The relationship between technology and creativity in the analysis of electroacoustic music: A comparative study of Riverrun by Barry Truax and Imago by Trevor Wishart

Abstract

The TaCEM project (Technology and Creativity in Electroacoustic Music), conducted by the three authors of this article and funded by United Kingdom’s AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) for a duration of 30 months (2012-2015), investigates the relationship between contemporary compositional practices and new technological resources on the basis of eight case studies from the electroacoustic repertoire. The authors present a comparative study of two of these cases : Barry Truax’s Riverrun (1986/2004) and Trevor Wishart’s Imago (2002). Both composers are deeply involved in the development of digital tools for musical creation ; but their aesthetics, compositional methods and artistic outcomes contrast strongly. Riverrun was composed using real-time granular synthesis software, allowing for the generation of large textures and processes, while Imago is the assemblage of over a thousand of sound files, created with non-real-time software including many different processes for recorded sound. Both works have a common point : the use of a very short fragment of sound as the primary source for composition ; but Truax and Wishart’s compositional goals led to two works that develop these sources according to the very distinct creative and technological paths detailed through this article.