In an article for New York Magazine, Justin Davidson manages to tie together the majority of my musical/academic interests in a single argument about mechanical music and performance.

No really, he talks about Zenph Studios’ “re-performed” Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff, Ulrich Krieger’s arrangement of Metal Machine Music (the focus of my undergrad thesis), Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies, and Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique.

Needless to say, this is all right up my alley. Davidson’s point, generally, is that the relationship between humans and machines in music-making is complicated:

Zenph and Krieger may be heading in opposite directions—one automates performances, while the other puts mechanical art into human hands—but they are converging on the same goal: transforming a recording into a performance. Imagination rolls into technology and then back into live experience. Instrumentalists have always treated their specialized contraptions as expressive extensions of themselves, and technological improvements like valved horns, steel strings, and GarageBand all aim to enhance creativity. But Zenph’s musician-free live performance and Krieger’s warm-blooded robotic clangor aspire to a fresh and perfect synthesis of spirit and machine.

These attitudes towards instruments and music-making machines are exactly the focus of my research, and it is tremendously exciting to see the topic pop up in the public discourse like this.

[I apologize for the lightness of posts recently—apparently this is what thesis term is like. I promise I have some longer things coming down the pipe, when I get a moment between research trips and grad school interviews.]

(via New York Magazine, mailbackwards)