The goal of this paper is to examine the nature of subjectivity as it relates to my practice as a composer and performer, especially in the use of appropriated materials and recognizable cultural forms in the creation of new expressive outlets. Specifically I will discuss the ways in which recognizable cultural artifacts are used as musical materials in my work, as well as the ways in which the audience’s expectations in culturally familiar situations may be exploited or subverted. I will also explore the natural or vernacular qualities in my work, and the relationship between these qualities and Appalachian folk styles.

These discussion will center around several recent projects, including recent collaborative work Pocket Music, a small set of recorded folk tune arrangements, and various notated concert pieces from the past few years. These works have been selected because they typify the diversity of approaches I have taken in working with the above-mentioned ideas. A secondary goal is to examine some of the risks and benefits of working with appropriated materials in a highly personalized way, including a discussion of language and its relationship to style, as well as the ways in which pervious experiences can be combined.

This dissertation will analyze the ways in which personality, personal history, and subjective experience are explored through the collection and simultaneous arrangement of independent materials in two of my recent artistic projects. In my work as Porpitid the concept of collection is explored in the context of a sampling/mashup practice based largely around discarded and secondhand physical media. Through bringing together a number of independent video and audio sources as a basis for improvisation, this practice seeks to use an anachronistic assortment of culturally peripheral materials to probe the nature of American consumer culture. This practice deals with processes of material collection and organization in a number of ways which are quite direct, and will be explored in Chapters One, through Four. Chapters Five and Six focus on This Way Forever, a notated electroacoustic chamber work composed for in^set (David Aguila, Teresa Díaz, and Ilana Waniuk) in 2023. This work is in many ways an exploration of how performer-selected materials can be brought together in a pre-composed framework to create a piece which celebrates its existence as a combination of distinct personalities. Performers are invited to provide text, musical samples, and theatrical actions which insert themselves in a number of ways over the course of performing the piece. Throughout, the players focus on speaking, playing percussion, and physical actions more often than playing their primary instruments, with the goal being to showcase the tremendous flexibility of the performers, as well as the ways in which their approaches to these kinds of situations may differ. In this context the idea of collection serves to allow the performers a way into the piece, where they can provide a collection of materials (original and otherwise) which represents their conceptions of themselves, their instruments, and each other. In presenting these collections together simultaneously, the work aims to explore the complex series of interactions and ideas which underly a given ensemble’s practice in a chaotic, abstracted way. 
 Through the discussion of my practice as Porpitid, as well as analysis of This Way Forever, I hope to examine ways in which the formation of personal corpuses of material, and the navigation of complex media environments have been fruitful grounds for my recent artistic exploration, while also suggesting ways in which these ideas may be expanded going forward.