Soft Music

Abstract

This essay combines three layers of ideas: The first one is in text form, containing personal reflections on the possible creation of a new kind of music by means of a network. These means are technical as well as communicative, instrumental, conceptual and perhaps even musical. The second layer is a collage of thoughts collected from musicians and artists working on the Net. Presented as video clips, they reveal the humans behind the ideas. These clips are juxtaposed with or illustrate my own reflections. The third layer consists of hypertext links to sound projects, and, if such projects are not accessible, to documentation and the like. The general idea of the essay is not solely to be found in the text layer, nor in the choice of links or in the artists’ statements. While it is certainly fine to stroll through each of the separate layers, the subject’s diversity is more closely captured when combining multiple approaches and views. The overall idea of the essay can be discovered in the combination of the three layers. The fact that there is no one single path through the layers, but instead, a multiplicity of paths, reflects perfectly on the nature of the topic: the network as a multi-dimensional space of unstable musics; of musics in flux.