The entanglements which make instruments musical: Rediscovering sociality

Abstract

A thing becomes a musical instrument by virtue of its use in a social context, a use of which its initial intended design (if it had one) forms only a part: sometimes a very small part. Drawing on the notion of the ‘performance ecosystem’ this papersuggests that instrument designers/makers working with digital technologies might fruitfully attend further to the social contexts/constructs that characterise every level of musicking. It looks at the emergent, situated co-development of player, instrument and environment, suggesting that humans habitually use instruments to sense out, test and probe the possibilities of self-other relations in dynamic, mutually-engaging, and often playful and improvised behaviours.1 11 The entanglements (see e.g. Hodder, 2012) of the title are therefore the complex network of interrelations between objects, humans, environments, histories and ideas. Such co-dependencies may operate irrespective of physical or historical distance, and though pervasive may also be temporary or unpredictable.?>