Rodney DuPlessis
Nomadic Soundsters Creative Director and Programs and Development Director Dr. Rodney DuPlessis has spent the last few years researching the ability for science to inform music, creating art that is as novel and groundbreaking as the latest scientific discoveries. DuPlessis has dabbled in various scientific genres for inspiration, but has found that physics seems to be the field that lends itself best to ‘musification’: “It seems to me that the things that work best are systems, ideas, or concepts that are really dynamic. Concepts about change or flow, or something that is in one state transitioning to another state. Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are about a process, it’s about something in motion, with energy - it lends itself well to music because of that focus on energy.” One of his first forays into obtaining scientific inspiration came from a collaboration at UC Santa Barbara. He recalls, “I collaborated with a chemical engineer, Chelsea Edwards, who was also a violinist, so I wrote a piece for the violin. Through collaborating with her, I learned so much about chemistry and what chemical engineers do; I asked her so many questions about what she does everyday, what she does in the lab. I even had her bring a microphone into the lab and record sound … From that, I made a piece for her to play [that originated in] the chemical reactions that happen in the research she does. Collaborating with scientists is a huge way that I come to understand science, as an outsider.”
Having just finished his PhD, DuPlessis is starting to look for new collaborators who can help him continue his work, looking even as far as CERN, a cutting edge research institution in Switzerland with one of the largest supercolliders, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Working alongside such complex instruments at an institution where collaboration is one of their primary missions could provide DuPlessis the perfect place to continue his research, and hopefully a new audience interested in his work. “I’ve found in the past, when I’ve worked with scientists before, they’re interested in how I or any other artist might reinterpret, or shift [their work], like a piece of glass or a prism: you turn it in a different direction and it shines in different patterns, colours emerge - I think of it like that. You just turn [the idea], look at it a different way, and it reveals something new sometimes.”
Although DuPlessis is creating new work and a new process for the integration of science and art, the concept itself is not novel. DuPlessis points out, “Einstein said that his special theory of relativity came from a musical instinct somehow. How can such a technical, precise, groundbreaking discovery come from a musical idea? But Einstein played the violin, he understood music, and there are all these complex systems going on in music: layers of interacting parts, proceeding at sometimes different speeds, interacting in time, foreshadowing … There’s all this structure in music that isn’t so far from how a scientist might think about things. It’s really interesting to me, talking to scientists about it, and it can be a really amazing experience to find common ground between these seemingly distant fields and ways of working.”
His penchant for collaboration played a large role in his decision to co-found Nomadic Soundsters, and he believes that this type of residency could support other uniquely interdisciplinary work. On moving into a new year of Nomadic Soundsters, DuPlessis says, “I have ideas of what I hope for [in the New Year for Nomadic Soundsters], but I love to be surprised and I’ve been surprised so much this year in what the residents brought [to the table], and how their interactions and collaborations flourished - I just hope for more of that. I hope that everybody who took part in the residency this year walks away with something valuable; new relationships, new ideas about art and creativity, and I hope the same for the upcoming year.”
Keep up with DuPlessis’s work at rodneyduplessis.com!
Written by Sammy Gerraty
