On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity

TLDR

Music mediation has historically taken diverse forms that cohere into assemblages, and the article highlights the need to monitor shifts in dominant musical assemblages, with mediation, creativity, and negotiation of difference as key motifs. The article aims to develop a theoretical analysis of music and mediation drawing on Adorno, DeNora, and Hennion. The authors employ Alfred Gell’s anthropology of art to frame mediation through music’s social, technological, and temporal dimensions, then use these tools to conceptualize twentieth‑century shifts in musical creativity, compare the work concept with jazz and improvised electronic music, and analyze three contemporary digital experiments illustrating provisional work and social, distributed, and relayed creativity.

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical analysis of music and mediation, building on the work of Theodor Adorno, Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion. It begins by suggesting that Lydia Goehr’s account of the work concept requires such a perspective. Drawing on Alfred Gell’s anthropology of art, the article outlines an approach to mediation that incorporates understandings of music’s social, technological and temporal dimensions. It suggests that music’s mediations have taken a number of historical forms, which cohere into assemblages, and that we should be alert to shifts in the dominant forms of musical assemblage. In the latter part of the article, these tools are used to conceptualize changing forms of musical creativity that emerged over the twentieth century. A comparison is made between the work concept and jazz and improvised electronic musics. Three contemporary digital music experiments are discussed in detail, demonstrating the concepts of the provisional work and of social, distributed and relayed creativity. Throughout, key motifs are mediation, creativity, and the negotiation of difference.