Jacob Eckhardt (1st-year master’s)
On Turntable Musics: Pasts & Present
~QTaking part in the (somewhat) recent resurgence of turntable musics within experimental music discourse, this project undertakes an exploration of turntablism as a discipline deeply entwined with the materiality of its instrument—the turntable. This perspective opens up broader questions about the ph ysicality of sound-reproducing technologies, their malleability, and how these aspects relate to notions of noise, tactility, and the dual role of the turntable as both an instrument and a mediator of pre-recorded material. The project also aims to address the divisions between “experimental” and “popular” musics, and how these segregations permeate the turntablist discipline both historically (in how its history is told), artistically (in the segregation of techniques between these fields), and culturally (in how the discipline is generally perceived).
These theoretical concerns inform and run in tandem with an experimental music practice that employs instrument preparations to explore alternative methods of reading the sound content inscribed on vinyl discs, with these techniques being presented in a performance setting, though other formats will also be explored.
Ivan Kalashnik (1st-year master’s)
Interfacing Reality Beyond Auditory Perception
Large-scale computational research in Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA), focused on the perceptual and cognitive principles of auditory processing, indicates that the human auditory perception system is inherently fragile due to both physical and cognitive limitations. This mirrors insights from various recent philosophical movements influenced by anti-correlationist thought, which argue that human interpretations of reality lag behind actual events. These perceptual limitations bias any attempt to interface with the reality of sound, making speculation unavoidable.
According to Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), both human and non-human objects possess independent existence and agency, and should be studied in their own (speculative) right. At this point, aesthetics is no longer only about human-centred sensory experience but also about acknowledging the complex interplay between the perception, relation, and materiality of sound objects. This framework emphasises a shift from seeking comprehensive control of the auditory experience to engaging in a more interactive, speculative mode of thinking in relation to sound. Such an approach focuses on the exploration of new dimensions of aesthetics that align with the speculative reconfiguration of human <> nonhuman interactions, positioning sound as an active agent in the broader ontological landscape.
The proposed project aims to explore the potential ways of interfacing reality beyond auditory perception, offering access to the transient phenomena shaped by the cognitive, spatial, and temporal locality implied by a human body. I intend to develop a digital audio synthesis environment that functions as a mediator, offering access to both the evident and hidden properties of sound actants, as well as the complex emergence of auditory scenes.
Referring to ASA, one can assume that the human experience of auditory information is processed through principles of segmentation, integration, and segregation—coincidentally fundamental in Pulsar Synthesis (PS), a variation of granular synthesis described by Curtis Roads.[1] A PS-oriented approach could serve as the basis for an interface, offering precise control over various time-span domains of listening and sound composition and unlocking new dimensions for digital audio synthesis within the framework of object-oriented aesthetics and philosophical inquiry.
[1] Roads, Curtis. (2001). Introduction to pulsar synthesis. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 109. 2401-2401.
Isul Kim (1st-year master’s)
Process as Methodology in Artistic Practice
In practice, process encompasses the body of work in its developmental stages. Contemporary art and sound worlds have expanded the definition into theoretical domains by approaching it as a form-bearing concept; scenes, narratives, and durational pieces that present its unfolding (as the work itself) are some examples. Process, as it is understood in process philosophy, focuses on change as the fundamental aspect of reality and marks pivotal points where an idea can take on new forms as critical junctures for analysis. At these points—spontaneous concentrations of activity, accidents, coincidences, or unintended obstacles—one is given the chance to reassess the work and engage in its transformation into another state. It can be hypothesised that these situations provide spaces for imagination where intuition can be examined for further intuitive decisions.
This research aims to detach from outcome expectations and redirect attention to the artistic process, thereby developing a conscious relationship with my own method of practice—it is about intuition, non-fixation, change, and one’s involvement with the process of discovery. Through a combination of art theory and sound-making, with a critical cultural approach to the context of a work’s ideation, the research will make personal interpretations and create new meanings around the theme of process, while engaging in my own process in practice. Undoubtedly, feedback becomes a sound metaphor for this research, along with sonic situations representing critical junctures of change. The malleability of these situations will be investigated through speaker technologies, multichannel configurations, and spatial mixing to create immersive spaces and augmentations of spatial reality.
