ABSTRACT

The etymology of the verb 'to mediate' can be traced back to the late Latin verb mediatus, which means 'placed in the middle'. The concepts of opaque and transparent mediation draw upon 'Opacity and Transparence in Pictorial Representation' and 'Mimesis and Description' by the French philosopher Louis Marin. A listener's sense of a particular act of mediation as transparent or opaque also varies over time, place and musical genre. As listeners grow accustomed to the constant alternation between dropouts and sound clips, the music begins to activate their musical expectations in this regard, expecting sound to succeed silence and vice versa. Though the vocal sequence is in fact the same in each of the tracks, the 'Break' amplitude graph also reflects the drum track. The dashes mark places where the sample is cut and separated by an inserted dropout. 'Break' demonstrates that the cut-and-paste tool is used as a compositional tool as well as an editing tool.