Public seminar: Alexander Rehding (Harvard University)
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'Subtractive Acts of Creation'
What if music wasn’t built up from tones but cut out of noise? Media theorist Friedrich Kittler argued that music was merely a subsection of the world of noise and imagined a music created purely by a process of filtering. This paper explores the technological and aesthetic conditions underlying music sculpted out of complex noise. Taking a broad approach to subtractive synthesis, which not only encompasses electronic music but also instrumental before the emergence of synthesizers, it asks to what extent such a music filtered out of noise might in fact exist – it does so in parts – and concludes by arguing that to understand noise better, music theory would do well to embrace the digital.
What if music wasn’t built up from tones but cut out of noise? Media theorist Friedrich Kittler argued that music was merely a subsection of the world of noise and imagined a music created purely by a process of filtering. This paper explores the technological and aesthetic conditions underlying music sculpted out of complex noise. Taking a broad approach to subtractive synthesis, which not only encompasses electronic music but also instrumental before the emergence of synthesizers, it asks to what extent such a music filtered out of noise might in fact exist – it does so in parts – and concludes by arguing that to understand noise better, music theory would do well to embrace the digital.
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Where is it happening?
Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, 30 Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6HT, United Kingdom
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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Host or PublisherFaculty of Music, University of Oxford
