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made its last appearance in 1957, at a ball organized by Michael Gillis. We used
a big machine, a small machine and a collection of display media accumulated
over the years. But there were other things to do. After the ball, in the crisp,
but fragrant air of St. James's Park, the Musicolour idea was formally shelved.
I still have a small machine. But it does not work any longer and is of chiefly
sentimental value” (Pask 1971, 86-88). We can follow the subsequent muta-
tions of Musicolour in Pask's career below, but one other aspect of its histori-
cal development is worth mentioning. As mentioned above by Elizabeth Pask,
Gordon had an enduring interest in learning, and we should see how Musi-
colour fitted into this. The point to note is that in performance the performer
learned (performatively rather than cognitively) about the machine (and vice
versa), and Pask therefore regarded Musicolour as a machine in which one
could learn—scientifically, in a conventional sense—about learning. Thus, in
the show at Bolton's Theatre (Pask 1971, 83, 85-86),
it was possible to investigate the stability of the coupling [between performer
and machine]. In this study arbitrary disturbances were introduced into the
feedback loop wihout the performer's knowledge. Even though he is ignorant
of their occurrence, these disturbances are peculiarly distracting to the per-
former, who eventually becomes infuriated and opts out of the situation. But
there is an inherent stability in the man-machine relation which allows the
performer to tolerate a certain level of disturbance. We found that the tolerable
level increases as the rapport is established (up to a limit of one hour at any
rate). . . . Meanwhile, John Clark, a psychiatrist, had come to the theatre and
we jointly observed some phenomena related to the establishment of rapport.
First, there is a loss of time sense on the performer's part. One performer, for
example, tootled away on his instrument from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. and seemed
unaware that much time had passed; an hour, he thought, at the most. This
effect . . . was ubiquitous. Next, there is a group of phenomena bearing on the
way in which performers train the machine. As a rule, the performer starts off
with simple tricks which are entirely open to description. He says, for example,
that he is accenting a chord in a particular passage in order to associate a figure
in the display with high notes. . . . Soon . . . the determinate trick gives way to
a behaviour pattern which the performer cannot describe but which he adopts
to achieve a well-defined goal. Later still, the man-machine interaction takes
place at a higher level of abstraction. Goals are no longer tied to properties as
sensed by the property filters (though, presumably, they are tied to patterns of
properties). From the performer's point of view, training becomes a matter of
persuading the machine to adopt a visual style which fits the mood of his perfor-