I/O Media / Soundreach / 2010

[mp3 .zip archive / 79MB]

I/O Media's initial plan for this issue of Vague Terrain was to arrange a meeting at our de facto meeting place, the Golden Turtle Vietnamese restaurant near our practice space (I'd recommend the number 96).[Rob: I like the #1, with a durian shake].  We would interview ourselves, discussing collaboration and specifically the on-line performance we had done with Shenzhen-based artist Zen Lu.

Not unexpectedly, the 'interview' degenerated into a series of off-the-wall tangential discussions, none of them bearing much relation to that which we had initially set out to address. It occured to me that we don't, as a rule, discuss intent and process. I think the Tanso project and the subsequent "interview" worked in similar ways- we set out some rough guidelines, then worked within them without over-analyzing any part of the method after the fact.

After listening back to the recording, I decided to strip out the audio that held any literal content (most of which would have been irrelevant anyway) and, in doing so, began to notice that the result in fact retained a flow and dynamic, providing a good analogy to who we are and how we function as a musical collective. There is an element present of an awkward first date, but also an evolution through silences, responses and moods that offers a curious but eloquent parallel to the way that we function visually and musically as improvisors.

The idea of improv as a conversation may be somewhat hackneyed, but in it there clearly appears to be a core of truth.

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The audio file of the interview was subsequently used as the source material for a jam, providing a second take on the idea of conversation as improvisation.