The Computer as Instrument
In contrast to the musician-instrument relation described above, the musician-computer relation is more convoluted in nature. What I see when I start an application on my computer, what I experience to be the system in play, is just myself, the hardware, and some software, when in reality it may involve previous inputs and outputs as well as various biases, some of which may be hidden. In this sense, the electronic musical instrument is a system that is, from a certain perspective, larger and more elaborate than an acoustic instrument. What does it mean to get on the inside of such systems? What part of the system has agency, and to what extent is the creative act distributed rather than controlled by the musician? The extent to which such a system stretches out into the unknown is significant. It may include programmers and designers who are disconnected from the performer in both time and space yet connected to the instrument and its design properties.[11] There may be a range of hidden layers, obscured from both performers and audience, which can be reorganized during the course of the performance. An electronic instrument that is connected to the internet and that continuously fetches information that co-determines its output in live performance is a special case, and such a system is significantly different from an acoustic musical instrument. Intuition, I believe, is still a valid method here, but it requires a few considerations that I will discuss in the following sections.
In this context, it is also worth noting that a certain merge between the fields of arts practices and science in general has occurred, making possible a critique of Bergson's division between analysis and intuition. Regardless of the extent to which the field of artistic research has reiterated the importance of the difference between the sciences and the arts, the computer is to a significant degree one of the main tools that both fields use. In other words, the artistic research lab is not technologically different from that of the science lab, and the primary tool for deductive analysis is also the primary tool for much of music production today, as pointed out by professor of history of art John Tresch and professor of music Emily I. Dolan (2013) in their paper Toward a New Organology: Instruments of Music and Science. Though the methodologies of the two fields differ to a significant degree, the merge is profound, and the universality of computers may conceal the fact that the technology, rather than merely supporting the creative work, also controls it in ways that are not obvious. The agency of the various parts of the system is blurred. More importantly, in this merge of the computer as a tool and an instrument, there may be a risk that the scientific nature of the machine constrains the ability to engage intuitively with the system of artistic production. As was noted above, many electronic instruments, due to their immediate relation to engineering and science, lend themselves naturally to an understanding based on representation rather than intuition, which enforces their role as mere tools. The method of entering into sympathy with a recorded sound in a technological system and understanding it from the inside – without getting lost in the various ways that the systems extend in space and time – is complex. In my experience, understanding something like signal processing is rather different from using signal processing tools. A recursive filter or a signal processing device, an AI-enhanced digital compressor or a generative audio plugin are all natural components of a contemporary Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). In order to empathetically experience the inside workings of these systems, an artist may require insight into the analytical aspects of sound that may alter the intuitive focus of their working methods.