工具展，一个关于工具、设备、乐器的展览。每两月一件。“tool”, an exhibition about tools, instruments and so on.
李维思 – 宝塔镇河妖 | li weisi – wizard in the can
(english version see below)
问答（提问：颜峻；回答：李维思）
问：按照你的要求，我把4罐苏打水和一盘磁带放在了这块木板上。四罐水的位置没有经过计算和测量，放置磁带也仅仅是根据“不要掉下去”的原则，既不精确也没有任何美学上的考虑，这样可以吗？
答：精确对我来说好像不那么重要。苏打水部分，我原本设想的放置位置也就是“差不多就行”，“四个点大概均分总长度就可以”，或者，哪怕是三罐或者四罐完全随机摆放，我觉得也是没有本质区别的—简而言之，有就行；不过说到美学，最终的呈现和设想的稍微有一些出入。主要是磁带堆积部分的量，我估计如果我来操作放置的话，大概用目前所用磁带的1/4就可以了：它们乍一看是一坨，但同时又能透出底座来。毕竟多看见一种材料嘛。
不过这么多磁带，倒让我有了一种之前没有明确量化过的感觉：我寄给你的大概是3-4分钟长的磁带（不知你是否都用了，看来似乎如此）。一段任何风格的任何音乐都是那么长；原来一小卷正常绕起来的声音，展开以后可以是这么大一坨。尽管走带速度是已知的，人们可以算出任何时长的声音到底占用多长的磁带，但一件“时间”属性的物质明确地以“空间”的形式展现在我面前的时候，还是有点微妙，好像一个怪谈或者克苏鲁神话小品：4分钟的神秘声音在这个规格下，摆在那里，无人知晓确切的声音，只知道其重量。要是40或者4000分钟呢？巨大的一坨，鸟巢体育馆那么大，铺满天安门广场也行。它可能在美学上比较随意，但是已经不重要了。
问：自从不再喝酒，苏打水和红牛成了你的日常饮料，为什么没有选择红牛？其中富含各种物质，也许可以制造很多化学反应呢？还是你偏爱简洁的物理现象（当然释放气泡也是一个化学过程）？
答：我想了想，我还真的从来没有想过探索红牛是否可以发出声音。我觉得原因主要是我不具备“使用红牛发出声音”所需的知识。或者说，“创造性地使用红牛演奏”，我估计是做不到了。
我认真想象了一下下，红牛肯定是可以通过复杂的化学（我认为主要得靠化学）反应来发出声音的，那么我就得发明一套装置，我可以通过不同的参数（投放各种化学式的物质）来控制它发出的声音，肯定和简单的气泡水声不一样。不错啊！化学合成器嘛不是！但是太难了我操。。。
问：很多时候你的演奏声音都很小，有什么大声的音乐是你喜欢的吗？
答：有。大概有两种：动态极大的乐器演奏（不限于乐音），以及几乎没有动态的大音量长音（不限于噪音）。
问：很多人都会说，摇滚乐和实验音乐并没有很大的区别，喜欢就好，那么从做音乐的角度来说呢？排除主观的干涉，以设定的条件去观测实验的结果，是不是也可以应用在摇滚乐中呢？
答：我是这么觉得的。“没有很大区别”这个结论我想对非创造者身份的人来说是绝对成立的，无论什么音乐，喜欢与否是这类人最终的评判标准。或者说聆听者的美学经验是最终评判标准。但对创作者来说，实验音乐的创作过程中，美学经验只是判断自己作品的一部分依据，甚至对有的作品来说只是很小的一部分。剩下的那部分，可以叫做“学术判断”吧。他们基于各种各样的方法论来创造一个作品，有时完全匪夷所思甚至与“美”毫无关联。比如精妙的作曲，在演奏出来之前就已经成立了，到底是用绝世好乐手集群演奏还是用一堆蛆演奏呢？不知道，我是创作者的话，可能更偏向后一种，又可能偏向前一种。又比如我最近在用矩阵运算写一个作品，但整个过程我并不知道它最终听起来如何，当运算顺序和参数完成，作品也就完成了，整个过程并没有什么“喜欢”可言，因为我十分确定无论如何我是不可能“喜欢”矩阵运算的，除了数学家谁会喜欢矩阵运算呢，我觉得大部分数学家都不能说喜欢矩阵运算，那得多变态啊。和矩阵结婚吗。那只是一种工具而已吧。我想真正的问题是，为什么会创造不被“喜欢”的事物呢？因为“排除主观的干涉，以设定的条件去观测实验的结果”，是有意义的，参考最后一个问题。比个人的喜欢与否意义要大得多。
摇滚乐的话我觉得就不一样了，创作者和消费者相当“共感”。精妙的摇滚乐，我不在某个晚上由我写出那个唯一的决定性的音符并且不当着好几十万人亲自演奏出来，怎么也是死不瞑目的。所以我觉得在摇滚乐上这么干行不通，不成立。如果有人这么干（事实上很多人这么干），它一定不是纯粹的摇滚乐，倒可能是纯粹的实验。
问：在我们的充满杂质和偶然的生活里，实验究竟意味着什么呢？
答：那当然是提纯了！毕竟杂质和偶然太多了，赛博垃圾和快消哲学，还有p2p骗局（这词好像是从你某条朋友圈看见的），必须提纯，必须阻止它们！延缓熵的增加！虽然蛋用没有吧。也不能说蛋用没有，我觉得还是有点蛋用吧。
狭义上的答案是这样：实验的意义和目地在于它有可能更新已有的知识体系。若干年前我这么认为，现在我仍然这么认为。
questions: yan jun
answers: li weisi
q: according to your request i put 4 cans of soda water and a roll of tapes on the wooden board. the positions of 4 cans have not been precisely calculated and measured. the principle of putting the tape was also merely “keep it stay on”. it’s not precise and there was no aesthetical thought. is this fine?