To understand the plurality of perspectives and methodologies explored around this topic, the research will analyse a handful of time-based works where process plays a thematic role and present this in written form. To further ground the theoretical component, I will create a body of electroacoustic compositions and mixed media assemblages for performance and installation, while documenting its development.
Axel Kolb (1st-year master’s)
Rupture as Relation
Rupture presents an opening, a crack, a rift, a crevice from which something can emerge. It delineates parts and projects its surface onto the separating elements; the surface of one is negatively mapped onto the other. Rupture becomes the common denominator between partitions. It is constantly shaped by what it shapes, and assumes the superficial structure of an element at the very moment it produces it. It is through Rupture that what is separated stays or becomes related. Reversing a common notion of Rupture – one that sees it only as a symptom of their host – leads to a reading of Fissures, Crevices, Cracks, Tears, Shears, Fractures and Ruptures as agents of the in-between.
My thesis presents Rupture as causal for the (in)differentiation of perceptual elements in the flux of associative aural perception. In my research, I translate the event of Rupture to the perception and cognition of sound by looking at Ruptures and Fissures in various fields. These include, but are not limited to, phenomenology, fiction, acousmatic theory, metaphorology, fracture mechanics, topology, tectonics, and philosophies of perception. Ruptures become prevalent as these fields are subverted through a fictionalised reading that de- and re-contextualises the topics discussed.
This approach traces the hole-linings created by Ruptures and Cracks through the back-feeding processes of listening and composing, reading and writing, perceiving and interpreting. Questioning the inferential prescriptions of relational coherence, I present these processes as being inherently spatiotemporal and delineated by Rupture.
Lawrence Mc Guire (1st-year master’s)
Poetics of Synthetic Vocality
This project proposes an investigation into vocality through a simultaneous exposition of natural and synthetic voice, where synthetic voice is theorized as a way of knowing, or gathering a vocal understanding (e.g., acoustemology). The synthetic voice will be used as a vehicle for furthering an experiential understanding of what does not fit within a vocal identity, pattern, or structure. How can the perception of a vocal sound be enriched through techniques of juxta- and superposition with a synthetic voice?
Drawing inspiration from sound poetry both before and after the Second World War (e.g., De Stijl, Ultra-Lettrism, Concrete poetry ), I will explore approaches to structuring units of language, using voice either as an endpoint or a departure point. Where, in the sonic abstraction and reinterpretation of voice, I will rely on ambiguity as a key perceptual element to enhance the interpretative qualities of voice. I will experiment with compositional techniques to attain these qualities, particularly in forming vocal hybrids from two vocal identities and interpolation between the two, inspired by the Spectralists and contextualized by the idea of perceptual fusion of vocal identities. Synthesized voice will be utilized to both align with and deviate from familiar vocal aspects, such as the envelope of a speech signal, timbre, or intonation pattern. Meaning, I would like to use the ‘deviating’ voice as a sensory tool to probe the speech processing system and use the perceptual and acoustic distinctions and commonalities with natural voice as acoustemological clues to gain a deeper understanding of what is vocal; to pose questions and provide speculative answers regarding vocal timbre, articulation, and rhythm and speech across various time scales and perceptual dimensions.
Roc Montoriol (1st-year master’s)
Sessile Auralities
Plants are often regarded as silent, though vegetal existence engages with sounds in manifold, and ubiquitous ways. Vibrating in step with their ecophysiological rhythms, or resonating with the sounds of a zillion earthlings, they unfurl myriad forms of sounding and listening in place with many sorts of partners—human and nonhuman alike. What can their fields of sonic activity tell us about their symbiotic modes of living and dying, emplaced with others? What possible worldings, and transformative listening practices could arise when adopting a vegetal perspective? To listen to and with the vegetal may help us ask pertinent questions about the act of listening, and rethink meaningful ways to render the earthbound audible.
Noticing the sounds, and energetics of multiple configurations of place across the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, I will tune my ears to vegetal auralities through various means of recording, listening, and performative approaches. Informed by methods in plant bioacoustics, and biotremology, I will craft and utilize a range of microphones, and vibration transducers in different field recording strategies, involving in-site listening performances, and aural improvisations. My research-practice will be further addressed in the form of sound performances, collective listenings, and writings.
Drawing from emerging fields of research in the biological sciences, together with listening practices within the artistic domain, this project considers how vegetal vibrations participate in geo-biological entwinements between humans, nonhumans, and places; and it proposes, with plants, a practice of listening otherwise.
