{"id":12987,"date":"2023-02-17T00:00:58","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T05:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/?p=12987"},"modified":"2023-02-16T14:37:04","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T19:37:04","slug":"rene-rodriguez-paisaje-electroacustico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/rene-rodriguez-paisaje-electroacustico\/","title":{"rendered":"Ren\u00e9 Rodr\u00edguez: electroacoustic landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ren\u00e9 Rodr\u00edguez is a composer, pianist, teacher and visual artist. He assumes the electroacoustic creation without a \"recipe book\" under his arm. This singular creator, who holds a Master's degree in music from the University of the Arts, is in Havana on a constant inner search. He conceives his work by meticulously seasoning the clarity in the use of the subject matter, the discursive logic of timbre, the economy of audiovisual resources and the simplicity of ideas as a platform for the subsequent and complex creative process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ren\u00e9's music hypnotizes by the integration of languages in a successful design of images that show his essence as a creator. When I listen to it, I try to know the artist's conceptualization; I like to discover his perspective on music. In this interview, I also venture into the discovery of his creative processes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>\u00a0What is electroacoustic music for you?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A quixotic workshop where I generate at will timbres, shapes and colors. It emerges from an accumulation of situations alien or subject to art, empowered by science and the desire to cross new frontiers. The history of electroacoustic music has witnessed the marriage between technology and artistic creation. I consider it the most effective means to deposit and transmit my artistic concerns, the same way a pianist uses the piano or a fisherman his gear. It is a way of telling and \"singing\" stories through different and impartial codes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Why create electroacoustic music?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Due to my inclination for the visual arts, essentially photography and video, I have found in electroacoustic music the perfect synthesis. This set of disciplines, associated with what I have learned in my career as a composer, allowed me to take this direction. Also, the combination between pleasure and creative need and the luck of having the basic means to develop it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Since when do you make music with computers?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although in practice I did not have a computer in front of me until my studies at ISA, long before that, through observation and appreciation, precedents were established that stimulated my desire for knowledge. Undoubtedly it was my high school teachers who instilled in me the sensitivity and work methodology that I am so grateful for. Even from my first photographs with a Russian Zenit, which accompanied me on every trip along with a cassette recorder, I felt the need to integrate sound and image in an unconventional way. I had, despite the scarcity of means, that desire to archive events with a purpose that until that moment I did not know, but that in a certain way I glimpsed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The exercises with electroacoustics began at the university stage. I owe my first steps in the Electroacoustic and Computer Music Studio (EMEC) to Professor Teresa N\u00fa\u00f1ez, but it was my teacher Carlos Fari\u00f1as who encouraged this commitment and thus, little by little, the passion to penetrate the compositional side.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"youtube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Y0BJ9vLbdMk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of his major influences in my work was towards the opening of creative thinking and the linking of composition with the visual arts, architecture and literature. Based on these aesthetic assumptions, I began to develop an interest in expanding the creative field by adding the sound record to the visual, in such a way that, when professionally confronted with the editing and production of video, the seed was already germinating. At the end of the 90's I participated in a course of the National Laboratory of Electroacoustic Music (LNME), which opened more doors for me and in this way, by the beginning of 2000, I was premiering my first pieces in national and foreign events, such as the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music, the mega exhibition Cuerpos pintados in Santiago de Chile and the SGAE contest of Young Composers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What are your influences?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My influences move through visual music, video art, concrete music, minimalism, generally by relating the soundtrack with electroacoustic music and having common elements with some of the creative paths that encourage my creation. I think that the fact of being so closely linked to photography, generates, through the visual, common areas for my search for sound. But going further back, I must refer to that stage as a high school student at the National School of Art when, almost indirectly, auteur cinema motivated this encounter. The cinematographic trends that broke the canons of the industry established then, in me, guidelines that determined tastes and aesthetic decisions. This symbiosis between image and music marked my first concerns. A series of directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick and others, consolidated the already marked inclination. The cinematographic aesthetic richness of the English Free Cinema, the Nouvelle Vague in France, the Brazilian Cinema Novo, the Italian Neorealism, the American Independent Cinema and the Danish Dogma 95, among others, enhanced this visual and sound panorama.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then I had the great joy of meeting with a very valuable group of teachers in my training, such as Harold Gramatges, Tulio Peramo, Roberto Valera, Juanito Pi\u00f1era, Juan Blanco, Calixto \u00c1lvarez, M\u00f3nica O'Reilly, among others. I would like to add the relationship with outstanding composers invited by the Instituto Superior de Arte to give workshops on electroacoustic music and other trends, such as Alejandro Rossi, from Argentina, and Luigi Abbate, from Italy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to all this arsenal of creators, there is the \"prize\" of having belonged to Carlos Fari\u00f1as' classroom. With him, taking into account his multidisciplinary interaction, especially his link with Cuban cinema, the opening of knowledge was maximum.  Let's add the continuous interactions with the programs and participants in the different editions of the Havana Festival and the Havana Spring Festival of electroacoustic music, where Fari\u00f1as propitiated, among the students, continuous debates to enrich our language and knowledge.....\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"youtube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ti2DpmVjMJY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>What software do you use in your artistic production?