Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to examine the role of sound as experienced by the self through fractality. Through ethnographic analysis of studio discourse and audio examples, this paper will consider how temporalities of a sonic persona are negotiated in the interfacing between digital and hardware.

Paper long abstract:

In studio discourse, creative praxis is framed in terms of simultaneous holdings within multiple time scales captured by locators in a digital software grid. These movements involve recalling past sonic objects and their iterations in smaller and more specific phrases. As these sections are looping, memories of the original and concurrent parts are held and improvised on by drawing on associational listening alongside frequency decisions, in addition to interactions with non-human actants and technical dimensions of analog hardware.

Layered into these micro-decisions and processes are reflections on the piece as a whole, as its reflection of the artist/composer at that particular point in time/trajectory, and positioning in a macro/canon presentation of sonic persona.

Imagined and projected futures of an idealised sonic persona, as represented through sonic signature and textural markers, are enacted through spatio-temporal fractality in compositional rendering as minor clusters of midi refract larger phrases in the piece. Sonic objects are crafted as representative of artistic self by association and repetition across time scales as these are marked and deployed through arrangement in the technologically textured life world of the studio environment.

The aim of these modalities of self-making in creative practice are underlined by engaging thematically with analog hardware to render digital imaginings fleshed out and concrete. By physically drawing digital signal through distortive hardware there is a sense of physicality attained by the artist. This paper will illustrate spatio-temporal fractality through analysis and the presentation of sound clips to afford the listener an acoustic facet of engagement.