ABSTRACT
As many of the chapters in this book show, technology and culture cannot be separated from one another in early 21st-century daily life. New media technologies shape the way we perceive and interact with the world around us: since they guide our perception and have acquired their own agency, they are also actors in the networked structure of our day-to-day activities. Digital music is an interesting example of these two aspects of technological mediation: not only do we hear this music through the digital media of keyboards, samplers and MIDI – and we might download it in mp3 format via P2P networks – we also interact with it with the help of digital agents such as iPods, Internet radio and club turntables. The lyrics to Apoptygma Berzerk’s ‘Kathy’s Song (Come Lie Next to Me)’ quoted above ponder the possibility that technology has even acquired its own creative agency: it is Machine, not God or man, that created music, and Machine that observes the human perception of and interaction with it.
