ABSTRACT
The role of sound production points to a second bodily extension: the sound of music itself is something that extends and permeates bodies through both enveloping them and blurring boundaries such as to deny their autonomy. Prostheses and bodily extensions are now everyday occurrences: nonhuman elements are routinely incorporated into human bodies in medicine; bodily presence is complicated daily by presence online; near ubiquitous access to digital and communication networks is afforded by portable technologies such as smartphones. Autonomy from constitutive contexts – especially material, bodily contexts – is not only an apparent characteristic of information: classic claims about the autonomy of modernist artworks are also well-established. A number of commentators have suggested that this complexity not only presents a challenge to the performer but that this challenge defamiliarises the performer’s conventional actions.