Jun Ryu (1st-year master’s)
Free Improvisation as a Composing Interface in Electronic Music
What makes a live performance truly distinctive is the uniqueness of its specific characteristics in time and space. It is the interaction between all elements present in the situation; performers, audience, ‘atmosphere’ (including temperature and humidity), and temporal aspects. Under this premise, my study begins with a focus on the field of free improvisation, which is likely the most practical and direct method for understanding the parameters which affect live performance.
The essence of free improvisation is to achieve diverse creative expressions through the real-time interactions between all individual subjects and objects. For this reason, it acts as a mirror of the performance situation. With this in mind, within the field of improvisation, composition can be considered as the act of creating an interface that could leads to certain situations, regardless of whether specific situations are intended or not. This includes not only instructions given to the subjects but also the creation of diverse spatiotemporal situations and atmospheres. In this context, it is possible to consider the situation itself as a instrumental interface, allowing not only the subjects but also the elements that influence them to be incorporated into the act of composition.
This research takes this premise as its foundation, exploring and experimenting with the idea of incorporating various elements of the performance situation as an interface for improvisation, aiming to engage more broadly with the context of live performances. Aesthetically, improvisation can be interpreted as each subject’s life attitude in response to the situation, raising questions about how far unexpected musical moments can be discovered and extrapolated. Furthermore, this research challenges the power dynamics between means and ends, as well as between processes and results, by exploring and expanding the possibilities of live performance, thus broadening the range of performance art forms within the field of electro-acoustic music.
Max Frimout (2nd-year master’s)
Performance in Synthesised Space
The aim of my research is to use mobile technology as a lens to examine the performance of electronic sounds. This involves understanding how mobile technology influences the performance itself, the sequence of events before and after the performance, the reasons for joining the performance versus broadcasting it, and the dynamic between performer and spectator.
This investigation begins by examining the visual and auditory aspects of contemporary consumer electronics, characterised by the individualisation of perceived parameters of physical space, to understand the impact of technologically mediated personal spaces on spatial perception. Theoretical frameworks such as Richard Schechner’s Performance Theory and Michael Bull’s concept of prismatic approaches will be applied, expanding on Bull’s investigations into how personal audio technologies like the Walkman and iPod have evolved to influence urban behaviour.
Methods of inquiry into these virtual spaces involve creating tools with them. Empirical work includes examining our own relationship to these technologies and observing the relationships others have with them. For some of these technologies, they are too new to conduct traditional investigations. In such cases, alternative approaches include creating with them, studying the technologies themselves by examining developer documentation, and taking an anthropological approach to reading patents.
Clara de Asís Geraldia Gallardo (2nd-year master’s)
Sound presences: space, materiality, and states of being
There is something ungraspable in the experience of remembrance. When recalling a memory spontaneously, multiple temporalities seem to align, opening up a particular region that closes itself away as soon as we attempt to get a hold of it.
The precise conditions that might trigger one’s memories are as countless as the memories themselves, but their mechanism has been widely associated with space across the centuries. Material and spatial configurations can induce particular levels of attention, and make distinct specific elements within a frame. Space can be understood in multiple ways. When considered from an acoustic standpoint, space is a continuum where sound waves spread. Moreover, space is also a perceptual product drawn from the relations between elements in a whole.
In my research, I will explore forms of sound agency that reveal the relation between the production of space, material conditions, and regions of subjectivity, where sound is understood as a presence in a perceptual space that can be discerned by tactics of attention. I will focus on filter and resonance as both conceptual and perceptible premises to examine specific materialities and relational possibilities of sounding matter, and implement those premises in a composition. Ultimately, my purpose is to find meaningful ways to link space, materiality, and modalities of subjectivity in sound-based practices and composition, thereby creating the opportunity to treat this interrelation as a form-bearing element.
Flurina Mia Häberli (2nd-year master’s)
The soundscapes of underwater anthropogenic noise pollution as foundation for compositions and live performances
Noise pollution in our environment on land is known, understood, and abated through applicable existing ordinances. Unfortunately, this is not the case with respect to our underwater environment. The act of regulating anthropogenic noise pollution in the oceans is much more difficult due to the physical propagation of underwater sound. Human-made underwater sounds originate from many sources, including shipping, seismatic activities from oil and gas exploration, military activities, pile driving during construction of offshore windfarms, and deep-sea mining. Marine mammals use hearing as primary sense to detect predators or prey, orientation and to communicate with cospecies. There is an overlap in the frequency range in which marine life can hear/produce sound and anthropogenic sound; as a consequence, marine life gets interrupted. The increasing noise level can negatively affect marine life and their ecosystems in complex ways, including through acute, chronic, and cumulative effects.
