> Performances > Machinic Intersection

9th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X

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Machinic Intersection: Not—Yet—Chaconne

Seth D. Thorn

seth.thorn@asu.edu

School of Arts, Media + Engineering Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

Keywords: Augmented Violin, Machinic Heterogenesis, Composed Instruments, Haptics, Enactive Thought, Classical Remix, Guattari, Deleuze

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The Chaconne is the final movement of J. S. Bach’s Partita in D Minor for solo violin. Recreating this piece with an augmented violin I developed, I draw it into a plunderphonic culture enabled by technologies of reproduction and performance. By means of signal processing techniques I construct through trial and error and a novel shoulder rest I designed that attaches to my acoustic violin, giving tangible feedback related to the digitally-reprocessed sound, my system exemplifies Guattari’s notion of “machinic heterogenesis.” That is, in creating and performing Not—Yet—Chaconne, I follow a flow of matter generated by a heterogenous machine acting transversally across corporeal, material, affective, algorithmic, and semiotic domains, with the score being just one part—a musical “piece,” hence partial, “not yet”—belonging to this technical ensemble. Real-time signal processing and improvised development of digital musical instruments not only narrows the interval between musical conception and realization but also transforms that interval by jutting its locus to the sensorimotor level, to the biological organism itself, which symmetrizes action and perception, generates a fine-grained consistency, and potentiates a fresh “non-human enunciation.”

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