Random Ruminations with the Geryon Trio
Chris Brown, Johanna Poethig, Raffi Garabedian
In 2014 poet and essayist the late Lyn Hejinian invited me to contribute to an online journal on the practice of the “absurd” asking the question “Where might absurdity become a constructive principle, a form that rises against the failure of rationality? Around that time I was also designing a public art project about the waters that flow through our landscapes, the meanders, riffles and pools of rivers and streams; like thought processes allowed to circulate, seemingly aimless but etching grooves. Allowed to wander I threw some stones on the ground and studied the patterns. I read books about cleromancy and the ancient systems of divination and prediction. Ruminating randomly I began a new series of texts, images, casting cards about the absurdity of questing, the giddiness of magic, the roll of gambling, taking orders from oracles and starting wars on the words of pundits. Those habits are geological but now we live in a state of mechanized spectacle, search engines that cut ruthlessly through the planet body offering only a risky escape from the speed of its entropy. With little room to go off line and find another path, another book, a contrary idea and get lost in a random encounter this becomes the absurdity of our times. This Libretto, the music, the arrangement of text, the images and improvisations come together in a gentle chaos. There is prediction for those that want to know the future and history for those that know the past is lurking and gambling for those that can touch the shimmer of divination.
“Geryon” is a being with three heads, whose name derives from the ancient Greek words gê (earth) and gêryô (singing). It models a musical multiplicity, a collision of John Cage’s indeterminacy and jazz improvisation, in which each musician’s sound is randomly electronically sampled, processed and redistributed by computer software, then played back through 3 loudspeakers, one for each player. The resulting aleatoric recomposition of the trio’s music provides foils for further improvisations, creating a resonant environment of both musical and acoustic feedback.
“Randomness assigns value to everything and everyone it touches by giving each participant equal weight: everything is equally valuable. In this, randomness is inherently political and inherently empowering.”
James Bridle, Ways of Being
