header

Saggi per la call-sezione sottoposta a peer review

Nr. 8 (2024): Suono: la dimensione sonora del quotidiano tra arti visive, macchine, musica elettronica. Prospettive teoriche, pratiche e culturali (Vol. 2)

Deconstruct To Reconstruct. Logic Of Assemblage and Aesthetic of Metamorphosis in Electronic Dance Music

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/connessioni/26645
Eingereicht
Oktober 3, 2024
Veröffentlicht
Dezember 31, 2024

Abstract

Electronic music can arguably be considered the genre that has most effectively encapsulated and articulated human relationships with noise, machines and technology, embodying many technology-oriented concepts. The 21st century has brought about a post-condition that has had an impact on popular electronic music, with the rise of what has been labelled “deconstructed club”, “post-club”, and “conceptronica”. This paper presents a critique of the aforementioned terms, arguing that electronic dance music has consistently employed deconstructive and decontextualizing strategies in relation to pre-existent genres, elements, and expressive codes. Indeed, it is argued that a logic of assemblage and an aesthetic of metamorphosis are intrinsic to popular electronic music, given its technological and recombinant essence. If electronic dance music is based on avantgardist techniques such as assemblage and aesthetic détournement, it may be conceived, then, as an expression of popular avantgarde or popular modernism. Moreover, conceptual underpinnings may be found in popular electronic music since its inception. This paper, therefore, aims to reframe the analysis and discourses on popular electronic music by considering its deconstructive and conceptual aspects, and proposes that the most interesting facets of its recent developments may, in fact, lie elsewhere.

Literaturhinweise

  1. Attimonelli C., Techno: Ritmi Afrofuturisti, Meltemi, Roma 2008.
  2. B.A. Attias, A. Gavanas, H.C. Rietveld (eds), DJ Culture in the Mix. Power, Technology, and Social Change in Electronic Dance Music, Bloomsbury, New York-London 2013.
  3. Barthes R., The Death of The Author in R. Barthes, Image Music Text, FontanaPress, Lon-don 1977, pp. 142-148.
  4. Bolter J.D., The Digital Plenitude. The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media, MIT Press, Cambridge-London 2019.
  5. Born G., Haworth C., From Microsound to Vaporwave. Internet-Mediated Musics, Online Methods, and Genre, 2018, in «Music & Letters» Vol. 98 No. 4, 2018, pp. 601-647.
  6. Butler M., Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2006.
  7. Butler M., “Everybody Needs a 303 Everybody Loves a Filter”. Electronic Dance Music and the Aesthetics of Obsolescence, in P. Messaris, L. Humphreys (eds.), Digital Media. Transformations in Human Communication, Peter Lang, New York 2006, pp. 111-118.
  8. Cascone K., The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music, in «Computer Music Journal», 24(4), 2000, pp. 12–18.
  9. Cramer F., What is Post-Digital?, in «ASPRJA», vol.3 num.1, 2014, pp. 10-24.
  10. Deleuze G., Guattari F., A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis-London 1987.
  11. DeNora T., Music in Everyday Life, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004.
  12. Eshun K., More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures In Sonic Fiction, Quartet Books, London 1998.
  13. Fabbri F., How Genres Are Born, Change, Die: Conventions, Communities and Diachronic Processes, in S. Hawkins (ed.), Critical Musicological Reflections, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2012, pp. 179-191.
  14. Fisher M., What Is Hauntology?, in «Film Quarterly», 66(1), 2012, pp. 16–24.
  15. Fisher M., Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Zero Books, London 2014.
  16. Gilroy P., The Black Atlantic. Modernity And Double Consciousness, Verso, London 1993.
  17. Goodman S., Sonic Warfare. Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, MIT Press, Cambridge-London 2009.
  18. Graham, S., (Un)Popular Avant-Gardes: Underground Popular Music and the Avant-Garde, in «Perspectives of New Music», vol. 48, no. 2, 2010, pp. 5–20.
  19. Graham S., Modernism for and of the masses? On popular modernisms, in B. Heile, C. Wil-son (eds), The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music, 2018, pp. 239-257.
  20. Haraway D., A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism for the 1980s, in «Socialist Review», 15(2), 1985, pp. 65–107.
  21. Harper A., Dux Content: Life Style and The New Hi-Tech Underground, in T. Beyer e T. Burkhalter (eds), Seismographic Sounds - Visions of a New World. Norient, Bern 2016, pp. 478-483.
  22. Hemment D., Affect and Individuation in Popular Electronic Music. In I. Buchanan & M. Swi-boda (Eds.), Deleuze and Music, Edinburgh University Press 2004, pp. 76–94.
  23. Holt F., Genre in Popular Music, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007.
  24. Holmes T., Electronic and Experimental Music. Technology, Music, and Culture, Routledge, New York-London 2008.
  25. Jasen P.C., Low End Theory. Bass, Bodies and the Materiality of Sonic Experience, Blooms-bury, London 2016.
  26. Krauss R., A Voyage on the North Sea. Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition, Thames & Hudson, New York 1999.
  27. Malafouris L., How Things Shape the Mind. A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge-London, MIT Press 2013.
  28. Manovich L., Post-Media Aesthetics, 2001 https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/post-media-aesthetics (accessed 15 December 2024).
  29. McHugh G., Post Internet. Notes on the Internet and Art, Link Editions, Brescia 2019.
  30. McLeod K., Genres, Subgenres, Sub-Subgenres and More: Musical and Social Differentiation Within Electronic/Dance Music Communities, in «Journal of Popular Music Studies» 13, 2001, pp. 59-75.
  31. McLuhan M., Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, MIT Press, Cambridge-London 1994.
  32. Olson M., Postinternet. Art after the Internet, 2011, https://www.academia.edu/26348232/POSTINTERNET_Art_After_the_Internet (ac-cessed 15 December 2024).
  33. Paci Dalò R., Quinz E. (eds), Millesuoni. Deleuze, Guattari e la Musica Elettronica, Cronopio, Napoli 2006.
  34. Reynolds S., Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, Faber & Faber, London 2013.
  35. Reynolds S., Diefenbach K., Technodeleuze and Mille Plateaux. Achim Szepanski’s Inter-views (1994-1996), Everything Else 2017.
  36. Russolo L. The Art of Noises, Pendragon Press, New York 1986.
  37. Schulze H., Sonic Fiction, Bloomsbury, New York-London 2020.
  38. Steinskog E., Afrofuturism and Black Sound Studies. Culture, Technology, and Things to Come, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2018.
  39. Szepanski A., A Mille Plateaux manifesto, in «Organised Sound», 6(3), 2001, pp. 225-228.
  40. Toffler A., Future Shock, Bantam, New York 1970.
  41. Toop, D., Ocean of sound : ambient sound and radical listening in the age of communication, Serpent’s Tail, London 2018.
  42. Veal, M.E., Dub. Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, Wesleyan Universi-ty Press, Middletown 2007.
  43. Weibel P., The Post-Medial Condition, in «ArteContexto. Art, Culture, New Media» n. 6, 2005, pp. 11-15.