Interview with GIASO
– How did this initiative come about?
The project was created in 2005 during an event in which Julien Ottavi participated by Audiolab/Arteleku in San Sebastian, Spain. The orchestra at that time included: Achim Wollscheid (Frankfurt), As 11 (Athens), TMP (New York), Randy H. Yau (San Francisco), Jason Kahn (Zurich), APO33 (Nantes), Ilios, Julien Ottavi, Xabier Erkizia, Mattin, Iñigo Telletxea (Donostia-San Sebastian). It is a project conceptualized and created by Julien Ottavi with the support of the APO33 collective.
– How many members is the Orchestra composed of today?
More than twenty musicians.
– Where do the musicians who make up the Orchestra come from?
France, Chile, Canada, USA, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Sweden, etc.
– How long has it been in existence?
Since 2005.
– If I understand correctly, all creations are done online? Do musicians intervene in the composition from the platform? Do they always compose collectively or not (sometimes solo, duo, or more)?
Creations are done both online and in one or more diffusion spaces. Musicians send a real-time audio transmission (streaming) via the internet. The conductor mixes their sounds/streaming and gives them instructions; they hear the overall result via the GIASO streaming (global mixing and space diffusion). In some versions, musicians directly influence the mixing, and sometimes it’s an automated/program that randomly controls the final result.
– What changes have you noticed in the practices of musicians but also of spectators? What influence does this have?
Musicians, through this project, have started working differently; there is obviously more discussion among us about how the overall sound and music unfold. Individualities appear stronger but are engaged in discussions about the composition itself and what is being broadcast rather than interpretation. Musicians are not chosen based on their instrument but on their ability to play in such an orchestra. The influence is more on the question of changing each one’s practice and the desire to continue developing this approach in their own artistic research. The spectator no longer exists as a fixed unit in one place. They are everywhere at once, connected, at home or in another diffusion space, but also on-site in a semi-classical form, between a concert and an installation. Their listening changes; they can also interact with the musicians. There is less distance from a “stage” and more crossing between the two. The relationship to music is less hierarchical, involving greater freedom of movement or space for exchange and debate.
– From your point of view, what impact, what influence does streaming have on artistic creation?
From our perspective, streaming has had a fairly strong influence on part of the artistic community and on creations that struggle to exist in classical art circles (exhibitions, concerts, etc.) because the survival of an Italian-style system is still very strong. We are confronted with a form of cultural and artistic conservatism that tends not to take this kind of practice seriously. Conversely, we have waves of artistic creation using streaming as a means of diffusion or creation, which also develops another form of “spectators,” more active and often engaged in the process. Streaming itself has not changed artistic creation significantly; it is more a combination of computer+internet+streaming+Free Software/Free Culture/Copyleft that profoundly changes artistic practice.
– What place does streaming hold in your projects? And in Art more broadly?
Streaming for about fifteen years and radio, more broadly, for almost 20 years, play a strong role in our practice. From radio diffusion, we have moved on to multichannel and bidirectional webradio. It’s about this spirit of sound transmission and the creation of artistic and musical instruments/devices. Streaming opens up certain installations or performances to an outside (outdoors), outside the dedicated space (concert hall, show or exhibition hall). In art more broadly, it’s hard to say, but there has been something common from the beginning of net art and in artistic practices using streaming, this spirit of information circulation, the creation of new devices, and new writings.
– Could you enlighten me on this part of your presentation, please? ”It is a question of transforming the device into an instrument of intervention and poetic writing. Beyond the diversion of the device: the artists produce a form of installation that establishes the autonomy of the device and the impossibility of post-production intervention on the device: the device escapes the hands of the creator.”
This is a more elaborate reflection of what we write above in the interview. A more global thought about the radio and streaming device. It is an instrument of intervention, which we use for actions, these actions generate writing. There is a diversion of the device, in the sense that it is no longer just a tool for transmitting information, and we manipulate it in this way within its limits. Likewise, it, after a certain time and notably in its dissemination within the community or via the public, becomes something else, and we lose control of it; it escapes us. We are almost at an extreme threshold between what we are looking for, what we have found, and what happens beyond our field of intervention/manipulation.