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The Emergence of an Ecstatic-materialist Perspective as a Cross-genre Tendency in Experimental Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2017

Riccardo Wanke*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music – CESEM, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Av. de Berna, 26 C, 1069-061 Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

This article proposes a perspective on certain practices within experimental music based on a particular understanding of sonic materialism. By tracing correlations and marking divergences between post-spectralism, minimalism, electroacoustic music, glitch and IDM’s offshoots, this article reflects on sound-in-itself, the conception of space and time in music, poietics, perceptual and cultural factors, and suggests that there is a particular understanding of sonic materialism – which I term ecstatic-materialism – that is rooted in a synthesis of perception, theory and embodied actions.

This perspective explores a new expressivity of sound in which the sound itself is the point of convergence for creative impulses and perceptual motives, sound being the common territory between composer and listener. By developing the idea of an ecstatic-sonic-materialism, various works across different genres can be brought together according to this mutual convergence on sound that embodies acoustic properties, intimate traces, external and corporeal experiences.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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