Rama Gottfried & Ritwik Banerji in Array
The 2019 volume of Array features fantastic contributions by BCNM music alumni! Rama Gottfried co-wrote the introductory editorial and interviewed Andrea Neumann in "Instrument Environments," while Ritwik Banerji contributed "Feeling Like an Agent." This year's theme was "Agency" in electronic and computer music.
An excerpt from Gottfried's "Instrument Environments":
Array: Would you say that this idea of agency is mostly related to the autonomy of the preparations? But then you have the amplified network system,...
Neumann: There's agency everywhere. For example: I have these percussion brushes, and when you use them for playing the strings, when you want to have a certain intense string sound, you press the brushes so they go around the strings.
An excerpt from Banerji's "Like An Agent":
As strange or convoluted as such problems may seem — and indeed, no one should fail to register them as such — they are of relevance for a broad swath of artists using technology, and particularly computation, as a means of achieving their creative goals. More importantly, the differential between agency one believes they have and agency the same subject actually has further illustrates the tremendeous imoprtance of a rigorous approach to the evaluation of new systems and tools at the intersection of computation, sound, and music.
You can read the entire issue here.