Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T06:59:05.822Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Getting Out of the Black Box: analogising the use of computers in electronic music and sound art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

Damien Charrieras  and
François Mouillot
Damien Charrieras*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong Level 7, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, 18 Tat Hong Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
François Mouillot*
Affiliation:
McGill University, Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies, Room W225, Arts Building, 853 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0G5
*
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The process of creating computer-based music is increasingly being conceived in terms of complex chains of mediations involving composer/performer and computer software interactions that prompt us to reconsider notions of materiality within the context of digital cultures. Recent scholarship has offered particularly useful re-evaluations of computer music software in relation to musical instrumentality. In this article, we contend that given the ubiquitous presence of computer units within contemporary musical practices, it is not simply music software that needs to be reframed as musical instruments, but rather the diverse material strata of machines identified as computers that need to be thought of as instruments within music environments. Specifically, we argue that computers, regardless of their technical specifications, are not only ‘black boxes’ or ‘meta-tools’ that serve to control music software, but are also material objects that are increasingly being used in a wide range of musical and sound art practices according to an ‘analog’ rather than ‘digital’ logic. Through a series of examples implicating both soft and hard dimensions of what constitutes computers, we provide a preliminary survey of practices calling for the need to rethink the conceptual divide between analog and digital forms of creativity and aesthetics.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 20 , Special Issue 2: Sound Art and Music, Historical Continuum and Mimetic Fissures , August 2015 , pp. 191 - 199
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, C. and Wolff, M. 2010. The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet. WIRED. www.wired.com/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/ (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Barker, T. S. 2012. Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth University Press.Google Scholar
Berkman, F. 2013. Hans Zimmer: The Computer Is My Instrument. Mashable. http://mashable.com/2013/02/05/hans-zimmer-vjam/ (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Bernier, N. 2013. Intimate Frequencies. Ableton. www.ableton.com/en/blog/nicolas-bernier-intimate-frequencies/ (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Bertelsen, O. W., Breinbjerg, M. and Pold, S. 2009. Emerging Materiality: Reflections on Creative Use of Software in Electronic Music Composition. Leonardo 42(3): 197–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cascone, K. 2000. The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music. Computer Music Journal 24(4): 12–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, N. 2004. Review of Radiohead: Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief. Computer Music Journal 28(1). www.computermusicjournal.org/reviews/28–1/collins-radiohead.html (accessed 12 September 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Combes, M. and LaMarre, T. 2013. Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Constellation Records. 2014. CST104 HISS TRACTS: Shortwave Nights | Constellation Records. http://cstrecords.org/cst104/ (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Gayard, M. 2012. Interview: Mostly Robot. Electronic Beats. www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/interview-mostly-robot/ (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Graham, J. n.d. Will.i.am: ‘My instrument is the computer’. usatoday.com. www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/talkingyourtech/story/2012–03–11/william-computers-digital-music/53489604/1 (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Heidelberger, M. 2004. Nature From Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner And His Psychophysical Worldview. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ihde, D. 2008. The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination. In P. Kroes, P. Vermaas, A. Light and S. Moor (eds.) Philosophy and Design: From Engineering to Architecture . Dordrecht, NL: Springer.Google Scholar
Jones, D., Brown, A. R. and d’ Inverno, M. 2012. The Extended Composer. In J. McCormack and M. d’ Inverno (eds.) Computers and Creativity. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer.Google Scholar
Kim, Y. 2013. ‘Boundaries’ and ‘Thresholds’: Conceptual Models of the Musical Mind in the History of Music Psychology. Psychology of Music 42(5): 671–691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirton, T. 2013. C4: Creative Coding for iOS. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. TEI ’13. New York: ACM, 411–13.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1994. On Technical Mediation – Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy. Common Knowledge 3(2): 29–64.Google Scholar
Licht, A. 2009. Sound Art: Origins, Development and Ambiguities. Organised Sound 14(1): 3–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, K. 2013. Daft Punk on EDM Producers: ‘They’re Missing the Tools’. Billboard. www.billboard.com/articles/columns/code/1560708/daft-punk-on-edm-producers-theyre-missing-the-tools (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Mathews, M. V. 1963. The Digital Computer as a Musical Instrument. Science 142(3592): 553–557.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, P. D. and Matviyenko, S. 2014. The Imaginary App. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostertag, B. n.d. Why Computer Music Sucks. bobostertag.com. http://bobostertag.com/writings-articles-computer-music-sucks.htm (accessed 12 September 2014).Google Scholar
Richards, J. 2008. Getting the Hands Dirty. Leonardo Music Journal 18: 25–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogerson, B. 2008. Justice Respond to ‘Unplugged’ Controversy by Posting More Pictures. MusicRadar.com. www.musicradar.com/news/tech/justice-respond-to-unplugged-controversy-by-posting-more-pictures-183657/ (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Simondon, G. 1969. Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne.Google Scholar
Souriau, E. 1956. L’œuvre à faire. Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 25 (Feb). 4–44.Google Scholar
Souriau, É. 2009. Les différents modes d’existence Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterne, J. and Rodgers, T. 2011. The Poetics of Signal Processing. Differences 22(2–3): 31–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomsen, B. M. S. 2012. Signaletic, Haptic and Real-Time Material. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 4: 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Twinsoul Media. 2010. Mostly Robots. Supergroup. http://twinsoulmedia.com/?p=2919 (accessed 15 September 2014).Google Scholar
Whitelaw, M. 2009. Transduction, Transmateriality, and Expanded Computing. the teeming void. http://teemingvoid.blogspot.hk/2009/01/transduction-transmateriality-and.html (accessed 24 January 2014).Google Scholar