Music in a Mediatized Modernity: Intermedia Counterpoint and Posthuman Performance

The tools of computer art are posthuman tools: they either co-opt and transform existing material or use algorithmic automation to generate new material. In either case, they replace the artist in his or her traditional creative role. Therefore, computer art that manifests its meaning or aesthetic value in the same places as traditional art cannot be any more than poor copies or simulations. It is essential for artists working in computerized media to recognize that the artist is not being replaced by technology. Instead, technological developments are shifting the human element of communications including art into new territory. This can be demonstrated in several of my musical and intermedia compositions that embrace the new artifacts emerging from computer art as the voice of posthuman agents in the works and in turn use them to highlight the humanity manifest in them in new ways. In these works, the effects of mediation by computers on live-performed events are used to create structure through the classic musical technique of imitative counterpoint.

Music in a Mediatized Modernity: Intermedia Counterpoint and Posthuman Performance Conference Paper