Is it possible to dissociate research from creation? Is there such a thing as autonomous research in the service of creation? Are there independent researchers at the service of creators? Is research a service to creation? Or does the composer himself divide his activity into two phases? Two complementary functions? Alternatively, is research irreversibly linked to creation? In this case, research cannot exist outside of creation.
Why has the concept of research come to the fore, and why has it taken on an air of autonomy? Does this autonomy really exist, or only in appearance? And above all, has technical development created a new situation? And if there is autonomous research, what does it live on, what does it develop from, what is it based on?
And what about collective and individual effort? Is research able to set itself collective goals, while creation is exclusively an individual prerogative? Does the individual draw on the resources provided by the group?
Does the technological environment dictate language, or does language determine the direction of technological research? Is the researcher - whether purely scientific, or a musician pondering a specific problem - capable of abstracting from language, and thus from the mode of expression?
These problems can be posed in absolute terms: either/or. In fact, relations are more complex; they are also more pragmatic, and are rarely determined in such a schematic way. Instead of a pre-existing global theory, we build as we go, through one connection and then another. We generalize if we have the time, leisure, taste or means to do so.
But what is research if not, first and foremost, an observation, a survey of a state of affairs? In any case, it begins, albeit unconsciously, by taking stock of what you have and what you lack. The composer's search begins by taking stock of his dissatisfaction with what exists, and with what he imagines possible. Between this possible, sometimes precisely imagined, sometimes confined to the vague, and its realization lie more or less rational approaches, carefully deduced or provoked by short-circuiting.
The composer's research cannot exist without language guiding and determining it. Research can only exist through expression, through writing. In creation, "pure" research does not exist. However, it would be presumptuous to rely solely on expression: the all-too-real danger of reducing invention to trivialities on borrowed time. This writing/expression relationship is likely to lead to the unexpected. Purely technical research in the field of writing can give rise to a point of view in expression that is not absolutely intended, but rather discovered.
Adjacent phenomena that are grafted onto a main phenomenon, and become if not more important, at least other than the main phenomenon. A kind of derivation occurs. All because speculation and expression are not necessarily in phase at the moment of composition. The trick is to take advantage of these divergences, to use them for the benefit of the invention, to tip the balance in favor of " yield ".
If this exists at the level of writing itself, we can imagine it with far greater force at the level of technological extension. There is also a difference in the nature of the means and even the goals. However, we must be wary of the cliché that artistic imagination is involved solely in creative activity, whereas technological discovery is, above all, a matter of hard work.
P. B.