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Scholarly Works (2 results)

  • Book
  • Peer Reviewed
Writings / Presentations (2021)
This dissertation enacts the dialogue between my creative work as an improviser-composer and my critical engagements with scholarship. Both creative and academic streams of my work have converged on core themes, which have accompanied me as I experiment with my practice as a composer and as an improviser on the mrudangam (South Indian drum): (1) queering rhythm and temporality in relation to ensemble dynamics and score-based practices; (2) imagining counterpoint to received socio-aesthetic hierarchies; and (3) the transformative possibilities in alternative mappings of the body in music— as related to perception, collectivity, and pleasure. Substantive creative responses to these themes have been, and continue to be reflected in the following projects: (1) two works — Of Agency and Abstraction and Apertures — written for RAJAS, an ensemble I lead, and which embodies a convergence of cross-cultural improvisational approaches; (2) a handful of commissions of through-composed music — for chamber ensemble, string quartet, and for myself as a multi-instrumentalist, respectively; and (3) a nascent, open-format compositional project titled Mangal, which invites interdisciplinary perspectives and possibilities into my musical palette and score design. Reflections and analyses are interspersed with excerpts of the creative works, engaging community-based discourses as well as an array of academic fields— spanning critical improvisation studies, queer of color critique, and performance studies— to comment on musical process and historical and contemporary resonances. In excavating the core themes above, I address my fluid positionality across musical/cultural contexts, my ongoing work with scores, iterative performances, and recordings within an unruly aesthetic network, and the challenges of tracing emergent possibilities with instrument, body, voice, and archival elements. The dissertation aims to spark novel networks of theory and praxis around my music and its social and philosophical undercurrents.
  • 4 supplemental PDFs
  • 1 supplemental audio file
Cover page: Time, Virtuosity, and Ethics Otherwise: Queer Resonances for Diasporic PlayCreative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2025)

The Art of the Unheard: A Subject-Oriented Approach to Sound and Music explores listening as an active, creative, and fundamentally subjective practice that challenges conventional, object-oriented conceptions of music and sound. By positioning the listener at the core of sonic experience, this dissertation introduces “subject-oriented” musicking, emphasizing that music and sound are not passive stimuli but active engagements shaped profoundly by individual contexts, cultures, environments, and personal histories.

Drawing upon interdisciplinary frameworks from phenomenology, cognitive science, ethnography, philosophy, neuroscience, and sound studies, this research demonstrates how listeners co-create musical meaning through embodied and relational experiences. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros's practice of Deep Listening and Salomé Voegelin's philosophical insights, it reconceptualizes listening as a dynamic co-creation—a vibrational and existential encounter rather than a mere perceptual reception.

Central to this approach is empathetic omniscience, a mode of listening that privileges subjective embodiment and multi-perspectival awareness, enabling individuals to inhabit diverse sonic realities. This dissertation thus redefines the very question “What is it to listen?” as a practice of becoming, rooted in physicality, memory, anticipation, and imaginative presence.

Incorporating theoretical exploration alongside compositional and technological practice, the dissertation argues for embracing the multiplicity and relationality of sonic experiences. It outlines innovative compositional frameworks and technologies designed to foster empathetic, situated listening environments, where spatialization, embodiment, and intersubjectivity guide the listener’s sonic journey.

Ultimately, The Art of the Unheard responds to and builds upon an existing paradigm shift that centers listener subjectivity within musical experience. By highlighting and extending this shift, this work reaffirms listening as an active, creative, and transformative human endeavor with profound artistic and experiential potential.

    Cover page: The Art of the Unheard: A Subject‐Oriented Approach to Sound and Music
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