Jon Rose: Violin Music in the Age of Shopping / Chaotic Violin


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Title:


    Violin Music in the Age of Shopping / Chaotic Violin

Artist(s) and People Involved:


Symposium:


Artist Statement:


    As revealed in the seminal book The Pink Violin, the Australian composer, theorist and violinist Dr. Johannes Rosenberg predicted that after the demise of Communism and Capitalism would come The Age of Shopping. He also identified two important characteristics that the culture industry of this period would develop – firstly an obsession with technical process for its own sake and secondly, a contemporary art and music world largely empty of any creative content. A culture where the constituent parts have been removed from their context (meaning) and all voices, authentic, original or otherwise, continue to exist only as easily identifiable, sellable product. Content as a recognizable idea has ceased to exist because all the “content” has become interchangeable – it wouldn’t matter what is going on providing there is evidence that something is going on. A merely quantitative world of massed copies and fakes. All music, whatever its origin, status or supposed function would exist now in a digital dream time that the originators of ‘muzak’ could never have imagined. Rosenberg envisaged the music supermarket of today – a place where the tins on the shelf are interchangeable; the labels looking different but the content (once bought) would be all the same.

    For the best part of 20 years now, Jon Rose, “The Paganini of New Music” (according to a New York Times critic) has been de- and re-constructing the violin and its music in an attempt to formulate an alternative and personal history for the instrument. He has taken Johannes Rosenberg’s rather extreme ideas at their word – hence the existence of this project Violin Music in the Age of Shopping. Placing the violin in a global shopping context does seem to be the next logical step in Jon Rose’s gesamtkunstwerk approach to music. Contexts, histories, functions, imagery and meanings are all up for sale in this current culture-vulture project. Shopping will of necessity be a satirical piece with political intent.
    The Chaotic Violin is another of Jon Rose’s interactive violin/computer pieces – this time his violin bow acts as a MIDI controller. The 32 mapping tables of the program can be set to work within the standard chromatic scale or choice of notes can be generated by random generator, algorithms, or methods of interpolation between fixed points. Superimposition of these structures in real time lead to very complex patterns but these patterns nevertheless always retain a high degree of self-similarity. This complexity must also operate in an ever changing mode because of the adjacent violin performance operating in parallel, against or with it – ie. those physical actions, movements and techniques of the violinist.

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