Unsayable Music: Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music

Chapter 4 The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music

103 Chapter 4 The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music 1. From Electroacoustic to Digital Composition On a historical level, what we call electroacoustic1 music today emerged in the early 1950s when composers began to use electric and electronic instruments for storing, reproducing, transforming, and synthesizing sound.2 The systematic use of electricity and electronic equipment distinguishes electroacoustic music from acoustic music, whether vocal or instrumental. However, such a distinction is problematic in light of the growing influence of technology on all aspects of music including composition, production, distribution, and listening. The first electroacoustic compositions were created in studios in Paris, Cologne, and New York. The Paris and Cologne studios, both affiliated with state-owned radio broadcasters, became important for the aesthetic tendencies that marked the beginnings of electroacoustic music. The affiliation with public broadcasting placed the European studios at the center of intense activity of production and performance. The medium of radio gave visibility to electroacoustic music and contributed to its enormous impact on 20th century music. The New York studio, like many other studios founded later in the USA, was affiliated with universities and linked to research projects on computer audiotechnologythatemergedintheearly1950s.Thefoundationsofcomputer music lie in the research on digital sound synthesis, synthesizer hardware engineering, software systems for music, and digital signal processing.3 1 Both the forms “electroacoustic” and “electro-acoustic” are used in English; I prefer the former. 2 For a short overview of the beginnings of electroacoustic music, see Bennet (1970) and Ungeheuer (2002). For a history of electroacoustic and computer music including the period before World War II, see Holmes (2012) and Manning (2013). 3 For an overview of different aspects of the beginnings of digital audio and computer music, see Roads (1985). For a concise introduction to the digital audio concept, see Unsayable Music 104 While the term “electroacoustic music” has an artistic connotation, evoking the activities of composition and performance, the term “computer music” emphasizes the convergence of art, science, and technology. The computer became a multifunctional tool that replaced analog technology as a medium of production, composition, and performance. Digital technology improved and expanded the possibilities of electroacoustic music and opened new fields of interdisciplinary creativity such as algorithmic composition, humanmachine interactivity, music cognition, psychoacoustics, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Besides the concepts of electroacoustic and computer music, the term digital music is becoming increasingly popular thanks to the mass distribution of music over the internet in combination with the use of digital mobile devices for listening. Digital music represents new markets and opportunities; the commercialization of digital music is taking over the old structures of the phonograph and recording industry. On the other hand, diverse and varied connotations of the adjective digital in the contexts of music and art correlate with new structures of creativity that are emerging in society. Kerckhove (2001) describes it as a new architecture of connectivity linking the physical world with virtual networks of information and communication. The music of the digital age is no longer restricted to the bodies that produce sound and manipulate instruments, but acquires a fluid character through the multiplicity of connections and contexts in which it can be inserted and expressed (Chagas 2003b). The digital connectivity of music accelerates the differentiation process occurring in art and in society as a whole (cf. Luhmann 1997; 2000).4 Digital networks support the development of new artistic fields by exploring sound as a meaningful technical and cultural object—for example with sound design, sound art, and soundscape—and also by shaping new interdisciplinary connections between music and visual media, body, and space. The history of electroacoustic music is helpful in gaining an understanding ofhowanaloganddigitaltechnologytransformsperceptionandconsciousness. The ability to generate sounds and images by manipulating machines has developed a new kind of creativity, which Flusser calls the power to imagine [Einbildungskraft] (cf. Flusser 1985, 39-45; 2011, 33-39). The hegemony of alphanumerical and linear codes of writing, which have constituted the Roads (1996, 5-47) and Dodge and Jerse (1997, 62-71); for an introduction to digital sound synthesis, see Roads (1996, 85-116) and Dodge and Jerse (1997, 72-114). 4 See discussion on Luhmann’s theory of social systems in “Communication and Meaning: Music as Social System”, pp. 65-102 herein. The Creativity of Electroacoustic and Digital Music 105 basis of historical thinking and scientific knowledge since the Renaissance, has been replaced by the new codes of the universe of technical images and...