Guest: Mary Roberts, Assignment to do a Situationist piece
 
 
 
 

Assignment for Graduate Students -- Exercises designed in the style of the Situationists

Pick either Activity #1 or Activity #2 to do as your assignment. All realizations must be essentially done in the sonic domain; however, non-sonic elements may be used to facilitate the making of the sonic elements. Please note that a packet of readings will be put in your mailboxes on Friday, May 18. These readings provide quite a bit of information concerning the dérive and the détournement. Also, we will spend some time defining exactly how we want to interpret the meanings of dèrive and détournement in class on Monday, May 22.

Activity #1, The Dérive)

1) Determine how you can realize a dérive within the style of sound making that you are presently most comfortable with. What follows is a list of artistic elements that should be included in the realization of your dérive:
 

a) Remember that the primary goal of Situationists is to create non-spectacle activities. The Sits (Situationists for short) thought that full engagement by oneself can only happen within the activity of hands-on (ears-on) art making. Consuming of other people's art making, particularly the art made by people that think that they hold a superior rank or a particular position in a hierarchy is especially looked down upon by the Sits.

b) The dérive can be roughly translated as: "to drift". And originally the Sits used the dèrive as a type of framework for experimental behavior in an urban environment. Particularly, the Sits designed dérives that utilized randomly designed maps for wanderings in cities ­ much like sightseeing but with a sense of the unexpected. The sense of unexpected was very important to the psychology of the dérive in that it added an element of play and an element of disorientation which demanded a sense of hyper-engagement and hyper-awareness. When the person doing the dérive is struggling with disorientation they cannot shift their psychology to that of the spectator, they must engage in the moment with the activity at hand. This is very important and something that you should consider weaving into your sonic dérive ­ the ability for the participant(s) in the sound making to be disoriented.

c) The sound making activity should have an element of input on its own, so that the sound itself can provide a direction for the dérive. For example, most of us know of algorithmic compositions where the sound making mechanism can take on a direction of its own. This type of sound making would be very interesting to the Sits. The Sits would be interested in how the sound making mechanism could take them into sound making "neighborhoods" where they, the Sits, could feel disoriented, yet fully engaged and participatory.

d) The dérive should not happen in an environment with limited parameters. The Sits especially frowned on activities like the Happenings where events were announced, limited in space, limited in time, and meant to be consumed by an audience. You should make sure that your dérive has no such limitations. Limitations enable the Spectacle, limitations enable spectators to know where to go to consume art, how to consume the art, and how long the consumption will last ­ these are all key elements belonging to the Spectacle.

e) The dérive cannot be ideologized or manufactured in an ideological situation. And I know that this may seem vague but the true character of the dérive will not happen if an ideology of any sort is involved. It helps to avoid ideologies if your dérive is designed by a person or persons from the ground up as a cooperative effort. There should be no element of leadership because there should be no element of discipleship. It also helps if you choose to make your dérive with the help of other people whom you know are on a very similar wavelength with you concerning what you want to do. This way nobody has to learn from another person, but decisions for the cooperative effort and learning are done together.

To sum up the vital elements of the dérive:
 

a) Anti-Spectacle in essence.

b) Elements of disorientation should be used.

c) The environment of art making has the ability to steer the art makers in to unexpected areas.

d) Non-limited parameters should be used.

e) Non-ideologized group art making has to be done without leaders and disciples.
 

3) You should provide some documentation of the sonic event (CD, video, tape, soundfile, etc.).

Activity #2, The Détournement)

1) Determine how you can realize a détournement within the style of sound making that you are presently most comfortable with. What follows is a list of artistic elements that should be included in the realization of your détournement:
 

a) A good working definition for a détournement in a musical context is: The integration of two or more sonic expressions (probably pirated expressions) into a musical context that makes a point (in the case of the Sits they were making propaganda-styled points). The "point" should not be evident in the disparate sonic expressions by themselves as such, the "point" can only be realized with the combining of the disparate sonic expressions. The comics provided in your packet of papers kind of make a point, but you should be creative and design the point first, then carefully pick the disparate sonic expressions and combine them in such a way that the point is unmistakable.

b) It is also important that your integration of sonic materials express the loss of importance to the disparate materials. In other words, your new sound piece should make it clear that the elements you used are no longer useful except in the context of your new piece. Remember that the détournement does not de-value its elements (because art, as Sits see it, can have no value anyway), but the détournement, rather, can re-value the elements it uses.

c) The Sits were all for plagarization and they used the example of Marcel Duchamp painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa as a particularly boring example of plagarization. This act of simple negation by Duchamp provides no evidence of a rigorous and radical critique of Western Culture and its obsession with personal property. So, to be in true Sit form, you should make sure that your "point" does not have an element of comodification in it, rather, your "point" should reinforce the silliness of personal property.

d) An element of play and playfulness is important to the détournement. A good way to kick-start playfulness in regards to making a détournement is to try to imagine the most polarized elements weaved into in a radical combination that makes a clear point about how silly it is that art can be owned by anybody.

e) Like the dérive, the détournement should have an element of disorientation, just to keep things out of the realm of the Spectacle. It should be obvious by now that a sure-fire way to discombobulate the Spectacle is to toss in a bit of disorientation.

To sum up the vital elements of the détournement:

a) The integration of two or more sonic expressions (pirated) to make a point that is not evident in the disparate elements themselves.

b) The sonic expressions themselves should loss all sense of importance when they are combined in your piece.

c) With the use of plagarization, your "point" should reinforce the silliness of personal property.

d) There should be an element of disorientation.

2) You should write a paper (any length needed in order to precisely document what you did) that explains how you realized all of the above elements in to a détournement.

3) You should provide some documentation of the sonic event (CD, video, tape, soundfile, etc.).