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Boredom, the real secret behind innovation | Mark Applebaum | TEDxStanford

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    I thought if I skipped
    it might help my nerves,
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    but I'm actually having
    a paradoxical reaction to that,
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    so that was a bad idea. (Laughter)
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    Thank you for that introduction,
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    I was really delighted
    to receive the invitation
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    to present to you some of my music
    and some of my work
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    as a composer, presumably
    because it appeals
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    to my well-known and abundant narcissism.
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    (Laughter)
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    And I'm not kidding,
    I just think we should just say that
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    and move forward. (Laughter)
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    So, but the thing is,
    a dilemma quickly arose,
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    and that is that I'm really bored
    with music,
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    and I'm really bored
    with the role of the composer,
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    and so I decided to put
    that idea, boredom,
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    as the focus of my presentation
    to you today.
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    And I'm going to share
    my music with you, but I hope
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    that I'm going to do so
    in a way that tells a story,
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    tells a story about how I used boredom
    as a catalyst
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    for creativity and invention,
    and how boredom
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    actually forced me to change
    the fundamental question
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    that I was asking in my discipline,
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    and how boredom also, in a sense,
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    pushed me towards taking
    on roles beyond the sort of
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    most traditional, narrow definition
    of a composer.
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    What I'd like to do today
    is to start with an excerpt
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    of a piece of music at the piano.
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    (Music)
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    Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter)
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    No, it's not - (Applause)
    Oh, why thank you.
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    No, no, I didn't write that.
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    In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven,
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    and so I was not functioning
    as a composer.
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    Just now I was functioning
    in the role of the interpreter,
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    and there I am, interpreter.
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    So, an interpreter of what?
    Of a piece of music, right?
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    But we can ask the question,
    "But is it music?"
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    And I say this rhetorically,
    because of course
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    by just about any standard
    we would have to concede
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    that this is, of course, a piece of music,
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    but I put this here now because,
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    just to set it in your brains
    for the moment,
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    because we're going to return
    to this question.
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    It's going to be a kind of a refrain
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    as we go through the presentation.
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    So here we have this piece
    of music by Beethoven,
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    and my problem with it is, it's boring.
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    I mean - I'm just like, a hush,
    huh - It's like - (Laughter)
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    It's Beethoven, how can you say that?
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    No, well, I don't know,
    it's very familiar to me.
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    I had to practice it as a kid,
    and I'm really sick of it. (Laughter)
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    So what I might like to try to do
    is to change it,
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    to transform it in some ways,
    to personalize it,
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    so I might take the opening,
    like this idea -
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    (Music)
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    and then I might substitute - (Music)
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    and then I might improvise on that melody
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    that goes forward from there - (Music)
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    (Music)
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    So that might be the kind of thing -
    Why thank you.
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    (Applause)
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    That would be the kind
    of thing that I would do,
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    and it's not necessarily
    better than the Beethoven.
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    In fact, I think it's not better than it.
    The thing is - (Laughter) -
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    it's more interesting to me,
    it's less boring for me.
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    I'm really leaning into me, because I,
    because I have to think
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    about what decisions
    I'm going to make on the fly
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    as that Beethoven text is running
    in time through my head
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    and I'm trying to figure out
    what kinds of transformations
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    I'm going to make to it.
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    So this is an engaging enterprise for me,
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    and I've really leaned into
    that first person pronoun thing there,
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    and now my face appears twice,
    so I think we can agree
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    that this is a fundamentally
    solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter)
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    But it's an engaging one,
    and it's interesting to me for a while,
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    but then I get bored with it, and by it,
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    I actually mean, the piano,
    because it becomes,
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    it's this familiar instrument,
    it's timbral range is actually
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    pretty compressed, at least
    when you play on the keyboard,
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    and if you're not doing things
    like listening to it
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    after you've lit it on fire
    or something like that, you know.
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    It gets a little bit boring,
    and so pretty soon
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    I go through other instruments,
    they become familiar,
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    and eventually I find myself
    designing and constructing
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    my own instrument,
    and I brought one with me today,
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    and I thought I would play
    a little bit on it for you
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    so you can hear what it sounds like.
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    (Music)
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    You've got to have doorstops,
    that's important. (Laughter)
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    I've got combs.
    They're the only combs that I own. (Music)
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    They're all mounted on my instruments.
    (Laughter)
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    (Music)
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    I can actually do all sorts of things.
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    I can play with a violin bow.
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    I don't have to use the chopsticks.
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    So we have this sound. (Music)
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    And with a bank of live electronics,
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    I can change the sounds radically. (Music)
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    (Music)
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    Like that, and like this. (Music)
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    And so forth.
