The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Technology [research group]
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CENTRAL QUESTIONS
Participants are invited to interrogate the presuppositions that structure their practices and to develop the concepts, methods, and vocabularies through which those practices may become more precisely thinkable, communicable, and historically situated.
Technology and Musical Thought
When does a technology begin to participate in musical thinking? Is it a means for realizing ideas already formed, an environment within which ideas become possible, or an agent that redirects the course of invention? How do tools, standards, defaults, presets, formats, and workflows shape what can be imagined before any sound is produced? Can musical thought be separated from the material and technical conditions through which it takes form?
Instrument, Interface, and Agency
What makes something a musical instrument, and how does an instrument differ from a tool, controller, interface, environment, or system? Where is agency located when sound results from relations among bodies, sensors, code, models, networks, and spaces? Does an interface extend action, translate it, constrain it, or construct the user it appears merely to serve?
Code, Algorithm, and Automation
What forms of authorship and responsibility arise when musical decisions are expressed through rules, code, generative procedures, machine learning, or artificial intelligence? Does automation remove human agency, redistribute it, or conceal it within data selection, system design, and technical maintenance? How should practitioners distinguish assistance, delegation, simulation, generation, and autonomy? What remains accountable when outputs are uncertain or emergent?
Recording, Reproduction, and Mediation
What does a recording preserve, and what does it construct? How do microphones, editing systems, codecs, archives, and playback environments shape the event they claim to capture? What models of presence, fidelity, authenticity, and memory are embedded in recording practice? How do reproduction and circulation alter the identity of a performance or work? What is lost, added, or reorganized when sound becomes a file?
Performance, Embodiment, and Listening
What kinds of bodies, abilities, gestures, and attentions do music technologies presuppose? How do devices and interfaces choreograph performers, distribute effort, and define acceptable forms of interaction? What happens when technological systems fail to recognize particular bodies or modes of expression? How are listeners positioned by immersive, interactive, personalized, spatial, or networked systems? Can listening itself be understood as technologically organized action?
Data, Platforms, and Infrastructure
How does musical activity become data, and what exceeds its capture? Which categories, measurements, and exclusions are built into datasets and metadata? How do platforms, recommendation systems, streaming services, archives, and communication networks organize discoverability, value, and memory? Which infrastructures remain invisible while they function, and what becomes audible when they fail? Who owns, governs, or benefits from the traces musical practices produce?
Knowledge, Judgment, and Value
What forms of knowledge emerge through building, coding, performing, recording, maintaining, or repairing technologies? How might such knowledge be articulated and shared without reducing it to technical specifications or propositional claims? By what criteria are technologies judged: novelty, transparency, complexity, usability, expressivity, efficiency, reliability, accessibility, sustainability, or something else? Who has authority to establish those criteria?
Labour, Access, and Politics
Whose labour makes music technology possible, and which forms of labour remain uncredited or hidden? How do cost, education, disability, geography, language, licensing, ownership, and institutional support shape access? Does participation mean the ability to use a system, to modify it, to understand it, or to influence its governance? How do technologies reproduce or challenge inequalities within musical production and circulation?
Ecology, Materiality, and Obsolescence
What materials, extraction processes, energy systems, and waste streams sustain musical technologies? How should artistic practice respond to planned obsolescence, unsupported software, incompatible formats, and discarded hardware? Can maintenance, reuse, repair, and restraint function as creative and philosophical methods rather than secondary necessities? What kinds of musical futures become possible when endurance is valued alongside invention?
Concepts Yet to Be Named
How might artistic and technological practice generate concepts for phenomena that existing musical, engineering, and philosophical vocabularies cannot adequately name? What distinctions are required by hybrid instruments, adaptive systems, synthetic voices, distributed performance, machine listening, or technologies still emerging? Which inherited distinctions should be retained, revised, or refused? How can new concepts remain precise without becoming restrictive categories?
These questions do not prescribe a closed theoretical agenda, a unified methodology, or an authoritative philosophy of music technology. They establish a common yet deliberately plural field of investigation within which participants may formulate problems specific to their practices, test concepts against material and technical processes, challenge inherited assumptions, and develop positions responsive to the particular demands of their work.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC TECHNOLOGY
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io