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Sound Scripts

Sound Scripts

Digital Sound: On Technology, Infidelity and Potentiality

Abstract

'Digital Sound: On Technology, Infidelity and Potentiality' attempts to rethink digital sound. Working intimately with digital technologies in my own practice as a performing musician, exhibiting artist and writer I find that digital technologies exert an acute influence over not only the work I produce but the way in which I engage with and conceive sound. Most theoretical discussions around digital sound, however, have largely failed to go beyond mere aesthetics. This is exemplified by the most prominent theory of digital sound, Kim Cascone's 'aesthetics of failure', which this article addresses in detail. Undertaking an extended investigation of digital sound utilizing Martin Heidegger's theory that Technology should be approached as a system, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's conception of striated and smooth space and Giorgio Agamben's thought on potentiality, alongside more recent articles written specifically about digital sound, this article aims to construct an understanding of digital sound as more than just an aesthetics of digital technology. It suggests that digital sound is a complex potentiality and explains digital technologies' role as agents of a system of Technology that mediates sound.

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