Interpretive practice in laptop music performance

Laptop music performance has proliferated as a new form of practice over the past decade, resulting in new approaches and challenges to musical norms. This paper describes issues in laptop music performance, and discusses approaches in computer music research in relation to a qualitative study of "minimal" electronic music practice. The research aims to understand the social and technological dimensions of laptop music performance through a synthesis of methodological frameworks found in Technology Studies including Andrew Feenberg's "Instrumentalization Theory" and Trevor Pinch and Weibe Bijker's "Social Construction of Technology" (SCOT) These perspectives are combined with first-person methodologies and will show how the "minimal" electronic music community of practice interprets laptop music performance as an extension of the recording studio-as-musical instrument, and the techniques and musical form of DJ culture. The research examines Robert Henke's Monodeck and Ableton Live as examples of the instantiation of interpretations in the "minimal" context.

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