The Virtual is Material: Music Improvisation in Post-Digital Ecologies

Abstract

Link to performance: https://vimeo.com/640946914/cf858052e1This performance-lecture was originally presented at the DRHA (Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts) conference in 2021 in Berlin. 3BP (Paul Stapleton, Adam Pultz Melbye and John Bowers) presents three views on the creation of an online performance ecology that allows the trio to improvise together, despite living in three separate locations. Rather than trying to overcome the instabilities and artefacts introduced by the fluctuations in data transfer, 3BP describe how such properties become native to the trios understanding of its own practice, affording new areas of creative exploration and consideration. The trio draws on Karen Barad’s use of terms such as diffraction and apparatus to discuss how music-making and improvisation embedded in run-away technologies affords emergent behaviour that transcends reflection to allow for diverse and unstable non-linear performances.

Keywords

• improvisation
• materiality
• online performance
• Karen Barad