There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the ‘organic’ and the ‘synthetic’ in electronic music.... more There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the ‘organic’ and the ‘synthetic’ in electronic music. In spite of immediate opposing qualities, they instill sensations of each other in practice: Acoustic sounds are subject to artificial mimicry while algorithmic music can present an imitation of human creativity. This presents a post-human aesthetic that questions if there are echoes of life in the machine. This paper investigates how sonic aesthetics in the borderlands between electronic avant-garde, pop and club music have changed after 2010. I approach these aesthetics through Brian Massumi’s notions of ‘semblance’ and ‘animateness’ as abstract monikers to assist in the tracing of meta-aesthetic experiences of machine-life, genre, musical structure and the listening to known-unknown noise. The idea of a post-Internet society acts as framework for the intimate relation between pop and avantgarde in contemporary electronic music. This relation is a result of a sonic contextualization o...
This paper proposes an experimental approach to interactive evolutionary computation-assisted mus... more This paper proposes an experimental approach to interactive evolutionary computation-assisted musical improvisation through practice-based research and aesthetics discourse on evolutionary art. The harmonic series of a snare drum acts as source and fitness function for a real-time performance environment created in Max/MSP. The processing is based on the partials of the acoustic drum that, by way of genetic algorithms, populate, evolve and control sound synthesis timbre, tonality and rhythmical patterns. This presents a dynamic human-computer performance augmenting the acoustic instrument or as a mutating artificial agent. The paper seeks to map novel approaches to generative electro-acoustic music by suggesting a rapid variety and flow of fitness in both genetic algorithms and neural networks resembling modes of listening in free improvisation. The results span from prototype recordings, discussions of aesthetics and perspectives on further development, all anchored in the author's artistic practice.
There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the 'organic' and the 'synthetic' in electronic music.... more There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the 'organic' and the 'synthetic' in electronic music. In spite of immediate opposing qualities, they instill sensations of each other in practice: Acoustic sounds are subject to artificial mimicry while algorithmic music can present an imitation of human creativity. This presents a post-human aesthetic that questions if there are echoes of life in the machine. This paper investigates how sonic aesthetics in the borderlands between electronic avant-garde, pop and club music have changed after 2010. I approach these aesthetics through Brian Massumi's notions of 'semblance' and 'animateness' as abstract monikers to assist in the tracing of meta-aesthetic experiences of machine-life, genre, musical structure and the listening to known-unknown noise. The idea of a post-Internet society acts as framework for the intimate relation between pop and avant-garde in contemporary electronic music. This relation is a result of a sonic contextualization of late-capitalist society via the Internet. Finally I discuss how pop is the noise in the avant-garde and how the human in a post-Internet era presents itself through synthetic plasticity.
In this paper I will investigate the aesthetics of electronic sound synthesis, materiality and th... more In this paper I will investigate the aesthetics of electronic sound synthesis, materiality and the contemporary sublime in an analysis and discussion of interrelated phenomenological, philosophical and cultural considerations through chosen sound and music examples. I argue that the aesthetic experience of sonic timbres that seem unearthly to us resembles that of a transcendental sublime in the uncanny experience of the synthesis of both known and unknown sounds. Both experimental music and " switched-on " reinterpretations are addressed through explorations of sound in time, space and technology and I discuss if we as listeners are able to differentiate materiality from its superficial cognates when challenged by sonic doppelgängers. Concepts of sonorous perception are taken into account from a phenomenological point-of-reference with the purpose of discussing a Varèsian liberation of sound synthesis, arguing the transcendence of the boundaries in the physical world being possible through the aesthetics surrounding an unfathomable technological sublime in the art and infinite sea of possibilities of synthesizing electricity.
There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the ‘organic’ and the ‘synthetic’ in electronic music.... more There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the ‘organic’ and the ‘synthetic’ in electronic music. In spite of immediate opposing qualities, they instill sensations of each other in practice: Acoustic sounds are subject to artificial mimicry while algorithmic music can present an imitation of human creativity. This presents a post-human aesthetic that questions if there are echoes of life in the machine. This paper investigates how sonic aesthetics in the borderlands between electronic avant-garde, pop and club music have changed after 2010. I approach these aesthetics through Brian Massumi’s notions of ‘semblance’ and ‘animateness’ as abstract monikers to assist in the tracing of meta-aesthetic experiences of machine-life, genre, musical structure and the listening to known-unknown noise. The idea of a post-Internet society acts as framework for the intimate relation between pop and avantgarde in contemporary electronic music. This relation is a result of a sonic contextualization o...
This paper proposes an experimental approach to interactive evolutionary computation-assisted mus... more This paper proposes an experimental approach to interactive evolutionary computation-assisted musical improvisation through practice-based research and aesthetics discourse on evolutionary art. The harmonic series of a snare drum acts as source and fitness function for a real-time performance environment created in Max/MSP. The processing is based on the partials of the acoustic drum that, by way of genetic algorithms, populate, evolve and control sound synthesis timbre, tonality and rhythmical patterns. This presents a dynamic human-computer performance augmenting the acoustic instrument or as a mutating artificial agent. The paper seeks to map novel approaches to generative electro-acoustic music by suggesting a rapid variety and flow of fitness in both genetic algorithms and neural networks resembling modes of listening in free improvisation. The results span from prototype recordings, discussions of aesthetics and perspectives on further development, all anchored in the author's artistic practice.
There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the 'organic' and the 'synthetic' in electronic music.... more There exists a tenacious dichotomy between the 'organic' and the 'synthetic' in electronic music. In spite of immediate opposing qualities, they instill sensations of each other in practice: Acoustic sounds are subject to artificial mimicry while algorithmic music can present an imitation of human creativity. This presents a post-human aesthetic that questions if there are echoes of life in the machine. This paper investigates how sonic aesthetics in the borderlands between electronic avant-garde, pop and club music have changed after 2010. I approach these aesthetics through Brian Massumi's notions of 'semblance' and 'animateness' as abstract monikers to assist in the tracing of meta-aesthetic experiences of machine-life, genre, musical structure and the listening to known-unknown noise. The idea of a post-Internet society acts as framework for the intimate relation between pop and avant-garde in contemporary electronic music. This relation is a result of a sonic contextualization of late-capitalist society via the Internet. Finally I discuss how pop is the noise in the avant-garde and how the human in a post-Internet era presents itself through synthetic plasticity.
In this paper I will investigate the aesthetics of electronic sound synthesis, materiality and th... more In this paper I will investigate the aesthetics of electronic sound synthesis, materiality and the contemporary sublime in an analysis and discussion of interrelated phenomenological, philosophical and cultural considerations through chosen sound and music examples. I argue that the aesthetic experience of sonic timbres that seem unearthly to us resembles that of a transcendental sublime in the uncanny experience of the synthesis of both known and unknown sounds. Both experimental music and " switched-on " reinterpretations are addressed through explorations of sound in time, space and technology and I discuss if we as listeners are able to differentiate materiality from its superficial cognates when challenged by sonic doppelgängers. Concepts of sonorous perception are taken into account from a phenomenological point-of-reference with the purpose of discussing a Varèsian liberation of sound synthesis, arguing the transcendence of the boundaries in the physical world being possible through the aesthetics surrounding an unfathomable technological sublime in the art and infinite sea of possibilities of synthesizing electricity.
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Papers by Anders Bach