This research project will deal with the soundscape of underwater anthropogenic noise pollution as a foundation for compositions and live performances. By exploring ways to work with this sound material and incorporate it into my practice, I aim to create more awareness about noise pollution. How does the increasing anthropogenic noise pollution influence the biggest ecosystem of our world, the oceans? What are the possibilities to decrease anthropogenic noise? Can decreasing noise levels help counteract the ongoing species extinction due to climate crisis? How can I put those questions and facts into artistic musical work?
The theoretical part of my master’s thesis is subdivided into four topics: research of hydrosphere acoustics, composition techniques, field recordings, and research of different types of hydrophones. For example, regarding composition techniques: how can I include data of ocean noise maps in a composition or use it as a tool to create structures for following pieces? The practical part of my master‘s project is subdivided into five topics: collecting, recording, recreating, composing, and performing.
Nicolás Kliwadenko (2nd-year master’s)
Formalised Interactions as Musical Agents
A systemic approach to improvisation and composition involves considering the interconnections and interdependencies among various musical elements. The emphasis is on prioritising interactions over prescribing precise sound presentations. This approach offers a way to evaluate the composition’s resilience in its most radical aspects while allowing for unforeseen musical situations that challenge initial definitions. In improvisation, it ensures that musicians maintain their creative freedom while simultaneously reducing musical redundancy and promoting environments conducive to exploratory musical expressions.
The primary aim of this research project is to create scores and electronic musical pieces primarily based on a series of interaction definitions. To achieve this goal, improvisational scores will be used, striking a balance between localised decisions tailored to specific contexts and predetermined structural elements. These improvisational scores will form the basis for analysing and subsequently formalising specific characteristics inherent in the interactions between musicians and their environment. It is hoped that by establishing measurable definitions for these decisions in their respective contexts, it will facilitate an exploration of the consequences that arise from systematic use during the composition process.
One aspect of this project involves exploring compositional strategies inspired by information theory in search of radical organisational musical behaviours. Through the use of limited interaction rules, concise micro-compositions can be generated, potentially serving as scores for chamber ensembles, instructions for improvising musicians, or computer-generated sound fragments. When integrated into a larger musical piece, the resulting work is expected to embody distinctive characteristics not found within the individual micro-compositions.
Agita Reke (2nd-year master’s)
New forms of instructing the musician during live performance
My research project aims to contribute to the broader discourse surrounding the intersection of composition and live performance in the electroacoustic music field. I want to explore communication between the composer and musician during a live performance by creating a personalized system to instruct a musician. My aim is to find an alternative method for the score. I would like to research new forms of instructions for a musician, which can include light, specific sound materials, or other materials, that are not written on paper.
Expressing musical ideas in a score and translating them to a musician can be challenging in terms of reaching the composer’s expectations. It’s important for me that a musician can feel free on the stage, focusing on music and less on score material, but at the same time, I have certain expectations and requirements that need to be fulfilled. Real-time instructions could be a link between those two aspects. For instance, flow is taken from improvised music, but the structural decisions from the compositional aspect. My research questions would be: how music could be shaped by changing the way of instructing musicians? How would that influence the music flow?
Because of my intuitive nature, I would prefer a system that allows me to make these decisions live. For example, I would like to send a musician particular signals during the performance, specific rhythmical patterns, or triggers, without fixing those materials in a perfect timing in score. The outcome will be to explore these innovative approaches to instruction while maintaining my style, expression, and structural thinking, and finally to perform by processing and creating sound events in real time.
Otis Thomet (2nd-year master’s)
A non-peripheral musical body: Embodied musical knowledge in electroacoustic improvisation
“musical improvisation is ineluctably embodied; its creative and political force manifest through sounds and gestures that are traces of experience at once relational and contextual” (Gillian Siddal and Ellen Waterman, Negotiated moments improvisation, sound and subjectivity).