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    So this gives you a little bit
    of an idea of the sound world
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    of this instrument, which I think
    is quite interesting
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    and it puts me in the role
    of the inventor,
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    and the nice thing about -
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    This instrument is called
    the Mouseketeer... (Laughter)
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    and the cool thing about it is
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    I'm the world's greatest
    Mouseketeer player. (Laughter)
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    Okay? (Applause)
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    So in that regard,
    this is one of the things,
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    this is one of the privileges of being,
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    and here's another role,
    the inventor, and by the way,
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    when I told you
    that I'm the world's greatest,
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    if you're keeping score,
    we've had narcissism and solipsism
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    and now a healthy dose of egocentricism.
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    I know some of you are just, you know -
    bingo! (Laughter)
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    Anyway, so this is also
    a really enjoyable role.
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    I should concede also that I'm
    the world's worst Mouseketeer player,
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    and it was this distinction
    that I was most worried about
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    when I was on that prior side
    of the tenure divide.
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    I'm glad I'm past that.
    We're not going to go into that.
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    I'm crying on the inside.
    There are still scars.
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    Anyway, but I guess my point
    is that all of these enterprises
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    are engaging to me in their multiplicity,
    but as I've presented them
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    to you today, they're actually
    solitary enterprises,
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    and so pretty soon I want to commune
    with other people,
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    and so I'm delighted that in fact
    I get to compose works for them.
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    I get to write, sometimes for soloists
    and I get to work with one person,
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    sometimes full orchestras,
    and I work with a lot of people,
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    and this is probably the capacity,
    the role creatively
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    for which I'm probably
    best known professionally.
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    Now, some of my scores
    as a composer look like this,
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    and others look like this,
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    and some look like this,
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    and I make all of these by hand,
    and it's really tedious.
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    It takes a long, long time
    to make these scores,
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    and right now I'm working on a piece
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    that's 180 pages in length,
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    and it's just a big chunk of my life,
    and I'm just pulling out hair.
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    I have a lot of it, and that's
    a good thing I suppose. (Laughter)
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    So this gets really boring
    and really tiresome for me,
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    so after a while the process
    of notating is not only boring,
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    but I actually want the notation
    to be more interesting,
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    and so that's pushed me to do
    other projects like this one.
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    This is an excerpt from a score called
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    "The Metaphysics of Notation."
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    The full score is 72 feet wide.
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    It's a bunch of crazy
    pictographic notation.
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    Let's zoom in on one section
    of it right here.
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    You can see it's rather detailed.
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    I do all of this with drafting templates,
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    with straight edges,
    with French curves, and by freehand,
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    and the 72 feet was actually split
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    into 12 six-foot-wide panels
    that were installed
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    around the Cantor Arts Center Museum
    lobby balcony,
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    and it appeared
    for one year in the museum,
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    and during that year,
    it was experienced as visual art
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    most of the week, except,
    as you can see in these pictures,
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    on Fridays, from noon til one,
    and only during that time,
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    various performers came
    and interpreted these strange
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    and undefined pictographic glyphs.
    (Laughter)
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    Now this was a really
    exciting experience for me.
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    It was gratifying musically,
    but I think the more important thing
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    is it was exciting because
    I got to take on another role,
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    especially given that it appeared
    in a museum,
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    and that is as visual artist. (Laughter)
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    We're going to fill up the whole thing,
    don't worry. (Laughter)
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    I am multitudes. (Laughter)
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    So one of the things is that,
    I mean, some people would say,
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    like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante,"
    and maybe that's true.
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    I can understand how, I mean,
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    because I don't have a pedigree
    in visual art
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    and I don't have any training,
    but it's just something
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    that I wanted to do as an extension
    of my composition,
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    as an extension
    of a kind of creative impulse.
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    I can understand the question, though.
    "But is it music?"
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    I mean, there's not
    any traditional notation.
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    I can also understand
    that sort of implicit criticism
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    in this piece, "S-tog," which I made
    when I was living in Copenhagen.
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    I took the Copenhagen subway map
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    and I renamed all the stations
    to abstract musical provocations,
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    and the players, who are synchronized
    with stopwatches,
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    follow the timetables, which are listed
    in minutes past the hour.
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    So this is a case of actually
    adapting something,
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    or maybe stealing something,
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    and then turning it
    into a musical notation.
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    You folks have been neglected,
    I'll stand here for a couple of minutes.
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    (Applause)
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    Another adaptation would be this piece.
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    The wristwatch, I should say.
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    I took the idea of the wristwatch,
    and I turned it into a musical score.
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    I made my own faces, and had
    a company fabricate them,
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    and the players follow these scores.
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    They follow the second hands,
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    and as they pass over the various symbols,
    the players respond musically.
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    Here's another example from another piece,
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    and then its realization.
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    So in these two capacities,
    I've been scavenger,
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    in the sense of taking, like,
    the subway map, right,
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    or thief maybe,
    and I've also been designer,
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    in the case of making the wristwatches.
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    And once again, this is,
    for me, interesting.
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    Another role that I like to take on
    is that of the performance artist.
