Issues of ubiquitous music archaeology: Shared knowledge, simulation, terseness, and ambiguity in early computer music

Abstract

The reconstruction of tools and artworks belonging to the origins of music computing unveils the dynamics of distributed knowledge underlying some of the major breakthroughs that took place during the analogue-digital transition of the 1950s and 1960s. We document the implementation of two musical replicas, the Computer Suite for Little Boy and For Ann (Rising). Our archaeological ubiquitous-music methods yield fresh insights on both convergences and contradictions implicit in the creation of cutting-edge technologies, pointing to design qualities such as terseness and ambiguity. Through new renditions of historically significant artefacts, enabled by the recovery of artistic first-hand sources and of one of the early computer music environments, MUSIC V, we explore the emergence of exploratory simulations of new musical worlds.

The Internet of Musical Stuff

“…As part of the answer, we see two directions in recent developments that may shape the future expansion of the musical internet: a. There is an increased awareness of the impact of legacy concepts and technology on emergent internet-based practices (Lazzarini et al 2023;Karkina et al 2023;Messina et al 2022b; Zawacki and Johann 2014); b. There is a tendency to incorporate new resources while promoting adaptations of extant frameworks.…”

“…At the time, the adoption of computational tools involved constraining artistic practices to specialised venues -a requirement that went against the grain of the artistic proposals championed by James Tenney and other composers linked to the artistic collective Fluxus (cf. Lazzarini et al 2023 for technical details). Contrastingly, the current tendencies in creative music making indicate that computational resources are employed at some stage by a significant body of practitioners.…”

Editorial: Ecologically grounded creative practices and ubiquitous music – interaction and environment

“…His approach furnishes a good complement to Aliel et al's treatment of comprovisational methods. Building on a materialist perspective and embodying parallels with recent ubimus work around computer music archaeologies (Lazzarini, Keller and Radivojević 2023), Trillo and Poliks (this issue) provide an example of a musical work which embodies practices and strategies tangentially similar to ubimus (involving the use of diverse creative strategies, participatory precursors, and heterogenous techniques applied to signal processing), contextualised via cultural theory and media arts discourses. Trillo and Poliks usage of participatory precursor, incorporating the products of GANs (generative adversarial networks) trained on sonic resources selected from an open call, could be framed as a ubimus-type ecology.…”