Produced in partnership with aqnb, this month’s Unthinkable segment for NTS Radio  features contributions from Renick Bell and Ling. The mix, which also includes tracks by Nkisi, Mica Levi, Clara Mondshine, and Carla Bley, is characterized by a liveliness —be it a live performance or in relation to living persons: to continue in existence, operation and memory; to feed or subsist. It resonates with concern for experience, personal encounters, with reference to causes, conditions and effects.

Tokyo-based musician and programmer Renick Bell works with improvisation, algorithmic composition and live coding. It’s what he calls “the interactive control of algorithmic processes through programming activity”, in his ‘Data Visualisation Tools for Enhancing Live Coding Usability and Audience Experience‘ paper, “…by custom projected for an audience to see”.  Bell’s contribution includes an excerpt of Joanne’s London Algorave set and his own Fractal Beats, alongside tracks by Toxe, Sentinel, Rosen, and x/o.

In turn, Liverpool-based producer Ling’s recent Attachment EP deals with habitual mental tendencies, instinctual interpretation of information and internal responses. Here, interaction expands from the immediate setting of a live performance projected for an audience, to a living performance based on one’s own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc., and the act of looking within oneself.

Between the two of them, pragmatism is paramount with an emphasis on practicality — that is, “as a philosophical approach that clearly defines an idea and sees how it works ‘within the stream of experience’ to show how ‘existing realities may be changed’”, writes Renick Bell in his ‘Considering Interaction in Live Coding through a Pragmatic Aesthetic Theory‘. In other words, it follows what Ling calls “the idea that taking an instinctual interpretation of information potentially warps and distorts reality” on the PAN website.

Listen to the mix and read the text below:

Experience —all that is perceived, understood and remembered —permeates the natural world with intensity and an unlimited ability to transform in length, volume or shape. By the arrangement of pathways, newly acquired percepts allow interpretations beyond mere sensation, by way of which significance acquires an embellished energy. These percepts belong to their own reality. In fact, when applied as paths of access, immediate characteristics are no longer separable, and achieve significance that is otherwise controlled by a system of connected elements. With this, they are caused to become in immediate connection with the remaining world. Experience doesn’t regard objective elements, as mountains, trees, animals and rivers, separable from subjective elements of the thinking subject, such as moods and attitudes; rather, it holds them as part of a complex whole. Life itself stands for action or activity, wherein living things and their surroundings are contained. **

TRACK LISTING:
[J.G.]
Clara Mondshine – Lo and Li
Carla Bley & Paul Hanes – Stay Awake
Golden Living Room – Losing It (For The Princess)
Mica Levi – Love

Ling Mix

Nkisi – Mokonzi

Renick Bell:
Joanne – London Algorave 18.12.16 (excerpt)
Jelena Glazova – Melting Clone
Slub – 20020525 (excerpt)
Alo Allik – 151223_165803
Holger Ballweg – cc13
Calum Gunn – Wiper
Smell in Stereo – Attention Deficit Disorder (part A)
Alo Allik – 151229_045817
Metome – LucyI & Itch Stopping
Renick Bell – Fractal Beats 160116c
Toxe – Let Me Thru
Onion – Dragonfly
Smell in Stereo – Attention Deficit Disorder (part B)
Yearning Kru – Reeds Fledge in Fur
Sentinel – Freak
Renick Bell – Fractal Beats 16011709
Yaporigami – In Love
Yaporigami – Her Hand Tenderly
Rosen – Lliimm
x/o – ???
Zolitude – LOR
Danelaw – The Waever + Big Narstie acapella
Luuma – Below Theia
Swivelized Sounds – Can I See the Peoples
Kindohm – Colder
Calum Gunn- Chordarray
Alo Allik – 151228_203816
Renick Bell with Meuko!Meuko! – As They Are

J.G. Biberkopf’s Unthinkable radio show airs at midnight on a Friday every other month at London’s NTS Radio. This latest one aired February 20, 2016.

See here for more ‘Unthinkable’ mixes.