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    Some of my pieces have these
    kind of weird theatric elements,
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    and I often perform them.
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    I want to show you a clip
    from a piece called "Echolalia."
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    This is actually being performed
    by Brian McWhorter,
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    who is an extraordinary performer.
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    Let's watch a little bit of this,
    and please notice the instrumentation.
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    (Music)
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    Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously
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    because you too could hear that the drill
    was a little bit sharp,
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    the intonation was a little questionable.
    (Laughter)
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    Let's watch just another clip.
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    (Music)
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    Okay, that's enough.
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    You can see the mayhem continues,
    and there's, you know,
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    there were no clarinets and trumpets
    and flutes and violins.
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    Here's a piece that has
    an even more unusual,
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    more peculiar instrumentation.
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    This is "Tlön," for three conductors
    and no players. (Laughter)
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    This was based on the experience
    of actually watching
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    two people having a virulent
    argument in sign language,
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    which produced no decibels to speak of,
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    but affectively, psychologically,
    was a very loud experience.
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    So, yeah, I get it, with,
    like, the weird appliances
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    and then the total absence
    of conventional instruments
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    and this glut of conductors,
    people might, you know,
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    wonder, yeah, "Is this music?"
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    But let's move on to a piece where
    clearly I'm behaving myself,
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    and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra."
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    You're going to notice a lot
    of conventional instruments in this clip.
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    (Music)
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    Are you bored? I'm a little bored.
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    This, in fact, is not
    the title of this piece.
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    I was a bit mischievous.
    In fact, to make it more interesting,
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    I put a space right in here,
    and this is the actual title of the piece.
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    Let's continue with that same excerpt.
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    (Music)
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    It's better with a florist, right?
    (Laughter) (Music)
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    Or at least it's less boring.
    Let's watch a couple more clips.
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    (Music)
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    So with all these theatric elements,
    this pushes me in another role,
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    and that would be,
    possibly, the dramaturge.
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    I was playing nice. I had to write
    the orchestra bits, right?
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    Okay? But then there was
    this other stuff, right?
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    There was the florist,
    and I can understand that,
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    once again, we're putting
    pressure on the ontology of music
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    as we know it conventionally,
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    but let's look at one last piece
    today I'm going to share with you.
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    This is going to be
    a piece called "Aphasia,"
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    and it's for hand gestures
    synchronized to sound,
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    and this invites yet another role,
    and final one I'll share with you,
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    which is that of the choreographer.
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    And the score for the piece
    looks like this,
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    and it instructs me,
    the performer, to make
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    various hand gestures
    at very specific times
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    synchronized with an audio tape,
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    and that audio tape
    is made up exclusively of vocal samples.
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    I recorded an awesome singer,
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    and I took the sound
    of his voice in my computer,
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    and I warped it in countless ways
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    to come up with the soundtrack
    that you're about to hear.
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    And I'll perform just an excerpt
    of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay?
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    (Music)
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    So that gives you a little taste
    of that piece. (Applause)
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    Thank you. When this ovation dies down,
    I shall continue.
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    Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff.
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    Is it music?
    Here's how I want to conclude.
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    I've decided, ultimately,
    that this is the wrong question,
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    that this is not the important question.
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    The important question
    is, "Is it interesting?"
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    And I follow this question,
    not worrying about "Is it music?" -
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    not worrying about the definition
    of the thing that I'm making.
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    I allow my creativity to push me
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    in directions that are simply
    interesting to me,
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    and I don't worry
    about the likeness of the result
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    to some notion, some paradigm,
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    of what music composition
    is supposed to be,
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    and that has actually
    urged me, in a sense,
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    to take on a whole bunch
    of different roles,
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    and so what I want you to think about is,
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    to what extent might you change
    the fundamental question
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    in your discipline, and, okay,
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    I'm going to put one extra
    little footnote in here,
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    because, like, I realized I mentioned
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    some psychological defects
    earlier, and we also,
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    along the way, had a fair amount
    of obsessive behavior,
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    and there was some delusional
    behavior and things like that,
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    and here I think we could say
    that this is an argument
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    for self-loathing
    and a kind of schizophrenia,
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    at least in the popular use of the term,
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    and I really mean dissociative
    identity disorder, okay. (Laughter)
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    Anyway, despite those perils,
    I would urge you
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    to think about the possibility
    that you might take on roles
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    in your own work,
    whether they are neighboring
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    or far-flung
    from your professional definition.
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    And with that, I thank you very much.
    (Applause)
Title:
Boredom, the real secret behind innovation | Mark Applebaum | TEDxStanford
Description:

Mark Applebaum writes music that breaks the rules in fantastic ways, composing a concerto for a florist and crafting a musical instrument from junk and found objects. This quirky talk might just inspire you to shake up the “rules” of your own creative work.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
17:19

English subtitles

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