 Adorno20: It is all aesthetic pretense. Ensembles are hollow social spaces, only filled by the composed gesture of what is becoming.21 Oikake21: You should listen to more improvised music! It offers asymmetric and reactive processes, determined by both internal and social factors—up to the complete mutual contingency of all participants.22 Machibuse22: But can an improvisation group reflect the quality of its socialization? They try to produce something spontaneously that has previously been painstakingly trained, but deprive themselves of the possibility of testing, revising or discarding what they play.23 Kimagure23: Do you only believe in dis-coordination games where different views of a game conflict with each other?24 Otoboke24: Downing a Kuemmerling Schnapps in one, then playing carelessly apart25—as a trio, sometimes against each other, sometimes on their own . . . Oikake25: Whether cooperative or non-cooperative: I demand games with real decisions, an experimental curiosity about inconsistencies, questionabilities, inner tensions—an aesthetic emergency.26 Machibuse...