Musings on the Status of Electronic Music Today (original) (raw)
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This article explores the emergence of musical performance practices whereby electronic music styles, along with the musical and sonic characteristics inherent in their electronic production, are emulated through live musical performance using acoustic instrumentation. The article draws on Brummett's (1999) concept of 'machine aesthetics' to explore the emergence of these practices, whereby musicians emulate sonic and musical attributes of music usually produced by machines, without the use of machines. Utilising semi-structured interviews and musical analysis of records by Abstract Orchestra and GoGo Penguin, the article attempts to contextualise these practices within their broader function in popular music production and performance.
2018
In the last fifty years, the musical scene has been inevitably transformed by the device that has progressively defined the operation of human society since its advent: the computer. Computing machines have paved the way for the exponential advance of humanity's capabilities, shaping the economy, the nature of labour and human interaction along the way. Likewise, computers have radically changed the music industry in terms of its creation, dissemination and consumption. Vanguard musical creation is both highly contingent on the equipment at the hands of composers, and the cultural context of the era, which is heavily influenced by the existing material and sociological factors of society. The objective of this essay is to analyse how the 'computerized' sounds found in contemporary music, predominantly in the electronic music scene, act as the preeminent artistic reflection of the current zeitgeist, defined by the increasing scope of technology's integration into people's lives, as well as the effects of digital culture in shaping individuals' consciousness and anxieties. In order to build on the argument, the essay shall look at relevant contemporary artists such as Daft Punk, M83, Deadmau5 and Radiohead. Taking account of the current dynamic of 'cyborgisation' of the human species, the essay will go further to contend that these musical creations can be conceived as lyrical counterparts to the written post-human imaginative exercise present in Haraway's figurative cyborg imagery, and as such, represent how the sounds and messages present in music play a significant role in influencing individuals' dispositions to post-humanist mentalities.
Human Excess - Aesthetics Of Post-Internet Electronic Music
There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the 'organic' and the 'synthetic' in electronic music. In spite of immediate opposing qualities, they instill sensations of each other in practice: Acoustic sounds are subject to artificial mimicry while algorithmic music can present an imitation of human creativity. This presents a post-human aesthetic that questions if there are echoes of life in the machine. This paper investigates how sonic aesthetics in the borderlands between electronic avant-garde, pop and club music have changed after 2010. I approach these aesthetics through Brian Massumi's notions of 'semblance' and 'animateness' as abstract monikers to assist in the tracing of meta-aesthetic experiences of machine-life, genre, musical structure and the listening to known-unknown noise. The idea of a post-Internet society acts as framework for the intimate relation between pop and avant-garde in contemporary electronic music. This relation is a result of a sonic contextualization of late-capitalist society via the Internet. Finally I discuss how pop is the noise in the avant-garde and how the human in a post-Internet era presents itself through synthetic plasticity.
Music and the Cybernetic Mundane
Resonance, 2021
Few intellectual movements have been as influential as cybernetics was in the 1950s and ’60s. Fewer still have seen their stock fall so precipitously in the years since. Despite the growing body of literature that has reassessed this postwar “cybernetics moment” (Hayles, Kline, Pickering, Medina, et al.), its far-reaching impact remains curiously underappreciated, especially as regards music. This article seeks to redress this neglect, by focusing not on works and practices that spectacularize cybernetics (the “cybernetic sublime”), but instead on those activities, discourses, and projects that so thoroughly internalized and normalized the cybernetic ethos that it eludes notice (the “cybernetic mundane”). A first case study considers the little-known role played by information theory and cybernetics in the design of the RCA Synthesizer, one of the first instruments of its ilk to be developed. Among other things, I contend that cybernetic thinking pervaded the instrument’s conception to such an extent that it paradoxically contributed to the subsequent erasure of its influence from accounts of the instrument’s development and subsequent implementation as part of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. The second case concerns more recent applications of cybernetic ideals to digital music distribution, exemplified by the platform Spotify, whose routinization of these ideals has ensured not just their persistence, but their persistent misrecognition.
New aesthetics and practice in experimental electronic music
Organised Sound, 2008
Most research and academic writing about electronic and electroacoustic music is focused on music produced within academic communities-an inward-looking dynamic. The theme of Organised Sound 13(1) was established to explore work that exists outside this domain, work not supported by the academic economy. What is this work? From 1994, a body of works emerged, Oval's Systemisch (1994, Thrill Jockey/Mille Plateaux), Ikeda's +/2 (1996, Touch) and Autechre's Grantz Graf (2002, Warp) to identify a few. These heralded new aesthetic approaches to experimental music, new formations of technologies, and more. 'Electronica', 'post-digital', 'microsound', 'glitch', or one of many other descriptions of sub-genres have been proposed, used, defined and redefined to quantify the field. Yet all these classifications for new approaches to computer music are problematic in some respect; many are misrepresentations or, in fact, meaningless terms, often revealing more about authors' intentions than their subject. Not surprisingly, many of the leading
Interferences: Posthuman Perspectives on Early Electronic Music
Disruption in the Arts, 2018
PosthumanP erspectiveso nE arly Electronic Music Electronic music offers manyr eference points to reflect on the topic of 'Disruption in the Arts',i np articulari nr egards to experiments in music in the 1950s. This becomes especiallyapparent when using the prismatic concept of 'interferences'.Inphysics,the termrefers to the superposition of twoormore wavesthat leads to anew wave pattern. In the wider sense of communication sciences, 'interference' refers to anything that alters, modifies, or disruptsamessagea si t travels along ac hannel. In acoustics, it refers to the disruptive sound per se: whiten oise. The latter has become an object of media and culturals tudies in which it has been considered as ad isruptivee lements ituated in between chaos and information thatm ay constituteb oth crisis and progress (Sanio and Scheib 1995;H iepko and Stopka2 001). Earlye lectronic music has references to all of these implications and definitions. On am aterial level, the first music experiments were nothing other thann oise interferences based on electronic soundsa nd created by means of communication engineering.O nasocio-aesthetic level, this new sound basedoninterferingfrequencies expressed ahistorical turning point,which was aligned by overlaying discourses criticizing medial, social,a nd aesthetic practices.B ydiscussingi nterferences related to earlyelectro acoustics as striking example of the principle of disruption in the arts, bothof the mentioned levels willreceive attention in the following sections. It is the argument,that these interferences indicate an epochalt hreshold and finally offer approachesf or reflecting on ap osthuman 'state of the art' in earlye lectronic music.
Les Musiques Électroacoustiques: Construction of a Discipline
My hypothesis in this paper is that Hugh Davies redefined what electronic music was via his research and documentation work in the 1960s, and, that his definition of electronic music still holds true today (at least as far as electronic music in an academic context is concerned). My argument, in other words, is that Hugh Davies constructed the discipline of what is now known as electroacoustic music. Two questions are as follows. First of all, how did Davies go about constructing a discipline of electroacoustic music? To answer that question I examine Davies’s published and unpublished research work from 1961–1968. Second, to what extent was he successful? Or, to put it another way, to what extent has Davies’s definition of electronic music been accepted? To answer this second question I examine subsequent published literature and projects from 1968–2012 that have cited or been based on Davies’s work, and show how the structure of Davies’s model of electronic music is reflected in this subsequent work. This is a transcript of a presentation given at the 3rd International Conference ‘Music and Technologies,’ Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, 15 November 2013. An online version of this paper, comprising slides and recorded narration, is available at http://www.james-mooney.co.uk/em-nov13.