Mothers of Invention: An Afterword

Abstract

This paper offers a personal perspective on exchanges at the 2014 New Interfaces for Musical Expression panel entitled Gender, Education, Creativity in Digital Music and Sound Art, and also draws on discussion at the Gender Roundtable held in July 2013 as part of the MusDig international conference, St. Anne’s College, Oxford University. Neither anachronistic institutional positions in a fast evolving cultural environment, nor opportunistic promotion of market-driven education programmes doomed to swift obsolescence, is likely to foster the diversity needed to sustain new creative energies in digital music and sound art. Class and race barriers are often indissociable from those that characterise gender discrimination, but this is not just a question of intersectionality. It also concerns thinking specifically about the gendered constructions of the objects and concepts we employ, and about the objectification of gender itself. This overview of a decidedly heterogeneous array of projects and initiatives endeavours to reflect our panel’s emphasis on the imperative to uphold diversity and otherness.