Page 46 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

The topography of composing work 35

by a sensory and experimental approach in the spirit of the musical avant-
garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Hearing has a monitoring function in this
process. Because of composers’ years of training and experience in making
music and composing, their ability to make aesthetic judgements resides in
their hearing, which is equipped with embodied knowledge. This allows them
to gauge “if something actually works” (Essl).

1.3.2 Computers and technical apparatuses
Art music uses computers in a variety of ways. Depending on the software,
a computer can serve as a writing tool; as a tool during the composition
process (computer-aided composition); as a tool for mixing and trans-
forming sounds; and as an instrument that generates sounds. Before dis-
cussing these manifold uses, we would like to clarify the following
analytical issue: to what extent can a computer be seen as a material
object? A computer consists, on the one hand, of hardware. On the other
hand, the operational core of every computer is its software (operating
systems and applications). Since hardware and software are normally so
closely bound up with one another that every digital computing perfor-
mance has a physical translation (written notes or generated sounds),
computers have a hybrid status. We will consider computers to be, at one
and the same time, material and immaterial objects, and will therefore
discuss algorithms as cognitive tools in the section on immaterial objects.
For just over two decades, affordable powerful computers have been capable
of operating fast enough to “immediately generate an audible result, which
means you can work very intuitively”, according to Karlheinz Essl. Because
composers of electronic-acoustic music can interact with their computer in
real time, the computer is seen not just as a “machine that generates structures
of some kind or another, but it basically becomes an instrument you can
play” (Essl). The possibility of musical improvisation – partly in combination
with programmed sequences, so-called “pre-sets”– ultimately makes the
computer a fully-fledged instrument. This also delivers electro-acoustic com-
positions from a certain performative quality and makes it possible to interpret
them anew at each playing. Computers, like musical instruments, can thus be
seen as partners in an interaction (see also Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986; Suchman
2007; Folkestad 2012). This interaction presupposes explicit knowledge in the
field of software programming as well as technical know-how. It also requires
kinaesthetic skills, such as dexterity and auditory competence, which are
particularly fruitful during performances since computers are often wired to
mixers, amplifiers and other apparatuses necessary for carrying out certain
operations. Operating these apparatuses leads us back to the concept of
affordance introduced at the beginning of this section. Mixers are operated by
hand – trivial though this might sound – and that means that their various
attachments (such as controls and buttons as well as their layout) have to be
user-friendly. For performances of his piece “Herbecks Versprechen”,