Navigating an intertwingularity
: computational ambivalence in experimental music practice

  • Braxton Sherouse

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

This project offers a provisional, practitioner-oriented notion of ‘computational ambivalence’ in experimental music, addressing how many musicians sensitive to the non-neutrality of music technologies resist adopting a single overarching stance towards software, and therefore cannot extricate their technological questioning from music making itself. Computational ambivalence is established in relation to three idiosyncratically-defined ‘threads’ — experimental music, music computing, and critical cultural computing — and is exhibited in and through a ‘field guide’, speculative historical case studies on Iannis Xenakis’s Theraps and James Tenney’s Quintext, reflections on my own musical practice, and an accompanying portfolio of music and software.
Date of Award28 May 2019
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorMonty Adkins (Main Supervisor)

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