Performance: Constellation Theory of Knowledge Electronic Music and Philosophical Metaphor

Abstract

This short paper describes a performance in the Artworks section of the Creativity and Cognitions conference 2015. The artwork makes use of the author's research into creating a dialog between the fields of music and philosophy. Specifically the artwork is a multimedia piece that structures a philosophical text as a metaphor realized as electronic musical shape and process. The piece is entitled: Constellation theory of knowledge. Utilizing the philosophical concept of the "constellation" (an idea that Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin both made use of) the work seeks to first describe the idea and then articulate it in metaphorical form. This process is an extension of earlier modes of composition that utilized ideas in music via symbolic abstraction. R. Strauss and R. Wagner both made use of this form -- the procedure has not been developed further and offers interesting possibilities in terms of orienting motion processes within electronic music.