ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenge of achieving effective musical expression and communication between performer(s) and audience in the performance of modern electronic music, especially popular electronic music. This chapter proposes that this effective musical expression and communication is reduced (or lost entirely) due to a lack of visual agency and liveness. The term “visual agency” is used along with the concept of intentionality to encompass three variants of causation: direct, indirect and virtual causation. Liveness is discussed from a performance perspective, and a performance model of liveness is proposed introducing the category of pseudo-live elements.
