Derek Baron is a composer, musician, and writer living in New York City. They have released a number of solo recordings of chamber, computer, and concrete music on record labels such as Recital, Pentiments, Penultimate Press, and Regional Bears. (Sound Arts Lecture Series | CRiSAP research centre, UAL, 2023)

I found particularly interesting Derek Baron’s inspiration from very abstract concepts of Jewish mysticism and cosmogonic mythology about ‘sparks and vessels’ scattered across created cosmos, partially because these topics has been always close to me as well. This topic follows him across various art forms into the sound piece To The Planetarium. The piece is made from gathered old family interviews captured on tapes and its aim is to ‘let them be’ at its length and at its space instead of making short version cut. As a result, the piece is extremely long (about 4 hours). Derek Baron realises the difference between the material and the work. He found himself more in the position of a researcher / listener rather than a being in control over the content as a creator. This methodology reminded me an analogy in Jewish mystical concept of creation of the Universe, Tzimtzum, which means literally stepping back to allow for there to be Other, or Else, as in something or someone else, mentioned by Derek Baron earlier.

Derek Baron is sourcing inspiration for his music and compositions from various other art forms especially from paintings and often is putting random ideas and pictures together based on the ‘spark of momentum’ even if later the result won’t make any sense to him anymore. Such a spark he compares to the mythical spark from the creation. 

If I didn’t know about Derek’s fascination by mythology, his inspiration avenues would seems very random to me and wouldn’t make much sense to me either however I can somehow perceive what Derek sees behind all nuances of art pieces which inspired him into creation of his own and the ways presented during the lecture. Although there is an inherent difficulty to comprehend and describe these inspirations into detail because the whole journey seems to be very internal and personal.  

Bibliography:

Sound Arts Lecture Series | CRiSAP research centre, UAL (2023). Available at: https://crisap.org/research/projects/sound-arts-lecture-series/.