Sonic stuff : objects and objectiles

Abstract

This thesis investigates the role of objects in creative practice as alluring and evocative materials that disrupt compositional intentions and trajectories. This research does not begin from music as a cultural text but rather from the deeper experiences of sound as resistant materials that animate experiential space with their own styles of atmosphere, ambience and inaudible-audible signatures. Working across and often at the peripheries of the theoretical disciplines of object orientated ontology and process philosophy I address the philosophical issue of how sounds and objects possess the potential to unsettle, agitate and reconfigure networks of relation. Practice has informed a hybridisation of concepts derived from various disciplines, which are held together by threads of fictionalised prose that contribute alternative insights into the field of studio-based composition. This research employs a phenomenological method of reduction and at times an object orientated approach in theorising the autonomous life of sounds and objects. Dense descriptions of experiences, observations, thoughts and poetics form the basis for developing an informed creative treatise. Deviating descriptions of sensuous experiences are deployed throughout this research in order to find personal and meaningful ways of articulating sonic encounter. What are the multiple contours of Sonic Stuff? Is there an identity of sonic potential? What tensions/relations occur between the composer, studio and sonic object? In what form does Sonic Stuff reveal and characterise experiential time and space? What do the concepts of the withdrawn and revealed afford an understanding of sonic objects and sound in-itself?