Stet Lab is, and has been for some time, on indefinite hiatus. [More info…]
…a celebration of the practice of improvisation in all its diversity, complexity and, perhaps, contradictions
Between June 2008 and April 2011, fourteen author-practitioners documented over nineteen events from the POV of the stage. The Lab reports were an opportunity for the improviser-musician-performers to explore and explode the processes and practices of music in general, and improvisation in particular. These reports ranged in tone from the oblique, the whimsical, and the […]
Since Piaras Hoban published an algorithmically generated text for his Lab report, and since I’m not averse to conversations with technics, I thought I’d follow his example with a conversation with Eliza (in this case Charles Hayden’s Java implementation of Eliza), the grandmother of Turing-test contenders. Here’s a more-or-less unedited conversation on the October Stet […]
What is the status of ‘failure’ in improvisative performance? Is the notion of failure relevant to improvised music? If relevant, is it important in the ongoing practice (evolution, mutation or adaptation) of improvisation? safety… For me ‘oxleygrass (Marie’s phone)’ really doesn’t work as music. I think, at best, it’s a technical demonstration. The ditty didn’t […]
Stet Lab, Cork, February 10, 2009 Before we go on stage, I joke with Jamie Smith that we’re the two guitarists who’re going to be tripping up each other (and that the drummer, Owen Sutton, will have to pick through the carnage). By ‘tripping up’ I’m not implying that the results weren’t going to be […]
It’s good, I think, to think tactically about improvisation, and group improvisation in particular. You know, however, that you’ve lost the game in improvisation when you’re preempting the music. You don’t want to be thinking this is how it should be, goddamnit, and I will fit that square piece into that triangular hole. Much more […]
I’ve often wondered what goes through an improviser’s head during group improvisation. The improvised public performances I’ve participated in before have been more like improvised compositions in a sense—one person takes charge, or there’s a kind of plan vaguely sketched out (usually with the proviso that things might happen differently). This was my first time […]