Sound Work
Composition as Critical Technical Practice
Edited by Jonathan Impett
The potential for critical technical practice in the
creation of music
The practices and
perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and
technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its
many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music
culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in
writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge
production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of
discourse in both expert and public spheres. Internet pioneer Philip Agre
observed a discourse deficit in artificial intelligence research and proposed a
critical technical practice, a single disciplinary field with “one foot planted
in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of
critique. … A critical technical practice rethinks its own premises,
re-evaluates its own methods, and reconsiders its own concepts as a routine
part of its daily work.”
This volume considers the potential for critical technical practice in the evolving situation of composition across a wide range of current practices. In seeking to tell more honest, useful stories of composition, it hopes to contribute to a new discourse around the creation of music.
Contributors: Patricia Alessandrini (Stanford University), Alan Blackwell (University of Cambridge), Nicholas Brown (Trinity College Dublin), Marko Ciciliani (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria), Nicolas Collins (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Agostino Di Scipio (Music Conservatory of L’Aquila / "Arts, écologies, transitions" Research Team, Paris), Daniela Fantechi (Orpheus Institute / University of Antwerp), Ambrose Field (University of York), Karim Haddad (IRCAM - Centre Georges Pompidou), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute), Thor Magnusson (University of Sussex / Iceland University of the Arts), Scott McLaughlin (University of Leeds), Lula Romero (composer), David Rosenboom (composer), Ann Warde (independent scholar), Laura Zattra (IRCAM / Rovigo Conservatories of Music), Julie Zhu (Stanford University)
Too Cool to Boogie: Craft, Culture, and Critique in Computing
Illusions of Form
What to Ware? A Guide to Today’s Technological Wardrobe
Toward a Critical Musical Practice
The Composer’s Domain: Method and Material
Dissociation and Interference in Composers’ Stories about Music: The Renewal of Musical Discourse
Plates
The Impossibility of Material Foundations
Thinking Liveness in Performance with Live Electronics: The Need for an Eco-systemic Notion of Agency
Experiment and Experience: Compositional Practice as Critique
Designing the Threnoscope or, How I Wrote One of My Pieces
A Few Reflections about Compositional Practice through a Personal Narrative
Collaborative Creation in Electroacoustic Music: Practices and Self-Awareness in the Work of Musical Assistants Marino Zuccheri, Alvise Vidolin, and Carl Faia
Parlour Sounds: A Critical Compositional Process towards a Cyberfeminist Theory of Music Technology
Changing the Vocabulary of Creative Research: The Role of Networks, Risk, and Accountability in Transcending Technical Rationality
Designing Audience–Work Relationships
Online Materials
Format: Edited volume - ebook
384 pages
B&W illustrations and colour illustrations
ISBN: 9789461663665
Publication: December 17, 2021
Series: Orpheus Institute Series
Languages: English