Electronica in the Expanded Field

Sound is the sculptural aspect of new media

Electronica is no longer a pitifully vague term for what is less of a genre of music, and more of a contemporary practice in music and sound production. Having been out of popular use for the past several years, it is now a term that I believe is due a re-examination. An abused and discarded designation that should be picked up from the second hand lexicon show room and be given a glossy new life. What I call electronica is a discipline that is vast with permutations and discreet dialogues and discourses that have been developing for well over forty years at this point. It is not a future forward _topian infused term, but rather a way to survey the digital/analog landscape in which we are now most currently present. But I would like also to not remove the mystical, musical implications from the term as well. After all, we are talking about Art. An art who's groundwork has been laid by hard physics, mathematics and the labors of fastidious personas as devoted to boredom as one can find, but it is Art none the less, and an art to and of itself. What we need to do perhaps, is get a wider a perspective on what we designate as Music vs. Sound in the context of digital media. For the purpose of this essay, we will say that anything musical is what is intended to be listened to directly, and to which any accompanying media is ancillary. The focus of this essay however is on the leftovers. Sound. It is sound that bears the most in common with the tangible analog world, it is the literal surface against which other media is pressed, in impenatrabel surface as ethereal as it is presient. Bearing more in common with the most concrete of arts, Sculpture and Architecture. This is not intended to be a critical response to Krauss's now iconic tome on Sculpture in the expanded field, it is rather meant to be a point of contact. For the most important question asked about New Media work accross boundaries, is "How does it Address Sound"? Sound is the unseen, underacknowledged discipline upon which all new media practice is based. It is the illusionistic faculty, the abstract faculty, the concrete, the tangible.