Sound Work: Composition as Critical Technical Practice

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Introduction: Music-Making and Storytelling
Jonathan Impett
Too Cool to Boogie: Craft, Culture, and Critique in Computing Alan F. Blackwell
Illusions of Form David Rosenboom
What to Ware? A Guide to Today’s Technological Wardrobe Nicolas Collins
Toward a Critical Musical Practice Ann Warde
The Composer’s Domain: Method and Material Nicholas Brown
Dissociation and Interference in Composers’ Stories about Music: The Renewal of Musical Discourse Jonathan Impett
Plates
The Impossibility of Material Foundations Scott McLaughlin
Thinking Liveness in Performance with Live Electronics: The Need for an Eco-systemic Notion of Agency Agostino Di Scipio
Experiment and Experience: Compositional Practice as Critique Lula Romero
Designing the Threnoscope or, How I Wrote One of My Pieces Thor Magnusson
A Few Reflections about Compositional Practice through a Personal Narrative Daniela Fantechi
Temporal Poetics as a Critical Technical Practice Karim Haddad
Collaborative Creation in Electroacoustic Music: Practices and Self-Awareness in the Work of Musical Assistants Marino Zuccheri, Alvise Vidolin, and Carl Faia Laura Zattra
Parlour Sounds: A Critical Compositional Process towards a Cyberfeminist Theory of Music Technology Patricia Alessandrini and Julie Zhu
Changing the Vocabulary of Creative Research: The Role of Networks, Risk, and Accountability in Transcending Technical Rationality Ambrose Field
Designing Audience–Work Relationships Marko Ciciliani
Online Materials Notes on Contributors Index

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The practices and perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of discourse in both expert and public spheres. Internet pioneer Philip Agre observed a discourse deficit in artificial intelligence research and proposed a critical technical practice, a single disciplinary field with one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique. A critical technical practice rethinks its own premises, re-evaluates its own methods, and reconsiders its own concepts as a routine part of its daily work. This volume considers the potential for critical technical practice in the evolving situation of composition across a wide range of current practices. In seeking to tell more honest, useful stories of composition, it hopes to contribute to a new discourse around the creation of music. Contributors: Patricia Alessandrini (Stanford University), Alan Blackwell (University of Cambridge), John Bowers (Newcastle University), Nicholas Brown (Trinity College Dublin), Nicolas Collins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Agostino di Scipio (Conservatorio de l'Aquila), Daniela Fantechi (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Ambrose Field (University of York), Karim Haddad (IRCAM, Paris), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Scott McClaughlin (University of Leeds), Lula Romero (Kunstuniversitat Graz), David Rosenboom (CalArts, Los Angeles), Ann M. Ward (Cornell University), Laura Zattra (IRCAM, Paris)

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