Emerging Materiality: Reflections on Creative Use of Software in Electronic Music Composition

Abstract

The authors examine how materiality emerges from complex chains of mediation in creative software use. The primarily theoretical argument is inspired and illustrated by interviews with two composers of electronic music. The authors argue that computer mediated activity should not primarily be understood in terms of simple mediation, but rather as chains of complex mediation in which the dominant form of representation is metonymy rather than metaphor.