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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]
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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 

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