'Music as the Interface: the interaction of conceptual metaphors of movement and materiality in music performance systems, sound design and sonification'
Dr Brian Bridges
Music, Drama, Performing Arts and Film and Screen research unit
Ulster University, Derry
Considering the broad field of music (for the present purposes, defining ‘music’ as including experimental and exploratory sonic arts practices) as an interface akin to a technology may allow us to rethink some of our assumptions about music’s relationship with technology itself. The idea of music as a highly technical artform in dialogue with scientific, formal, or other technical principles is nothing new within various traditions of music theory. It is also no surprise that as music and sound technologies have become key areas of academic research and innovation, they are becoming increasingly dependent on an understanding of other technical principles, sometimes finding common ground, or even becoming inextricably linked with contemporary technology-centric fields such as human-computer interaction and machine learning.
In the context of a growing apparatus of technological ecosystems and processes by which we experience and share music in contemporary society (no matter where our particular preferences lie on the unmediated-to-mediated continuum), considering how music interacts with technology is, to some extent, unavoidable. It is here, at the intersection between music creation, our listening, and our relating of these aesthetic experiences together and within themselves, that how we conceptualise music as a general type of activity may provide a point of connection which is key to our understanding of how music manifests within a range of contemporary spheres. In his provocative monograph Natural-Born Cyborgs (Clark, 2003), cognitive scientist Andy Clark has proposed that language is a type of ‘cognitive technology’ and part of the cognitive architecture which connects us to our environment and tools. Is music another such technology?
This presentation will address this question with particular reference to the author’s previous research within the spheres of musical interaction design and sound design, examining how certain aspects of music theory may parallel contemporary embodied theories of mind (what is often termed 4E embodied cognition: embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) and how music may be conceptualised via gestures and embodied materiality which morph and blend with technological elements in various contexts within which they are deployed.
Brian Bridges is a composer/sonic artist, electronic musician and arts-technology researcher, currently serving as Research Director (Music, Drama, Performing Arts and Film and Screen) at Ulster University, Derry. He is a graduate of TCD (MPhil in Music and Media Technologies) and Maynooth (BA in English and Music; PhD in Music), studying with Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle and Jürgen Simpson (TCD) and Victor Lazzarini (Maynooth), in addition to private studies in the US with microtonalists Glenn Branca (2005) and Tony Conrad (2006) supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Research interests include the application of embodied models to musical practices, sound design, and the design of performance systems and interfaces, with publications in fora including the proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression, International Conference on Auditory Display, International Computer Music Conference, journals including Journal of Sonic Studies and the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces and volumes on sound design, sound spatialisation, and sound in interaction published by Routledge (including Focal Press) and Springer.
Creative outputs include sound–based spatial/immersive installations, audiovisual pieces and electroacoustic and acoustic composition, with particular interests in microtonal music. He is a founder–member of the Dublin–based Spatial Music Collective and his compositions have been programmed at festivals in Europe, the Americas and China. He has received support and commissions from arts organisations including the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, the Contemporary Music Centre and Resonance FM. Other interests include connections between arts and humanities and STEM, and he has served as Vice-President and President of the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association, as well as co-founding the Hearts of STEM (2016-18) and Oscillations and Modulations conference-festivals of synthesisers and electronic music in Derry (2018-present).