a: precision seems not that important for me. about the positions of soda water i was thought “going easy” would be fine, or “let the 4 points about to equally assign the length”, or there is no essential difference if 3 or 4 cans totally been set randomly – in short, as long as they are there. but back to aesthetics, the result is slightly different to what i was imaged. mainly the amount of the tape piling up. if i do the piling i might use only 1/4 of it. it would be a pile at the first impression but can see the board at same time. as we could see one more material.
but after all this much tape given me a feeling that i have never clearly quantified – what i sent you was tape about 3-4 minutes (i don’t know if you have used all of it. it seems so.) a piece of music on most genre is on such length. i don’t know a small roll of sound could be such a big pile. of course speed of running tape is already known. people can calculate how long tape would occupied for how long piece of sound. but it’s quite subtle once a piece of time material clearly appearing in front of me in a form of space. it seems a kaidan or cthulhu opusculum. 4 minutes of mysterious sound were setting there under such norm, no one kwons exact sound it contains but only knows its weight. how about 40 or 4000 minutes? a gigantic pile as the size of the bird’s nest stadium or full of tian’anmen squre. it might be easy on aesthetics but it’s not important any more.
q: soda water and red bull become your daily drinks since you quit alcohol. why didn’t you choose red bull this time? it consists lots of materials. it might be able to used for chemical reactions? or you just prefer simple physical phenomenon (but of course releasing bubbles is also a chemical process)?
a: i have taken a thought. for sure i have never thought about discovering sound from red bull. the main reason is i don’t have certain knowledge of “using red bull to make sound”. or “perform with red bull in creative ways”. i guess i can’t do it.
i have taken a serious thought, for a while. yes by certain complicated reaction (i think mainly chemical) red bull is definitely can make sound. but then i have to invent a set of device. i could control its sound by different parameters (of adding different chemical materials). it must be different to the normal bubble sound. nice! chemical synthesizer isn’t it! but too damned difficult…
q: most of time volume of your performances are low. any loud music that you like?
a: yes. basically two types: instrumental performance (not only musical tones) with high dynamics; loud drone with almost no dynamics (not only noise).
q: many would say, the only concern is that you like it as rock ‘n’ roll has no big difference with experimental music. so how is it from creator’s point of view? is it possible to apply the method of avoiding subjective interference and observing the consequence of experiment under certain setting conditions into rock ‘n’ roll?
a: what i’m thinking is, it’s absolutely can be set up that “no big difference” for non-creator people. whatever the music is, for these people the final criterion is like it or not. or let’s say the listener’s aesthetical experience become to the final criterion. but for creators the aesthetical experience is only a part of basic of judging their own works during the process of creating experimental music. for some works this is only very small part. let’s call the rest parts as “science judge”. they create a piece of work according to all kind of methods. sometimes totally unthinkable or even have nothing to do with “aesthetics” or “beauty”. for example a piece of exquisite composition which has been done before been performed. then should it be performed by a group of virtuosos or by a heap of maggots? i don’t know. i might prefer the later if i was the composer, or the earlier. another example is, i’m writing a work by applying matrix operations recently. but i have no idea how it sounds like during the process. once the order of the operations and parameters are finished the work would be done. there is no such thing as “like” during the whole process. because i’m pretty sure i will not “like” matrix operations anyway. who would like matrix operations except mathematicians? i think even most of mathematicians would not say they like matrix operations. how much hentai it would be? marry a matrix? it’s just a tool perhaps. i think the real question is why creating something that not be “like”? because it’s meaningful to “apply the method of avoiding subjective interference and observing the consequence of experiment under certain setting conditions”. (refer to answer of the last question) its meaning is much larger than being individually liked or not.
in terms to rock ‘n’ roll i feel it’s another issue. creator and consumer have quite an empathy. for exquisite rock ‘n’ roll i would not closed my eyes when dying if i couldn’t write the one and only crucial note in one night and perform it in front of hundreds of thousands people. so i feel it’s not possible to do so on rock ‘n’ roll. disconfirm. if anyone does this (and in fact many people doing this) then it must not be pure rock ‘n’ roll. it might be pure experiment.
q: after all what means experiment in our life which full of impurity and accident?
a: certainly is purifying! after all there are so much impurity and accident such as cyber trash and fast-consuming philosophy and p2p fraud (it seems i saw this term from a post in your social media circle). have to be purified. have to stop them! delay the increase of entropy! although it doesn’t work at all. but can’t say it doesn’t work at all. i feel it might be work a bit.
in the narrow sense the answer is like this: the meaning and aim of experiment is that it possibly renew the known knowledge system. some years ago i thought so and i still think so.