Improvising polyrhythmic space: exploring a continuum of musico-spatial creative practice
Creators: name: Ham, Jeremy
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330102
subject: Architectural design
classificationCode: 360304
subject: Music performance

description: My practice as both musician (drums and percussion) and spatial designer (architect) provides a unique perspective from which to explore cross-domain design research. Through a sustained critical enquiry, I explore a continuum of practice that reveals rich territories for investigation within and across the musical domain, the spatial domain and a nascent ‘musico-spatial’ domain.<br><br> The research follows two main trajectories: an exploration of the ‘infinite art’ (Berliner, 2009) of improvisation and, working synergistically with this, an exploration of cross-domain representation (XDR). I have based initial research investigations on the development of a methodology of performance of large numbers of drum-based improvisations across representative musical contexts. Curation of these hundreds of musical artefacts reveals the complex polyrhythmic ‘referent’ (Pressing, 1987) patterns and phrases that define my ‘polyrhythmic idiolect’ (Garner, 2017). <br><br>Alongside improvisation as methodology, I explored XDR through the development of a flexible parametric framework for a three-dimensional spatial drum notation (3D-SDN) that represents the dynamic note events-in-time of polyrhythmic drumming through a notational representation based on the spatiality of the drum kit and informed by the principles of architectural representation. The ‘affordances’ (Norman, 2002) of the 3D-SDN enhance understandings of polyrhythmic drumming, thus mediating a theoretical musico-perspectival hinge between the music and the understanding of music through notation. <br><br>From this foundation, I conduct design research investigations into the XDR of curated drum improvisations as spatial prototypes. Through this series of parametric workflows, I reveal a capacity to generate complex and intricate spatial representations of improvised drumming as polyrhythmic space. These spatialisations act to inform a cross-domain creative practice, but also provide further affordances for the understanding of the complexities and nuances of polyrhythmic drumming. These affordances of the 3D-SDN and spatial prototypes are tested on my own drumming improvisation and in a pilot study using a cohort of drummers of varying styles and expertise. <br><br>As a musico-spatial cross-domain practitioner, I explore modalities of drum-based musical improvisation through a series of experimental Digital DrumScape musical pieces and discover the concept of augmented musical improvisation. Moving beyond the ‘known world’ of drumming (Bruford, 2015), I develop new spatial design processes through ‘spatial improvisation’ where the digital drum kit is employed as a generative design tool for the actuation of dynamic note eventsin- time and space. Adapting improvisation as methodology for design research, I reveal a capacity for the real-time design of polyrhythmic space through spatial-thinking-in-action as thinking in space while playing in time where time becomes a critical determinant of spatial design output. <br><br>I bring these two trajectories of design research together as musico-spatial improvisation in and of polyrhythmic space through a virtual drumming environment (VDE). This integration of live drumming performance, virtual instrumentation and virtual reality forms the foundation for a new augmented musico-spatial improvisational practice. This dynamic musicospatial environment forms a counterpoint to static cross-domain representations and, together, these provide a repertoire of workflows to inform cross-domain design research through analytical, creative and speculative practice.