Ed recommended OuLiPo, based off of the way I was constructively talking about how the process of collaborative working had restraints which in turn effected the overall direction of our project; A self-imposed structure through limitation.
I think specifically Ed brought up Georges Perec who wrote an entire book with the self imposed limitation of being without the letter ‘e’. I have ordered a Penguin published book of OuLiPo and look forward to reading into this movement a little! I often relate my creative process through some sort of self-imposed limitation, a limitation of equipment, or a limitation of instruments, or certain chords. As a young adult I was fascinated by “Lo-Fi” movements in their capacity to be a great leveler of ideas, if the listeners ear could hear past modern production standards they might be more capable of seeing the ingenuity in something outside of industry standard production e.g: rules within mixing that the kick the snare, and bass guitar should be central in a mix that in a way stop us from exploring these things for ourselves… like the beatles did in their first stereo recordings 50 years ago.
Looking back at my interest of things like R Stevie Moore, I saw them as these rags to riches stories of existing outside of the mainstream. The uncomfortable truth with a lot of big ‘lo-fi’ superstars is a lot of them come from wealth, and the machines they were using weren’t completely accessible to everyone. R Stevie Moore was the son of the double-bassist for Elvis Presley. The controversial figure Ariel Pink, who was seen as the flag-bearing superstar of lo-fi and recently seen at the Trump rally wherein a portion of the crowd stormed the capitol – is the son of a multi-millionaire businessman. These uncomfortable truths about my younger self’s heroes are hard to bear, but interesting. What always resonated with me about this type of music, was that it felt easy to do, off the cuff and affordable and accessible to people who had ideas but perhaps not the skill or money to properly execute or showcase them. If you own a phone, you can technically make music now. If you have a computer you can buy a £20 usb microphone and download a free DAW.
I have over the years bought a few John Cage books and learned about Mesostics, a form of acrostic poem where the interlinking word is not bound to the first letter of each line. There is one rule to Mesostic poetry; the letters contained in the interlinking word mustn’t be repeated in the same line. So in a sense like OuLiPo, letters are to be omitted in between each line, therefore there is a relation in concept here. John Cage was an avid fan of the Mesostic Poem which was invented by Poet/Artist Jackson Mac Low. Mac Low is heavily tied to the Fluxus art movement, which I think I was first made aware of in our Visiting Lecture Series by Annea Lockwood. A lot of artists I admire seem to be involved with or fans of the Fluxus movement such as Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and Yoshi Wada (of whom I am more familiar with the work of his son, Tashi Wada). I will attempt to further investigate these two movements which seem interlinked.