Inviting an understanding of the body as an emergent relational happening, this research will be guided by the sensing and improvising body. Based on this notion I want to pose the questions:
Is the body and the way we iterate these traces, gestures, and repertoires an archive of engaging with sound?
How does this archive structure our musical decision-making?
What are methods to complicate, disrupt, and utilise this archive in a musically meaningful manner?
A starting point for this inquiry will be a series of workshops that I facilitated titled “sonic acts of noticing.” Attempting to liberate listening and sounding from the indoors and its acoustic and cultural conventions, these workshops took place in contrasting environments such as a dense forest and the relatively open Furka-Pass above the tree line. Specialised microphones and listening stations provided amplified access to sonic occurrences in the given environment. This setup also served as an amplification/attention feedback loop between the participants themselves and the surroundings. Guided by listening scores, the participants were invited to tune into registers of simultaneity, plurality, and polyphony and to utilise their voice to direct attention to, amplify, mimic, sound out, and enter a sonic correspondence with each other and the nature present.
Using the recordings of these workshops as a oral-electronic score that activates amplification/attention feedback loops mimicking the workshops setups in ways that bring forward the emergent behavioural properties of improvising subjects, and working with sound as a physical phenomenon that registers in our bodies “in ways that confound the assumed discreteness of exterior and interior space,” as Julie Dawn Smith writes in Diva Dogs: Sounding Women Improvising, as well as acknowledging the body’s presence as necessity and part of the production circuits of electroacoustic music, I will extend the idea of a relational sensorimotor loop between the body and the contextual into the studio to research the areas of knowledge afforded by human embodiment as well as cultural and historic constraints that are specific to improvising in an electro-acoustic setting.
Cansu Ülker (2nd-year master’s)
States, Events, Transformations: A Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Approach to Acousmatic Composition
The concept of transformations is fundamental to understanding and analyzing the behavior of dynamic systems over time. Ecosystems, chemical reactions, and human evolution all bear this dynamicity and change in between states of existence. Dynamical nonlinear systems theory is a framework that is commonly applied to complex systems to understand and observe the changes occurring in these states over time, which can be interpreted as a continuous sequence of transformations. Change occurs as the product of multileveled interactions between the various elements constituting these systems.
The transformation of sound has been a central method and practice in the composition of electronic music. It has been used as a mere method to generate a vast number of variations from a starting source or as an approach to macrocomposition based on the timbral development from one sound texture to another. Certainly, transformations cannot act alone in the process that leads to the compositional outcome. The network of interrelations between sound material, transformation processes, and interaction of the composer with this system constitute the evolution of the whole and its musical product. The dynamic nature of this network causes the compositional process to become a living being which is becoming.
This is a practice-led research project that aims to create a compositional framework and a computer program for acousmatic music by utilizing transformations in nonlinear dynamic systems as an inspiration and a model for discovering new possibilities in micro/macrocompositional processes. It will implement a compositional system consisting of a limited set of sound material and their transformations from one state to another. The states of sound will be analyzed, transformed, and mapped to control the behavior of the system on different operating levels. The temporal evolution of the system behavior will be inspected in terms of stability, pattern formation, bifurcations, and chaos. The output of the research will be a framework based on these ideas for the composition of computer music, a computer system that implements this approach, and fixed media pieces inspired by the research.
Kacper Werkowicz (2nd-year master’s)
Digital Synthesis Genealogies
Digital sound synthesis and its historical evolution stand as the central focus of this research. It aims to trace the genealogy of various digital sound synthesis technologies from their nascent stages in research laboratories to their current ubiquity. Historically and contemporarily, these technologies have had a profound impact on how sound is conceptualised, listened to, and created. A thorough understanding of these paradigm shifts can only be achieved when considering them in close relation with the technologies they stem from, calling for a unique combination of technological expertise with a critical cultural approach.
With this in mind, a mixed methodology is proposed, beginning with individual digital synthesis methods (both historical and contemporary) and exploring the circumstances of their invention, followed by a detailed study of their technical implementations. Afterwards, an attempt will be made to delineate the technological, historical, and cultural relationships between said methods, along with their possible broader categorisation and further impacts within music technology, culture, critical theory, and ontology. This part of the research aims not only to build upon technical resources, but also to delve into works of sound philosophy and journalism, music communities, and internet culture.
