[ISEA2011] Panel: Jon Lei­decker – A Brief His­tory of Mu­si­cal Au­thor­ity

Panel Statement

Panel: Tyrannies of Participation

This pre­sen­ta­tion fo­cuses on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween record­ing, au­thor­ship and the idea of com­po­si­tion. Work­ing across three dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods, I ex­am­ine the ten­sions be­tween in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive mu­si­cal cre­ation and look at music as a liv­ing so­cial prac­tice as op­posed to an ob­ject. West­ern no­ta­tion im­mor­tal­ized in­di­vid­ual com­posers and cre­ated a mu­si­cal hi­er­ar­chy in which music be­came a less col­lab­o­ra­tive so­cial prac­tice and more an in­dus­trial fac­tory re­pro­duc­ing the com­poser’s prop­er­ties. In the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury, record­ing tech­nol­ogy chal­lenged the in­di­vid­ual com­poser’s au­thor­ity by grant­ing the same im­mor­tal­ity to im­pro­vis­ing mu­si­cians and other live per­form­ers. Since the year 2000, new tech­nolo­gies have en­abled col­lec­tive tools for col­lab­o­ra­tive com­po­si­tion (e.g., Rocket Music, Ind­aba). Though these tools promise dis­trib­uted au­thor­ship, they may also be re­in­forc­ing in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­den­cies in mu­si­cal cre­ation, com­po­si­tion, and recog­ni­tion.

  • Jon Lei­decker (aka Wob­bly) is a San Fran­cisco-based mu­si­cian, com­poser, and lec­turer on ex­per­i­men­tal elec­tronic music. He has re­leased works on Tiger­beat6, Il­le­gal Art, Alku, Ph­thalo, and oth­ers. He has been pro­duc­ing music since 1987 and on­go­ing stu­dio and live pro­jects in­volve col­lab­o­ra­tions with Peo­ple Like Us, Thomas Dimuzio, Kevin Blech­dom, Tim Perkis, Mat­mos and The Weath­er­man of Neg­a­tiv­land. He is also a mem­ber of the Chop­ping Chan­nel and Sagan. In 2002, Lei­decker was re­spon­si­ble for the first mon­tage and final cleanup of the Keep the Dog album, That House We Lived In (2003).

Full text (PDF) p. 1491-1495 [Different title!]