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!]