What can a sonic assemblage do? A biopsychosocial approach to post-acousmatic composition

Abstract

Thinking and sounding are two terms which complicate one another, hence this thesis follows two trajectories each of which make an original contribution to knowledge. Part 1 (thinking sound) proposes to reground composition away from historically authoritative humanist models, instead suggesting a biopsychosocial approach for a post-acousmatic music. I elaborate a set of models and key concepts, chiefly an eliminativist account of the listener-sound relation; neurocognitively discrete musical domains and dimensions of the Kmatrix; model-based reasoning through a Reception-Interpretation-Action helix; and, mentalizing listening stances based upon dual-process cognition models. This is combined with an art-activist stance where composition is concerned with the effects that a sonic artobject exerts in its vicinity. I propose composition as experimentally concerned with generating new epistemic things through a process of assemblage and heterogeneous engineering. Part 2 (sounding thinking) discusses fixed and live compositions which initiated and respond to my proposed approach. In my practice, I focus on the disruption of specific aesthetic regimens to bring listening into attentional focus, engaging the specificity of the mnemonic traces that sound leaves. The pieces are largely concerned with sonic cultures related to Islam and the MENASA region