Personally, I find nothing wrong with large and/or complex systems. They simply reveal possibilities that are different than those arising from the small systems. Conversely, small systems uncover new possibilities while concealing others. The only real mistake is considering systems as the mathematical sum of their parts – a mistake encountered when one is looking “at” a system rather than actually using it. Often, systems are actually much less than the sum of their parts – which has to be OK!
In other words, if one has a system with five oscillators, it’s perfectly natural to always gravitate towards patches that use all five, or at least three or four. Theoretically, it’s possible to patch something up with just one or two oscillators, but practically this option is for the most part covered up – it lies at the edge of or just beyond the frame.
If one gets frustrated, or angry with oneself for not “disciplining oneself” to use only two oscillators, the only fault lies in the fact of this anger and this frustration. There has indeed been a lack of discipline, but precisely in the opposite sense – the lack of the discipline to simply let things be. Instead of the system withdrawing unnoticed into its function and thereby disclosing itself as what in really is it thereby becomes something one is looking “at” - and only here does the dangerous notion that a system is “the sum of its parts” emerge. One has let the circumstance of a large system delude oneself into forgetting one’s own finitude, and forgetting that the frame still exists.
If one must have “the best of both worlds” – start with an even larger system (seven oscillators), split it into two self-contained units, one big (five oscillators), one small (two oscillators) place them physically far enough apart in the studio that they cannot be cross patched. Not only does this work, one then finds oneself making simpler patches on the larger system because they parallel those made on the small system. The smaller system not only functions in itself as a frame, it modifies the frame of the larger system in curiously liberating ways.
The point is in any case not to force things and understand that there always is a frame, that one is never simply observing things from a detached position, that one is always in the world, placed in its depths, moving about, and that means that when something is revealed it necessarily means that something else is concealed. All beings are finite, which means that you cannot have one movement without the other, in spite of what is possible “in theory”.
Yet, there is nothing negative in this finitude, nor in its interplay of concealment and unconcealment. One speaks of the “joy of discovery” – discovery being just another word for un-covering, unconcealment. Rather than restricting freedom, finitude is actually that which frees. The frame frees entities to be what they are; it frees the artist to cultivate them, to care for them, to let them come into their own, to resonate in their being.
The frame, its freedoms, and the discipline of letting be hold no matter how small or large one’s studio, and there are no easy paths other than constantly trying things according to inspiration, learning what resonates most strongly, cherishing the rare moments when things really come together, understanding that these moments are fleeting more often than not, and being always open to change.