Such inquiry should result in a comprehensive body of cross-disciplinary knowledge, providing new avenues to critically engage and experiment with digital synthesis, informed by its past and ongoing influence on cultural production and perception of sound. It may also encourage an interest in the revival and re-integration of obscure or less commercially utilised technologies, and deepen understanding of how digital sound has been conceptualised across different times and cultural contexts. By engaging with diverse sources and communities, this research aims to enrich the discourse surrounding digital sound synthesis, broadening how it can be understood and engaged with in the future.
Hilde Wollenstein (2nd-year master’s)
More Real: Expressions of realism through music.
Everything in day to day, social life can be said to have become “cultural”. Through decades of capitalist logic, culture left its once upon a time more autonomous sphere and expanded throughout the social realm. As a consequence, music does not live a ghostly and intangible existence above the practical world either. Rather, people’s daily life is full of music, and vice versa; music is full of daily life. It is a medium affected by the reality of economic value and state power to practices, and the structure of the psyche itself. However, music can also be defined phenomenologically; as a state of listening to sound. What is heard can be perceived unrelated from its context, as something non-descriptive of daily life or the construction of reality, even as unconditional, potentially. By considering music’s abstract qualities as well as socio-cultural dimension, I intend to research how music negotiates with expressions — or genres — of realism in a creative, artistic and theoretical manifestation, drawing inspiration from definitions used in cinema studies. The presence of music in daily life and the subject of reality represented in musical form will be the material for multi-channel compositions and a written research.
Shawn Wong (2nd-year master’s)
Perspectives of the machine
Composers have long been incorporating mechanical processes of computers into human creativity. What began as a tool has now evolved to a level of intelligence where its creative potential can, to a certain extent, be compared with ‘human intelligence’.
This project – although aiming to build an intelligent system for making decisions and judgements in sound synthesis and material organisation – takes an approach that deviates from the common notion of artificial intelligence as modelling human intelligence. Since musical perception and decisions are merely a bundle of deterministic calculations in a computer, redefining and/or intervening in the computer’s underlying human-centred model can potentially bring us to a new horizon of mechanical perspectives on sound and composition that we otherwise cannot reach. ‘Problematic’ results returned by the computer would then not be seen as errors, but recognised as a unique perspective of its logical operation. The reconfiguration of algorithms can lead to fundamental questions of perspectival differences in a collaborative music-making context.
The research will be investigated from two directions: first, non-standard sound synthesis methods utilising computer operations (starting with what the composer Gottfried Michael Koenig described as “not imitating mechanical instruments or theoretical acoustic models” (Composition Processes, Koenig, 1978)); and second, algorithms of machine-perceptions – which form the basis of machine-decision-making – for material and form generation in music composition and improvisation. I believe, through a unique lens of the machine, the project can reveal the multiplicity of musical organisations and explore the tensions between our biological limitations and imaginative desire.
Nirantar Yakthumba (2nd-year master’s)
Cultivating Musics
How do different musics emerge throughout the world as modes of expression that sensibly inscribe meanings for their practitioners and listeners? The realities of different people—shaped by ever-changing multiplicities—cause them to produce music in incommensurably different ways. In their production, different musics implicate different limiting conditions: selections of materials, material configurations, and techniques of sounding. In this project, I investigate how cultures of musical labour arise as vehicles for our correspondences with the world, and for the sensible expression of our experiences and understandings of the world.
I will approach the problems outlined above by situating the inquiry within different interpenetrating relational perspectives: viz. the intrapersonal-interpersonal, the historical-material, the potential-actual, and the ontological-epistemological. This network of perspectives provides points of departure towards a creative methodology that is intrinsic to particular musical situations rather than constituting a speculative framework that is applied onto situations, observing and evaluating them from the outside, and extrapolating models or criteria for creativity to conform to.
As a prime example of the operation of this network of perspectives, I demonstrate the focal point of the project, in which I will elaborate a methodology for music making as a productive response to our current capitalist reality. The seemingly all-encompassing, perpetually-growing institution of capitalism neutralizes the potentiality intrinsic to the boundless modes of music making and listening, subsuming acts of musical creation to categorial schemes of products that are readily valuable and marketable, eradicating musical (sub)cultures, and pitting artists in competition with each other. The question of the emergence of different ways of music making and listening then takes the shape of the situation in the form of a new series of questions that arises in corresponding with the intrapersonal-interpersonal, the historical-material, the potential-actual, and the ontological-epistemological.