IMPROVISATION AND GESTURE AS FORM DE- TERMINANTS IN WORKS WITH ELECTRONICS Alyssa Aska University of Calgary alyssa.aska@ucalgary.ca ABSTRACT This paper examines several examples that use electron- ics as form determinants in works with some degree of structured improvisation. Three works created by the au- thor are discussed, each of which uses gestural controller input to realize an indeterminate form in some way. The application of such principles and systems to venues such as networked performance is explored. While each of these works contains an improvisatory and/or aleatoric element, much of their content is composed, which brings the role of the composer into question. The “improviser”, who in these works advances the work temporally and determines the overall form, is actually taking on the more familiar role of the conductor. Therefore, these works also bring up important conversation topics regard- ing performance practice in works that contain electron- ics and how they are realized. 1. INTRODUCTION Improvisation in some form permeates nearly all genres and eras of music: the baroque had improvised keyboard music, improvisatory solos are an integral part of jazz realization, and even classical concerti contain cadenza sections, which are improvised by a soloist. When one considers the ornamentations that were assumed in cer- tain styles of baroque music, as well as temporal improvi- sation such as rubato in romantic piano music, it is appar- ent that some degree of performance liberty, or interpre- tation, is applied to nearly all music, no matter how pre- cisely the notation of the work. Electronic systems, par- ticularly live ones, often have some elements that change, even if slightly, based on performance conditions. This is true of acoustic instruments to an extent (elements such as reverb and delay are dependent on venue, and musi- cians may compensate for such and perform differently) as well. Taking into account computational processing lag, minute differences in algorithm realization, and live interactive components that may differ in each perfor- mance, it is clear that the use of electronics is adapted well to flexible performance realization. It is this flexibil- ity requirement that led composers to seek live systems in favour of fixed media coupled with instruments in the past – for many works that included tape alongside live instruments, there simply wasn’t enough room for the performer to give a fluid performance whilst also adher- ing to the strict time of the tape. (This is not the case, however, for all tape music, when one considers some built-in flexibility in works such as Mario Davidov sky’s Synchronisms, no. 6) [1]. Electronic improvisation has also been explored, in programs such as Omax, in which the computer actually improvises along with a live in- strument [2]. This paper focuses primarily on improvisa- tional or aleatoric elements that affect the large-scale form or other temporal elements of a work. The works discussed below all make use of gestural control in some capacity to determine form and flow of time; that is, in each of these works, an performer interacts with a gestur- al controller to determine either the overall form of the work, or durations of sections within. 2. PRECEDENTS While improvisation and multiple score interpretation can be observed in many periods throughout history, an ex- haustive discussion of improvisatory works is beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore, the practical discussion is preceded with a brief description of some of the more relevant recent works (and scholarship) involving im- provisation and/or indeterminacy. The music of John Cage presents an excellent starting point for this discus- sion, as many of his works contained indeterminate pro- cedures within a modern framework. Many of these works resulted in incredibly diverse interpretations, and Philip Thomas noted that, regarding his Solo for Piano (1957-58), “No single interpretation is likely to represent all the material available, and the multiple possibilities open to the interpreter within just a single piece make the Solo for Piano a work that is uncontainable: it resists definition, and at micro- and macro- levels the score can be only the beginning of a process, a prompt for action rather than a description of sound” [3]. Thomas further commented on several interpretations of this work, de- scribing that the score was not a definitive element in much of Cage’s work, and that the resulting music was substantially diverse from interpretation to interpretation. When electronics become a consideration, the possibili- ties for improvisation or indeterminacy increase, espe- cially for those works that involve computing. However, most musicians are not trained to improvise with a com- puter system (and while growing, pedagogy surrounding the performance of works for instrument and live elec- tronics remains limited). Chapman Welch, who com- posed several works involving improvisation with an electronic entity, remarked that “the addition of an inter- active computer system within an improvisation adds a Copyright: © 2016 First author et al. This is an open-access article dis- tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.