Tactility, Traces and Codes: Reassessing timbre in electronic media

Abstract

This article starts by arguing that in diverse approaches to electronically produced sound in music of recent times a shift in focus has occurred, from the creation of novel sounds to the manipulation of sound materials inherent in a culture of electric and electronic devices of sound production.Within these practices, the use of lo-fi devices, circuit-bending, cracked electronics and a resurfacing of older technologies is coupled with digital technology in a process which emphasises the devices characteristic modes of sound production and artefacts. Electronic sound becomes regarded as embedded on a reservoir of qualities, memories and registers of technologies that inhabit our sound environment.From this starting point our apprehension of technologically produced sound is reassessed, constituted as the crossing of particular conditions of production and reception, cultural traces and codes inherent in the practices and characteristics of media.This perspective lays the ground for a compositional approach that exposes and problematises the interaction of these multiple conditions.