In this paper, I have laid out my artistic path since 2019 and how it set the stage for my current questioning around embodiment and identity in the digital realm. Although this was before I started my Master’s degree in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire, I felt it was necessary to include  the experiences I went through during the Corona Pandemic as they were pivotal to inspiring my current artistic practice.

This is clarified in the First Chapter when I relate the living and social changes happening during lockdowns to my own compositional practice. I was already discontented with music-making that involved creating systems of pitches and durations, and the lockdown shook me enough to completely steer me away from such a practice. With Twitch_Plays_Max, a fully online piece, I gained an interest in the online medium as a performance space as well as a connecting space for those that cannot share a physical one. It became apparent that even when lockdown measures were phased out, I would not return to "lattice-oriented" music-making. I related this to the social turmoil of the world and how, in my mind, going back to the aforementioned “lattice” meant ignoring everything that had happened around me and how it had shaped my personality.

In the Second Chapter, I expose how I started researching the digital world as a platform for art creation in a more active way. This led me to have an interest in analysing interfaces and media that are ubiquitously used by the modern human, such as the tablet, and inquire how we are shaped by them. Marshall McLuhan’s “The medium is the message” and “Media as extensions of human” tropes provided an interesting framework to develop the piece being with You, in Unity, where musicians use tablets to send requests to one another.  I noted that I was approaching digital-systems-based music in a very practical way by solely analysing how “button-mashy” the performers would be. This piece also exposed  important questions on what I conceive as “composition”. I understood that I wasn’t interested in handing a score to performers, but to create a micro-universe that they can immerse themselves in, where they are active agents in the act of art creation. My own experience of finding a Queer safe place on the Internet as a teenager started to occupy my mind and I recognised that my interest in these topics was no mere coincidence but a subconscious decision to look back on these moments and how they had shaped me.

After understanding the limitations  of how I was approaching the human experience in the digital world, I started realising that I wanted to understand what it meant to connect, or witness, someone in the digital realm. In the Third Chapter, I speak about the research of Caroline Nevejan (and the artists she presents in her book) on the act of “being-witness-to-each-other” when the other person is not physically present. I related this to ideas by Sherry Turkle and Marc Augé about how, even though separated by a screen, the emotional investment we feel towards other humans, even if not physically present, is very real and, sometimes, even overwhelming and debilitating. Concurrently, I became acquainted with New Aesthetic, Post-Digital, and Post-Internet art. In these artistic branches, I found a language I could relate to and learn from. The piece, Can we feel touch when we’re made of light, where I ponder if “beams of matter-less light accurately translate our very matter-full bodies” and if in this medium humans can truly connect, even if only to give a hug, emerged from this research. This work created a situation in which I was required to reflect on the importance of putting bodies on stage, and this was an extremely important moment in my still early career.

Lastly, in the Fourth Chapter, I draw inspiration from the women that helped build the digital medium I sought acceptance and companionship in as a teenager, and mention how it became a powerful tool for Queer people, like myself, to get acquainted with facets of our personalities that are shrunk and hidden away due to hostile physical environments. My own performance practice as a live electronics performer came into play as I spoke about spaces that are not conducive to artistic liberation because they are not meant to welcome those that live (and practice art) in the “in-between”. Though I am not transgender nor non-binary (I think…), the experiences and knowledge of these communities in particular were extremely inspiring, relevant, and beautiful to get acquainted with. Flesh is a dead format and The other day are two opposite perspectives on the issue of technological embodiment and Queer liberation. The former proposes that we get rid of our physical substrate as it cannot hold our identity or allow us to exist fully. The latter advocates for compassion towards our physical selves, as we can feel empowered even if bound by biological structures. I am convinced that we must choose the latter to guide our Queer empowerment and should not let normative structures make us think that we cannot fully exist as we are.

It is difficult to grasp any clear conclusion or collection of ideas that answer my research question or know where to go from here. The simple answer is: it’s complicated. And sometimes it’s even antithetical, just like many ideas that might be present in this paper. But part of the (artistic) human experience is perhaps being antithetical. The binary is crumbling. Notions of selfhood are changing. New technological powers that blur the boundary between human and machine are rising. We don’t need to settle on one perspective or the other. We can have both, or none, or a third option, or change during our lifetime. What I do know is that art making will be my guiding compass, how I reflect on the complex world around me, and how I empower my glitched existence. 

This is where I stand. At least for now.