UC San Diego

A warming critical reception and the appearance of computers within musicmaking domains that have traditionally been solely occupied by acoustic instruments is evidence that the computer is on a trajectory towards becoming a fully integrated musical instrument within both academic and popular musics. "Fractured bodies: gesture, pleasure and politics in contemporary computer music performance" opens the question of whether or not the receptive discomfort computer music performance has struggled against is the result of a conceptual error of function over form, or whether it is simply the result of historical bias and an awkward creative adolescence. I explore this question by providing a wide perspective on how computer music and post-digital performers are rewriting the well-understood historical role of the musical body, and how this situates the computer as an ideal site from which to critically reexamine the issues of musical gesture, intentionality, reception, and cultural capital