The Problem of Authorship in the Epoch of New Media. The Universal Digital Archive as a Source of Trans-Medial Transcriptions

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of authorship in the digital and post-digital eras. The digital revolution that took place in the early 21st century, radically changed artistic thinking. It was conducive towards the dismantling of the previous analog system and the subsequent transformation into the digital format, stipulated by the methods of encoding of information. The discreet cyber system makes it possible to reduce to a maximal degree the processes of informational transmission and to solve numerous various aims in simultaneity. The contemporary artist operates with the broadest spectrum of materials, including everything that was created and fixated not only in the digital, but in the analog form. This comprehensive archive forms the basis of the trans-medial transcriptions and opens up new trajectories of creative development. The article presents composers’ concepts that have appeared in the era of New Media: glitch-art, which uses intentionally distorted digital objects, which are presently included into the field of new music, the development of systems of artificial intellect for the creation of imitations of authorial styles, as well as conceptual outsourcing. The academic novelty consists in the fact that for the first time in Russian musicology the challenge of the problem of authorship is being realized in the digital and post-digital eras, and also for the first time in the present angle the music of composers Bernhard Lang and Johannes Kreidler is examined. The conclusion of the present research is that the contemporary issue of authorship turns out to be subservient to the openness of the unified digital archive and the possibilities of the trans-medial transcriptions in the situation of a unified digital perception.