PSIONICS
SONIC ART AND RESEARCH
The Spirit of the age.
Are reports of Postmodernism's demise exagerrated or is there a new zeitgeist in town
ABSTRACT.
Voices from academia and beyond have declared ‘postmodernism is dead’, that a new
age of realism and objectivity is upon us and that practice rather than theory or
concept now carry the cultural baton, but do these speculations reflect the reality of
contemporary popular culture?
The turn of the past two centuries have invoked a spirit of change, a desire to
reimagine the cultural landscape. The end of the Victorian era ushered in an age of
modernism inspired cultural and technological changes that sought to sweep aside the
old ways in a radical quest for the ‘new’. In turn, the 21st century has seen its own
revolution in the arts and society as a whole, led by a tidal wave of digital technology
who’s impact came almost hand in hand with the millennial dawn. Our reliance on
digital technology is now ubiquitous. We rarely leave home without a computer of
some kind, becoming overwhelmed by an irrational insecurity if we do that we need
to access one as soon as possible to let people know we are off the grid. Increasingly
we inhabit virtual societies parallel to reality, communicate in instantaneous
shorthand forms and think nothing of becoming absorbed by the role we play in the
simulated dystopias of video games. Yet, despite the possibilities open to us for a
second futurist sea change, culturally, we still seem inclined to look in the rear view
mirror. Technology has changed artistic methodology radically but has there been a
defined shift in the content of that aesthetic or do we still predominantly work within
the same basic frameworks we always have? Does this brave new digital world
signify a new zeitgeist or is it the ultimate evolution and realisation of postmodern
ideas?
FLOW
INTERACTIVE SONIC ART.
Abstract.
FLOW operates on two levels, firstly as an engaging live performance environment and secondly as a vehicle to discuss a number of philosophical ideas relating to sound as art.
As a performance piece FLOW exists to provide an inclusive interactive environment for musicians and casual visitors alike. A series of sensors allow those who enter the arena to make interventions in an immersive soundscape through their movements, opening up possibilities for the exploration of sound and gestural action within the space.
The piece challenges the conventional roles of performer and spectator and offers interactive technology as a means of uniting the two. The artist creates a re-imagination of the performance paradigm based on active engagement rather than passive observance through the establishment of a circular discourse between human and computer.
The following paper will also examine the nature of sound as art, suggesting that the poststructural ideas of Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari can be used as a conduit to define sonic emergences and morphologies within a Human/computer discourse, both in terms of timbral nature and spatial diffusion. Central to this is the concept that suggests the relationship between man and machine in interactive sonic art is one of energy transfer from organic fluidity to digital regulation and back to energy in the form of processed sound, according to the processes put in place. This leads into a final discussion of the nature of experimental compositional process, the choice between the determinate and the stochastic and the compromises between these that may need to be made to retain artistic coherence.