Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

We can demand that he tell us; but that would do no good. It never would. If he were alive, as Alan
Riddell found, he’d respond ‘That’s exactly my question!’
And that is the approach that he is communicating: ‘Often, the first spontaneous reaction is the
best guide to procedure’.
*
The technical personnel and methodologies of text-sound composition matter a great deal. I will
not say that any approach is superior to any other; it does not work like that; but the personnel
and equipment affect what can be done and how it is done. This is rarely discussed or even noted.
One exception would be Julian Cowley, speaking of ‘Oral Complex’ [10], who says: ‘Whiting’s
technical input has made ‘Oral Complex’ a distinctly different performance from other groups in
which Cobbing has been involved’—Konkrete Canticle, Abana, Bird Yak. I have some doubts about
that observation. The other groups mentioned brought different kinds of input and one might
equally note just how different all of the groups are from each other. Nevertheless, it is
undoubtedly true that the technical facilities available affect the possible output—obviously.
In a way that story tells the reader nothing. Perhaps one can say that Whiting’s technical input
allowed Cobbing to utilise his, by then, considerable experience of vocalising from graphical
language and making tape work without acquiring skill with machines with which he was
unfamiliar. It all takes time and effort; and, in some ways, for Bob it was the artefacts that mattered
the most if a short cut produced an artefact he approved.
*
‘Winter Poem 1’ (1974) rocks on the edge between representation and non-representation. The
representational elements in Cobbing, even if ambiguous, are fairly specific. ‘Self-portrait with
Glasses’ contains glasses; but they are not foregrounded. In ‘Winter Poem 1’ one feels oneself
seeing trees laden with snow, small animals etc; but in performance are found stimuli for vocal
utterance.
The visual experimentation continued with an ever-varying flow. In particular, we can look at
Pattern of Performance where he utilised not just the transforming capabilities of his stencil
scanner, but also its quirks and his knowledge of those quirks.
Experience teaches the attentive; and, increasingly, he knew what he would get from that machine
and from the duplicator. In the late 1970s, he was still exploiting the use of inadvertent monotypes
arising from the ink duplication process; and farming them, as it were; and transforming the
mundane output of the print media via scanning; and he reached for various of these methods
much as he might reach for an instrument or a compositional process; or an electronic effect.
He never quite repeated; but he built on what had gone before.