UC Santa Cruz

“A Complex and Interactive Network: Carla Scaletti, the Kyma System, and the Kyma User Community” is a study of composer and computer scientist Carla Scaletti, the Kyma music programming language, and the Kyma user community. Chapter One is a historical and biographical study of Scaletti and the creation of Kyma. I examine how experiences throughout Scaletti’s life and education as a musician, composer, and computer scientist, as well as the technology available at the time shaped Kyma’s design. Chapter Two is an analysis of Scaletti’s musical output, which not only sheds light on Scaletti’s unique approach to composition, it also demonstrates how Scaletti’s compositional philosophy influenced Kyma. Chapter Three is an ethnography of the Kyma user community. I study the social, cultural, and technological forces that shaped the formation and growth of the Kyma community as well as the mechanisms that enabled a mutually influential relationship between Kyma users and Scaletti, which indicates how Kyma users contribute to the development of Kyma. For this study I employed an interdisciplinary methodology that heavily relied on participant-observation ethnography at in-person Kyma user gatherings and online.