Echo's body: Play and representation in interactive music software

Abstract

This paper reflects on Hans Georg Gadamer's theory of play and adapts it to the context of interactive music software. I aim to show that interactive technological environments afford play in ways which, because they relate to truth and selfhood, are cognitively and philosophically significant and are not ‘merely’ playful.

Keywords:

• Aesthetic Truth
• Play
• Gadamer
• MAX/MSP
• Subjectivity
• Improvisation
• Echo
• Mimesis
• Instrumentality
• Sublated Word

Notes

[1] I interpret ‘interactive’ as referring to that class of software environments that can process sound in real time; that can respond to external stimulus. This includes familiar environments such as MAX/MSP, PD and SuperCollider, but there are also interactive, ‘real-time’ processing features in sound editing software such as ProTools. The mix window of CoolEdit Pro allows for a relatively fast and responsive way of organizing sound clips (especially when compared to the cutting and pasting of tape in the Radiophonic studio) and this too could be described as ‘interactive’.

[2] I am thinking here of CSound in its non-real-time incarnation.

[3] Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and method (New York: Continuum, 1994), p. 102.

[4] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 103.

[5] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 106.

[6] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 109.

[7] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 103.

[8] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 108.

[9] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 114 – 5.

[10] Gadamer, Truth and method, p. 113.