Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Music. By Joanna Demers.

Abstract

The world of music technology embraces a spectrum of creative activities, ranging from the production of permanent, fixed media compositions to works that are created live in concert performance. Between these two polarities many different genres are encountered, including, for example, free improvisation, the diffusion of multi-channel works in large performance spaces, and sound installation works, where the physical environment becomes an integral part of the artistic experience. Defining musical style in such contexts is a challenging prospect. Indeed the term ‘electronic music’, although still accepted by many as an all-embracing descriptor, is now something of a misnomer. Whereas the early post-Second World War development of the medium took place in an era governed by the possibilities of traditional analogue electronics, by the end of the 1950s pioneering work with digital computers had laid the foundations for entirely new methods of sound production and creative working. Although initially these developments were labelled as ‘computer music’, conveniently sidelined as peripheral activities available only to a handful of institutional pioneers, the implied distinction was progressively to lose its credibility, as step-by-step digital technologies replaced their analogue antecedents. Nonetheless both descriptors are still widely used today, albeit now co-existing with more accurate generic descriptors such as ‘digital music’.