The Cultural Role and Communicative Properties of Scientifically Derived Compositional Theories

Abstract

The role of science in the processes of musical creation is justifiable as a method of formalizing knowledge used for expressive purposes. The understanding of musical phenomena, however, should not be reduced to cognitive aspects or entrusted to a purely descriptive iteration; certain creative functions of musical composition go beyond the many degrees of control offered by the technologies of knowledge. The necessity of comparison with the cultural orientation of an audience, sometimes considered secondary by some, must remain integral. Our interest in qualitatively new creative and intellectual acts must not abandon the dialectical character of musical communication, which involves, among other things, a shared linguistic universe.

Observations about Music and Decentralized Environments

“…Neverth eless, likeni ng art to a "meth od of knowledge" conjures up the idea of frequent cognitive "resetting," destined to destabilize artistic communication codes. Thus, according to a trend which theorizes that the loss of contact between communication subjects is favorable to research about new meaning, new artistic meanings are often proposed without considering the risks of possible splits on both communicative and cognitive layers [17]. On the Net, the differentiation between forms of time, accumulation of performances, and presence of decentralized configurations of subjectivity, upset not only the ideas of object and musical process but also the subjective point of view from which those ideas have been drawn [18].…”

Internet2 and Global Electroacoustic Music: Navigating a decision space of production, relationships and languages

“…While the literature on Internet2 music increasingly considers the technical and social aspects of getting things done, coverage of sonic languages in tandem is often neglected because ‘netspace’ is usually considered to be a medium. From a philosophical perspective, Tanzi (1999: 106) provides a counterpoint to a largely production view when discussing electroacoustic music generally, noting that, for innovations to be validated, the grammar constituted by the phenomenological rules of musical communication needs to be respected.…”

Information technology and communication of musical experience: categories, conflicts and intersections

“…As a consequence, some composers were in a position to experiment with systems and applications offering completely new compositional approaches. This had repercussions on the fruitional path of the first computer music works, since they were destined to audiences seldom stimulated to express assessments regarding the communicative value of such innovative contents (Tanzi 1999). Besides, the complete freedom in locating within s/w program almost all of the formal aspects of a musical composition often gave rise to musical works planned without need of public confirmation.…”