Materiality, Contingency and Emergence of Compositional Material

Abstract

If there is one idea that unites the manifold and often evasive conceptions of materialism, it is the immanence of form. Materialism, thus conceived, is the idea that matter is not shaped into form by something external to it, but rather itself harbours formal potential. Aesthetic, musical, biological, physical, and social forms can be understood as the product of emergent material processes. They can be conceived as contingent encounters that have taken form. Such a notion of materialist morphogenesis challenges anthropocentric assumptions about the nature of creative processes, relinquishing the idea of artistic practice as mastery over the material. This article focuses on compositional approaches to sound that explore the emergent material generation of form. It proposes a notion of materiality as a non-monist, non-hierarchical, and unpredictable interaction of different temporal, material, spatial and conceptual levels. By discussing works by Georges Aperghis, Helmut Lachenmann, Ashley Fure, and Aaron Cassidy, it deals with ways in which compositional practices, understood as situated and relational explorations of material potentials, embrace material contingency and the emergence of form.