https://fcpvg.work/Recent content in fcpvg.work on fcpvg.work - vincent giles' writingHugo -- gohugo.ioen-gbFri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-07-05-stardew-valley-arts/Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-07-05-stardew-valley-arts/This essay is a bit of a rambling mess in which I’m trying to work out thoughts around belonging, fragmented arts communities, and the game Stardew Valley. It’s not well-realised and is probably the beginnings of something more coherent and cohesive. I had originally planned, and started writing, a progress blog for my piece orr net, but it never really got anywhere. So this is also a bit of a substitution for that.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-04-21-burnout/Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-04-21-burnout/Introduction A couple of weeks ago, I had arranged to give a little guest lecture to some first-year composition students at my day job – a cohort that I often don’t see or interact with. I was quite stuck for ideas as to what to talk to them about, so I asked a colleague for advice and they suggested that I just talk about my life in music so far, opportunities, etc.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-04-01-arbitrary-complexity/Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-04-01-arbitrary-complexity/The Arbitrary Dismissal of Complexity If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all. –John Cage, from Silence: Lectures and Writings (ed. Wesleyan University Press, 2010) I wrote this zine earlier in 2024 as a self-writing exercise to think-through something that has bothered me for a long time – the generalised opposition to so-called ‘complex music’.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-03-20-on-form-and-energy-in-composition/Wed, 20 Mar 2024 04:41:48 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-03-20-on-form-and-energy-in-composition/This essay is an attempt to think through and articulate ideas from my existing compositional practice, and to understand what composer Brian Ferneyhough means by “lines of force” and how these two concepts relate to my current compositional thinking.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-03-13-lizzy-welsh-the-target-has-disappeared/Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:07:04 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2024-03-13-lizzy-welsh-the-target-has-disappeared/I bought this album – the first by my friend, violinist Lizzy Welsh – on its release in the Australian winter of 2023, but I have only managed to listen to it now, in March 2024, to my detriment. I know Lizzy, and I know the work of the composers, and I wanted to commit the mental clarity and space, along with the physical listening space with appropriate equipment to reproduce the fidelity of the album, in order to doing the record justice.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2022-05-09-book-reading-22-05-09/Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2022-05-09-book-reading-22-05-09/I really value reading, and books, as a medium. As I read more about Australian indigenous knowledge systems, I also lean towards embodied knowledge systems (not so much in the practice-led research dogma promoted within Australian higher education institutes), at least as much as I can understand them having not been raised within such a knowledge system. Since I was raised within the Western book-based knowledge system, that is what I know.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2022-04-25-through-lines-from-finnissy-s-notion-of-transcription-to-my-current-and-past-work/Mon, 25 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2022-04-25-through-lines-from-finnissy-s-notion-of-transcription-to-my-current-and-past-work/This essay offers some clarifying remarks - mostly for myself - about composer Michael Finnissy’s concept of transcription, along with some thoughts and reflections on how it connects to current and previous work.https://fcpvg.work/posts/2022-04-21-in-a-dust-storm-of-altruism/Thu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/posts/2022-04-21-in-a-dust-storm-of-altruism/In this short post I talk about how part of Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark shows resonance and potential for me as a source (or inspiration) for text in a new composition involving voice.https://fcpvg.work/pages/about/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/pages/about/I’m a composer, primarily, and a producer secondarily. I’m sometimes an academic and scholar. In my career, I have: • Worked in retail • Freelanced as a bass player • Freelanced as a music journalist • Studied music composition • Taught bass guitar • Done live sound engineering • Lectured in music composition and production, along with music theory, critical theory, and other things • Got a PhD in sound design and composition • Written a few things critiquing the arts/scene in Australia • Dabbled in computer & web programming • Learned to train a weird dog • Learned to cook a lot of vegan/plant-based food Vincent Giles (Melbourne, 1985) is active in composition, improvisation, and installation art, and is informed by the physical properties of sound, experimental music, and technology.https://fcpvg.work/pages/links/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://fcpvg.work/pages/links/I try as much as practical (for me) to use free and/or open source software. So while I use a lot of closed source/proprietary software in my work, I am not providing links to any of that, here. This list will continue to grow over time. Internet Interests Small Internet | 2 | Web0 Manifesto Manifesto for humane web Slow Media Manifesto Marxism Archive Yesterweb Manifesto Against a hostile web