I've put live performance in a lot of spaces. Part of what I want to do is take over the takeover. Another way that someone put it is, you climb over the fence and you cut a hole in it, and let everyone else in. That's kind of what this is. The museum is a repository of great works, but there is certain work that no one ever calls great. This is an insistence on directing their attention to other stuff that's great, that never gets to be in a museum.
Vijay IyerWe think of music as this substance that flows - you turn on the tap, and there it is, streaming off your computer - but that's not how we evolved as a species. We evolved to listen to each other, and the reason we're able to listen to music in the terms is talking about is because we're really good at listening to each other. But this kind of technology has allowed us to forget that music is the sound of each other.
Vijay IyerWhat I find the challenge is with working with, say, digital machines - performing electronic music - is that when we play instruments there's a physical act that results in a physical vibration. There's a mapping between our exertions and resultant vibrations, or resonance.
Vijay IyerMusic making features real-time creation, real-time decisions and actions. It's basically improvisation, which is the stuff of everyday life. In the realm of discourse about music, improvisation is marginal, but in the realm of doing it, it's omnipresent. Strange distinction here: we're improvising all the time, but when we tend to talk about music, we tend to talk about objects that are fixed, like recordings, scores, pieces.
Vijay IyerYou figure out how to create opportunities to make music, and then, if you take care of the music, audiences will come around. They also might leave. What matters is the moment: the moment of making music, with and for and among others, and what that offers to those people in that moment. They might never see me again; they might never learn my name. But it might still be something they carry with them.
Vijay Iyer