Composing Social Media. The Representation of the Physicality-Virtuality Continuum in Óscar Escudero and Belenish Moreno-Gil’s Works

Abstract

Óscar Escudero and Belenish Moreno-Gil, as artists of the millennial generation, proposed an approach to musical composition that takes into account the new ways of being and relating to the world, which has been modified by the irruption of social networks. Their work represents an understanding of the mediatised and globalised world in which we live, making it clear that the philosophical and aesthetic paradigm has changed and must adapt to these new ways of communication. In order to understand their works, it is necessary to understand how social media and the physicality-virtuality continuum work and the effects they have on us. In this article I try to outline this with the help of literature in this respect and to relate it to the different forms of artistic presentation that make up their works. This article is to be understood as an attempt to conceptualise Moreno-Gil and Escudero’s aesthetics through specific examples of the works Custom #X Series and Flat Time Trilogy. The concepts of ‘simultaneity’, ‘hyperreality’ and ‘flat time’ or the ‘struggle for visibility’ and ‘profile subject’ help us to understand the new forms of communication through social media and are the philosophical basis for the works of Escudero and Moreno-Gil.

Keywords

• contemporary music
• contemporary music-theatre
• social composing
• music performance
• post-composition
• performance analysis
• social media