Thinking Telematically: Improvising Music Worlds Under COVID and Beyond

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown brought much attention to live music making via the internet, amplifying the previously marginal fields of livestream concertizing and networked music performance. Drawing connections among recent publications, artists’ creative strategies, and his own experiences, the author surveys questions about musical telepresence that arose in this process, including reflections on the nature of musical liveness in an increasingly digital industry, the creative potentials of networked music making, and the value of “thinking telematically” about cultural production and social change.