| dcterms.abstract | This is a dissertation about Experimental Electronica, the people who make it, the audiences who experience it, the places it creates, the influence of technologies, and the various theoretical issues the music provokes. While the music occupies a significant place in contemporary culture, defining the term Experimental Electronica and its relationship to other forms of Electronic Music has proven to be quite challenging; indeed this terminological problem is key to understanding important features of this music. Furthermore, these problems of terminology are wrapped up in broader musical discourses and ideologies that subsequently shape (or distort) how Experimental Electronica is understood. By Experimental Electronica, I refer to a body of Electronic Music that predominantly operates outside of both the " serious" and " popular" art domains, which simultaneously takes some bearing from, while also destabilizing these categories. Though throughout I resist such reductive binary constructs between, for example, " serious" and " popular," or similarly " high" and " low," and thus their possible blurring, these ideas are unavoidable for situating the aesthetics and practices of Experimental Electronica. And yet I argue that they have become too short of a shorthand for seriously approaching and understanding this music, and have contributed to misunderstandings and blind spots. As such, complicating and reassessing these concepts and how they might be relevant to wider and likewise unstable theoretical frameworks will be a central component to this project, utilizing the repertory of Experimental Electronica as the medium of inquiry. Under five subject areas which comprise the chapters--terminologies, roles, places, technologies, and theories--this study looks at specific moments to illuminate the contexts whereby this repertory exists and operates. In examining wide-ranging iterations of the music, from particular live events, key album releases, aesthetic shifts, and artist endeavors, we can also explore settings where discourses have played out. In doing so, not only do we get a sense of how the music is articulated as a kind of metagenre and conglomeration of relevant scenes, its inner-workings, politics, commerce (not limited to the monetary connotation), reception, and continued relevance are revealed. Because this repertory has been little studied, this kind of approach is fruitful as it addresses the crucial need to bring into the dialogue many important voices to tell this story of Experimental Electronica. This dialogue thus goes beyond the artists themselves and those scholars who may have laid some theorectical groundwork, to also include the numerous listeners, critics, and fans, who, I will attest, have played the most significant role in creating, documenting, and continuing a history of this music. | |
