The Aesthetics of Interactive Computer Music.

This article describes the aesthetics of interactive computer music and contrasts these with aesthetic assumptions of other genres of computer music. Interactive computer music is a sub-genre of what might be called performance-oriented computer music--that is, any computer music that includes a strong performance component. This broader category requires at least one live performer joined with computer-generated or electronically produced or modified music. The genre thus incorporates both the traditional tape-plus-instrument medium (Mario Davidovsky's series of Synchronisms [e.g., Davidovsky 1988] are paradigmatic) and more recent interactive computer music--whether precomposed, improvised, randomly generated, or a mixture of these. I will narrow the focus of this article to just those works that are interactive: works wherein the performer in some way controls the electronics or the electronics affect the performer's sounds.

The conceptual implications of this genre are rarely discussed. Even in works that purport to treat of the aesthetics of computer music in a general fashion, such as Keane (1986) and many essays in Heifetz (1989), the issues addressed fall short of those that are implied in addressing interactive computer music. Rather than merely creating a typology or presenting the more problematic aspects of its ontology, my aim will be to show what aesthetic, qualities this music has that distinguish it from other genres of electronic and electroacoustic music as well as from other forms of music generally. Since aesthetic issues are intimately intertwined with value judgements, I also make some claims about the relative value of various approaches to computer-extended performance and their possibilities.

After a brief discussion of some definitional and ontological issues (simply to set the boundaries of discussion), I turn to the main points of the article. These are considered under two broad, complementary headings: (1) the human performer's contribution to computer music, and (2) the computer's contribution to human performance.

Within these broad sections, there is a background theme involving the nature and relationship of the human element to the machine element. In a great deal of music since the advent of electronic sound production, the electronic elements have been used to imply the non-human; this is one reason electronic music has been so often used in science fiction films. This is something I refer to as the "aesthetic of the machine." The electronically generated sounds glory in effects that machines can easily perform and humans cannot, such as the rapid pitch signatures of the droids' speech in Star Wars.

But one might also think in this context of the Futurism of Edgard Varese, whose Poeme Electronique was a precursor of much electroacoustic music to come. One could say that in it he depicts the world of machines, factories, mass production, alienation, and so on. All of these elements are indicative of the 20th century's ambivalent relationship to the technology of machines--on the one hand looking to technology to bring humanity out of menial labor, while on the other fearing the enormous potential for the technology to control human life and value. The machine did not make the life of the factory worker better, at least not at first. Rather, the worker had to learn to adapt to the pace and consistency of the machine, with sometimes rather unpleasant effects. Part of my contention here is that this view of technology is now no longer relevant. Technology is beginning to empower individuals.

While it would be deceptive to hold too strongly to a human/inhuman, human/machine--or even more generally, a subjective/objective--dichotomy in computer music (just as deceptive here as elsewhere in the modern world), nonetheless there is another more subtle aspect of these dichotomies that comes into play frequently, and I would say more insidiously: the humanist/formalist dichotomy. The degree to which musical formalism--most often associated with notions of objectivity and scientism in art--has reigned almost uncontested in the electronic arts is itself of some concern, or ought to be, to many contemporary practitioners. Arising out of these issues is a brief discussion of the aesthetics of formalism and humanism. These two "isms" are very prominent today, with contentious debates reaching all the way to popular press outlets such as the New York Times. For this article, however, the issues are framed in the context of computer music.

The present article attempts to give an overview of all of these issues, though not an unbiased one. Objectivity in art being one of the values herein contested, it hardly seems appropriate to make pretense to objectivity in the presentation of that contest. It is through individual subjective responses to art that it will live or die. Nevertheless, there are times when objective criteria are certainly useful. One could turn to Scruton's formulation: "In one sense aesthetic judgment is subjective--for it consists in the attempt to articulate an individual experience. But in another sense it is objective, for it aims to justify that experience, through presenting reasons that are addressed impartially to all beings with aesthetic understanding" (Scruton 1997, p. 376). Indeed, I intend to go even further than Scruton: not only must we attempt to justify that experience, but we must attempt to justify more specifically why--and how--that particular experience should be valued.