Data Culture Generation: After Content, Process as Aesthetic
Alistair Riddell · Leonardo · 2001
The concepts of process and data, inherent in the technology of contemporary music, are contributing to a new musical practice and aesthetic. The role of technology in musical production has cast music into data (a tangible entity, commodity or product) and thus made data a kind of cultural object itself in certain contexts (LPs, CDs, MP3 files). This condition suggests that a rethinking/transformation of contemporary audio arts based on process is taking place. Increasingly, sound may be only one of several simultaneous and expressive components constituting a cultural experience. Here process can suggest and define a set of possibilities as an artistic statement irrespective of whether something or anything is manifest by any artist. With the environment saturated with music, the creative design of musical processes might become an art in itself.