Sentient spaces: composition as instrument-making

Thesis

This composition portfolio presents five original works composed between 2018 and 2021 which are interrelated by underlying methods and concepts that I describe as a circulation of instrument-making and speculative worldbuilding. The core research narrative explores the creation of hybrid acoustic and live electronic instruments that blur the boundaries between a musician’s physical body, their physical instrument, a digital instrument, the performance space, and the experience of the audience. Live electronics form the core of the portfolio’s compositional methodology, with the exception of the final work, The Holy Fool, which extends these ideas from electronics into an acoustic ensemble domain. Concepts and methods such as interactivity, mapping, proprioception, and homuncular flexibility help to explain the functioning of such systems, all built using Cycling 74’s Max. The type of instrumentality that I develop forms a continuum between an integrated performer–instrument–space unit and a more heterogeneous agent–environment paradigm, where human and electronic performers stand as distinct entities in a larger imaginary environment. The four electronic works in this portfolio explore different instances along this unified/heterogeneous spectrum. Of the latter category, I describe the instrument- space as a sentient space, which provides an aesthetic and technical framework throughout the portfolio and supports a broader objective that positions music as a means of disalienation from contemporary life through re-sensitising the listener to sound, space, and musical bodies. Throughout the portfolio, I return to core references that underline the speculative worldbuilding potential of music in relation to critical spatial and technological practices in art and academia, namely: the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves, Hito Steyerl’s essays on technology in the arts, and the Situationists’ practices of psychogeography. Furthermore, the portfolio draws on concepts and methods explored in a partner musicological dissertation, which elucidates Luigi Nono’s live electronic turn and the Experimentalstudio Freiburg in the 1980s with regard to recent literature in organology, anthropology, and electronic music practices.

Authors: Moroz, N

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-av0axakmv
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: organology; instruments; electronic music; interactivity; composition
• Subjects: Music