Techno Music and Techno People in the Digital Cave

JAVIER ECHEVERRÍA

1. It is neither appropriate nor productive to compare so-called “Information and Communications Technology (ICT)” to the machines of the industrial age or to traditional crafts. We must make the distinction between technique, technology, and technoscience.

2. ICT is technoscience. They not only transform nature and things but also language, including musical language. Given the mental and socially constituted function of diverse human language, we must conceptually make the distinction between music and techno music and between people and techno people.

3. Techno music creates new musical instruments, instrumentalists, stages, and musical performances in the network. Techno music has taken the music out of its scenographic sancta sanctorum (squares, theaters, concert halls, vinyl record players, etc.).

4. But the main innovation is (techno)linguistics and therefore systemic. Musical techno language is designed by companies and programmers. It is then used by composers and played by hybrid people/technological entities on the diverse musical stages of the telematic networks (digital cave).

5. As an example, we will discuss the humanoid Hatsune Miku, created in 2007 by Crypton Future Media to great success in Japan and China. Miku appears as a hologram and uses the synthesizing technologies Vocaloid 1, 2, 3, and 4. She has been singing in English since 2013. This summer, she will make her debut “in person” in Mexico City and several cities in the United States. Since Hatsune Miku is a virtual diva who can sing classical opera, a French composer wrote and premiered an opera about her in 2015, with traditional instruments and scenery. In this work, the protagonist ends up committing suicide in the face of the drama of being or not being a person: solely techno phenomenal. The myth of the born-again techno musical Platonic cave.

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