Music/ Music(ology)

This dissertation "womxn who make spiritual machines" is the culmination of 7 years of work as a graduate student at the music department of GSAS.

The term womxn is one of self-identification by the artists including the virtual womxn Kiki Yago who is composed of at least three humans behind the screen. The spiritual machines refer to technological assemblages ranging from hand-soldered electronic instruments re-imagninging the musical instruments of traditional folk and ritual performance practice, to studio workflows entangled with a meditative practice

This dissertation includes both a praxis-based approach to the subject as well as a theoretical one. Which is why the presented version came bound as two books. As a media practitioner, and a person who grew up in the book binding district of Paris, I was inspired to make expanded book-objects, they are an embodyment of the thoughts contained on their pages, full of networked materials that can be experienced at the same time as the printed text and images (because who reads anything these days without their smartphones by their sides?) and a reflection of present day printmaking capabilities.

This dissertation explores the responses of a grouping of performers whom I have dubbed "Womxn Who Make Spiritual Machines" to the ongoing human-machine reckoning that is a defining state of 20th and 21st century life. It revolves around an interview series which I published in the arts magazine Creatrix, with artists acting as cultural intermediaries, bridging the gaps between traditional practices avant-garde, experimental performance art, and music works. Their art expresses the nuances of identity, subversion, and the challenges of performing as digital natives in our rapidly evolving and changing technosphere. It aims to ensure that the voices, stories, and contributions of these womxn artists continue to be integral to a broader dialogue about the evolution of places, cultures, and communities, ushering in a continued era of appreciation for their talents and experiences in the age of networked, surveilled, and AI-mediated life experience.

The portfolio section of this dissertation contains my own work, produced during my time at NYU addressing this topic. It is a type of auto-ethnography and practice-based handling of the broader issues of this dissertation. This section also contains unedited reproductions of papers on the techne of the projects which have been published in various conference proceedings over the time of my enrollment in the music department at GSAS

The written chapters of this dissertation provide an overview of the theory and a mapping of the context in which the work of "Womxn Who Make Spiritual Machines" is produced. They deal with artistic and philosophical precedents contextualising the practice of the artists in this text. They have been written specifically for this dissertation project, with the exception of chapter one, "Sublime Noise" which was a talk I gave at the fu:bar// glitch art festival in 2022.

I chose to include as many of the manifestos as I could in their entirety, being that they are declarations of powers by sovereign entities and a kind of legal document.

This project exists somewhere between Feminist Science and Technology Studies, the Philosophy of Technology, and performance studies. I hope that this text is a fruitful blending of these fields.