Page 25 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

14 The topography of composing work

define art as the result of collective action. Becker was referring not only to
the creative process, but also much more broadly to all the processes that are
triggered within the cultural sector by the production, publishing, marketing,
distribution, evaluation, reception, archiving and preservation of artistic per-
formances. He summed up art as the result of coordinated communities,
which he called “art worlds”. Our analysis will be guided by Becker’s
1
approach – which does have its critics – to avoid treating composers as
monadic individuals.
We also ascribe practical relevance to material and immaterial objects as
well, such as computers, instruments, musical notation and algorithms.
We therefore need an additional theoretical approach that enables us to
discuss the cultural knowledge that is embedded in these objects, as well as
the objects’ associated effectiveness within composition processes. Werner
Rammert’s concept of distributed agency is pertinent here. (Andrew Picker-
ing (1995: 21, 115; 2001: 174) has a similar concept, which he calls the
“dance of agency”, pointing to the intertwining of a human agent with
other human agents, material objects and symbolic systems.) According to
Rammert (2008: 65), “[a]ctions emerge out of complicated constellations
that are made of a hybrid mix of agencies like people, machines, and pro-
grams, and that are embedded in coherent frames of action. The analysis of
these hybrid constellations is better done with a gradual concept of
distributed agency than with the dual concept of human action and
machine’s operation”. It must be added that this web (human beings/media/
artefacts) is always anchored in social and institutional settings, which
influence agency and competences. This also helps to explain why we interpret
material and immaterial objects as being participants (see also Engeström
1999). However, as Robert Schmidt (2012: 69 – our translation) emphasises,

Material objects Parameters and resources
Musical instruments
Computers and technical Commission and instructions
apparatus Place of creation and performance
Writing materials Working and living conditions

The creative process of composing

Immaterial objects Peers and non-peers
Theoretical and aesthetic Audience
discourses and considerations Composers
Algorithms Instrumentalists
Systems of musical notation Sound engineers and
software developers

Figure 1.1 The topography of composing work