Doctoral Colloquium (Music): Stanzi Vaubel, University of Buffalo

The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.

Students (Music) for whom attendance is required must sign the attendance sheet at the colloquium.

Indeterminacy as a Collaborative Model

How can we use the materials at hand to compose? It might be working with simple things, like some cardboard, paper, and a bristle brush, as specified by Rainer Rilke in his description of the materials needed to create the gramophone. Or it might be simple sounds, like the ones made by the monochord. Or it might involve grand, arduous, and intense gestures, like the desire literally to carry a ship over a mountain, instead of using special effects, as conceived by filmmaker Werner Herzog in Fitzcarraldo. In all of these examples, composition emerges from enacting and articulating experience instead of just representing it. How do we step into the thickness of such action instead of creating from the sidelines? By using indeterminacy as a framework for improvisation, I will describe the process of working with unusual locations, drawing together individuals from across backgrounds and expertise to bring what they know into the unknown.

Stanzi Vaubel is completing her PhD in Media Study at The University at Buffalo and is currently based in Montreal on a Fulbright Fellowship to stage her project The Indeterminacy Festival in Montreal in May 2020. Her work brings together individuals from across disciplines and communities to collaborate on staging large-scale site-specific events.