Digithum (Nov 2003)
The technoperception of electronic sound in cyberculture
Abstract
One characteristic of new information and communications technologies is that they make possible new technical uses at an instrumental level and new technological practices that affect intersubjective relationships, behaviours and models... Computer culture, or cyberculture, is no exception. With the original device that has given rise to it, now widespread and improved, we have the socially generated conditions for a radical change in even the most stable practices, concepts and cultural foundations. Most authors that have looked at the cultural sensorium have tended to look at the speed and acceleration of images and text, ignoring the role of sound and silence, in other words, of music, electronically generated. However, in the "digital" era in which computers govern our daily lives, it would be an unpardonable sin not to consider electronic, digitalised music as the most appropriate soundtrack for this new context. For these reasons, in this paper we will look at some of the cultural changes that characterise cyberculture and attempt to establish connections between the image revolution and the revolution in electronically generated music. The ultimate objective of our incursion into this field is to examine how technoperception of electronic sound affects the senses in the "the era of the intelligent machine".