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have gone through a long sequence of them that, through my experience, have been effective at the time. The evolution has been accompanied by new creative needs, but the reality is that I am always indebted to technology. There are many resources that I do not know, and that I would like to implement as required by the dramaturgy of the work. However, this does not limit me when it comes to planning and implementing a project. I think that the technological deficiencies we have in Cuba, although now there are more open doors, has led me to focus more attention on the constructive and formal aspects of the work, rather than on how to make it sound. I don't mean by this that I downplay the importance of digital resources, but I don't consider them as a priority either; if we lack a solid narrative structure, technology will not save the work from an ambiguous formal approach, that is to say: technique must be at the service of creation, never the other way around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Getting to the point of your question, the tools I currently use are Cubase, Reason, and the video editors Adobe Premiere and Vegas. I use each of these programs as a whole or independently, depending on my creative concerns. I repeat, in these times we run the risk of an excessive \"ambition\" to get the latest software or plugin, while we lose sight of what is relevant to the artistic result itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the vast majority of my work integrates visuality with sound, I have looked for programs that affiliate with these variants. The results, to my way of seeing, have never touched the ceiling of my demands, which I consider an advantage because there will always be in the list of tasks \"another attempt\" and another... and so on... of those restless searches, of which you never know if you are going to arrive or to be shipwrecked, because creation is a marvelous mystery. The principle of every artist is to communicate, but if you don't convince yourself, the generating exercise is worthless. The important thing is that the desire to conquer never diminishes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What is your creative process like?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My creative process is in constant movement, simultaneously permeated by unalterable points and commonplaces that I make use of. As I said before, my procedures are derived from academic training and interactions in the professional field. Carlos Fari\u00f1as and Enrique Pineda Barnet have been fundamental axes. The question has always been to channel these teachings through a personal point of view. As a result of these interactions, I have set up paths, not at all determinant, as I have been adding experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"youtube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1yevdJlHGBo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the synthesis of acquired knowledge, I have assumed a design in which sound and visual images are articulated in a continuous and integrated process. The \"electrocumental\" as an audiovisual model, from the hybridization between image and sound, presents me with challenges, like everything else. Of course, I propose a strategic layout to better communicate what I try to convey, which does not mean that I always go with a \"recipe book\" under my arm. The anatomy of each work is a mystery, meticulously seasoned with principles that I believe are vital at the time of construction, among which are: clarity in the use of the theme, the elements (visual and sound) raised without hierarchy, the way in which the treatment of the timbre is articulated with the discursive logic, the economy of sound and visual resources, the simplicity of ideas as a platform for the subsequent and complex creative process, among others.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I consider a work, from its embryonic stage, I try to draw up a script. Fari\u00f1as used to tell me that before having the piano or taking the ink to the score, it was necessary to sit at the table and control those rambling whims by means of a logical and measured guide. A first workshop is necessary, that's how I learned it and I assumed it as an effective strategy. Then comes the stage in which I unleash the broadest search for material, primary sound sources that I then proceed to organize according to their characteristic features, whether by textures, colors or rhythms: determined sounds, indeterminate, rhythmic, harmonic, mixed textures, etc. This process of classification and cataloguing allows me to better arrange the terrain in order to obtain a better creative coverage. Subsequently comes the assembly process (all these procedures are applicable to both image and sound), which I conceive by alternating the elements previously arranged in constructive interaction. Starting from the basic idea or \"primary script\", I begin to shape and shape the work little by little.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I propose a narrative line, keeping an idea in development that can be subject to purely conceptual contours or also flow between conventional and figurative languages, characteristic of documentary cinema. Sometimes I use minimalist resources in the handling of the overall material as an essential tool to maintain the thematic and formal unity. As for the sound, I consider a search between purely concrete parameters, electronically processed sounds, or the synthesis of both.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The process is nothing more than the extension of the academic and professional experiences acquired. These influences have propitiated the integration of languages, using the conjunction of the visual creative variables with electroacoustic music and focused particularly on the audiovisual profile, specifically in the art documentary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What has electroacoustic composition brought you?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A compositional residence without walls or ceiling, completely open. It helps me to conceive music outside the usual aural canon: directed towards the visual. The variables are infinite, they are found both through a score and through any situation generated by the surrounding reality. There will always be limits to find and cross; this language contains the precise ways to do so. The need to construct sounds is, in itself, exciting. The sum of this sonorous search in its link with the image makes the exploration become an innovative experience that, in turn, provokes dissimilar results in the expressive function in art.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ren\u00e9 Rodr\u00edguez's music hypnotizes by the integration of languages in a successful design of images that show his essence as a creator. When I listen to it, I try to know the artist's conceptualization; I like to discover his perspective on music. In this interview, I also venture into the discovery of his creative processes.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1600,"featured_media":12998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[598],"tags":[9561,8485,9560,9559],"coauthors":[9562],"class_list":["post-12987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrevistas","tag-electrodocumental","tag-entrevista","tag-paisaje-electroacustico","tag-rene-rodriguez"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/magazineampm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Rene-R-Portada-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C548&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12999,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12987\/revisions\/12999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12987"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}