From technical to technological: the imperative of technology in experimental music composition.(Critical Essay)

INTRODUCTION

PHILOSOPHER ARTHUR DANTO used the term "post-historical" to refer to a period in art--roughly from the late 1950s to the present--in which "art was no longer possible in terms of a progressive historical narrative" (Danto 1992, 9). For Danto, a work like Andy Warhol's Brillo Box--a large packing box for then-ubiquitous brillo pad cleaning items--best captured that moment when art became "philosophical." In order to even begin to see a work like Brillo Box, one had to understand it within the context of its social and historical framework; the work was in fact this very framework. Such a notion of visual art challenged the traditionally held idea that visual artworks present "significant forms" predicated primarily upon "retinal experience" (Foster 1996, 4). Since then, the "content" of visual artworks have increasingly concerned the means by which they are made, both in terms of the social and historical context in which they obtain meaning (their epistemological framework) and of the technical means by which they are produced.

A similar holistic approach has energized advanced music composition. Musical works are viewed not simply as machines for aural experience, exhausted in the listening experience they engender; rather, they are understood as knowledge systems, as sources for analysis, discussion, extrapolation. The sensual experience they elicit is but one aspect of their existence as works of art--they also exist as social, political, and technological agents. Sustained by this overall view is an appreciation for the procedural dimension of music composition-technique has been elevated, not merely as a means toward an end, but as an end in itself Electronic systems for sound and music composition empower this approach to composition, since the composer's work includes radical reformulation of the very techniques by which material is generated. The technical difficulties encountered within the early electronic music studio, for instance, focused composers' attention toward the dialectical nature of their compositional process, empowering them to see the object of their musical activity (the musical work) as contingent upon the particular manner in which its musical problems were articulated and framed.

The idiosyncratic musical forms and materials produced in these studios testify to a radical interpretive attitude regarding the technical devices employed in their composition. This radical approach to music composition was greatly advanced with the introduction of the computer. The computer provided the kinds of tools that allowed the composer to explore, more deeply, the very conceptual frames in which musical ideas might be imagined and realized. It enabled the composer to critically examine and assess the musical result, the means by which that result came about, and how the two are conceptually and generatively related.

In recent years, compositional technique has been derided, regarded as an "elite" holdover from the experimental days of the 1950s and 1960s. This overall derision comes during a time when the computer tools used in music composition have increasingly emphasized ease-of-use over representational flexibility. This has generated, arguably, a more productive composer while, by precisely the same process, transforming the computer from a tool for experimental composition into a tool for increasing musical production.

The aim of this paper is to articulate an approach to understanding music technology that favors its experimental imperative over its merely productive capability. Such an approach would focus on technique, understanding technique as the locus of any experimental activity. Toward this end, I begin by discussing technology more generally and, due to its ubiquitous presence in computer technology, the computer interface more particularly. In doing so, I wish to counter technological determinism with technological hermeneutics. Technological determinism views technology as a deterministic frame, only minimally permeable to social, cultural, and political concerns. By contrast, technological hermeneutics views technology as an interpretive frame in which humans model the materials and forms by which domain-specific activity is defined. Viewed as interpretive frame, technology overtly invites and includes the participation of humans in designing the representations through which domain-specific thought and activit y is conceived, understood, and realized. In designing the representations through which domain-specific thought and activity is conceived, understood, and realized, humans participate in designing the larger social and political frames according to which artifacts (e.g. works of art) are produced and propagated. In doing so, humans participate in the design of their own ontological, cognitive, and epistemological experiences. The computer may therefore find its most compelling use, not in modeling already known historical frameworks, but in positing as-yet unknown models (Laske 1989). Viewed in this manner, the computer becomes a valuable tool for composers who view compositional technique itself as an end, not merely a means to an end. Such an interpretive stance regarding the computer acknowledges its subversive potential: as a means for negating--in the dialectical sense--the performative principles that otherwise direct technology research and the commercial imperative that drives that research.

THE COLONIZATION OF TECHNIQUE