The Internet of Musical Stuff (IoMuSt): ubimus perspectives on artificial scarcity, virtual communities and (de)objectification

Abstract

Part of the recent developments in Ubiquitous Music (ubimus) research involve the proposal of the Internet of Musical Stuff (IoMuSt) as an expansion and complement to the Internet of Musical Things (IoMusT). The transition from IoMusT to IoMuSt entails a critique of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as technologies for allotment, disciplination and regimentation of formerly open and freely accessible artistic web content. In brief, the replacement of the operative concepts constructed around “things” with strategies based on “stuff” highlights the underlying interconnected processes and factors that impact interaction and usage, pointing to resources that become disposable and valueless within an objectified and monetized musical internet. This conceptual and methodological turn allows us to deal with distributed-creativity phenomena in marginalized spaces, highlighting the role of resources that are widely reproducible, fluid and ever-changing. In this paper, we address IoMuSt-based responses to issues such as the artificial production of scarcity associated with the application of NFTs. The selected musical examples showcase the meshwork of dynamic relationships that characterizes ubimus research. In particular, we focus on a comprovisation project involving VOIP visual communication through Skype, Meet and Zoom, a ubimus experience involving a Telegram chatbot and a set of musical experiments enabled by an online tool for remote live patching.