@ -17,8 +17,12 @@ Art isn’t inherently or universally communicative. What it means and how it la
.[
Fell 79-82
.]
As sound art philosopher, Mark Fell, points out, “we cannot unlearn our own cognitive development.” What we bring to art — our habits of perception, our social training — shapes what we’re even capable of receiving from it.
.[
Fell 338
.]
.PP
Art connects people who share certain values and ways of thinking, creating a space for shared inquiry rather than universal truths. But honestly, above all that, art should be beautiful first. The audience should be able to feel it before they’re thinking about it if you care about reaching anyone. Mark Fell, <signal phrase>, says, "what's the point of art in which you need to read an essay in order to understand? I think this speaks more to the curator's ambitions and an industry that has fully internalized a contentist agenda, than it does about the shortcomings of 'non-expert audiences'.
Art connects people who share certain values and ways of thinking, creating a space for shared inquiry rather than universal truths. But honestly, above all that, art should be beautiful first. The audience should be able to feel it before they’re thinking about it if you care about reaching anyone. Mark Fell, puts it best, "what's the point of art in which you need to read an essay in order to understand? I think this speaks more to the curator's ambitions and an industry that has fully internalized a contentist agenda, than it does about the shortcomings of 'non-expert audiences'.
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Fell 94
.]
@ -36,14 +40,14 @@ Convolution – Because it does more than simulate space—it can completely rec
.LISTEND
.PP
IDM has a unique role in pushing experimental sound design into the mainstream, raising the bar for what listeners expect and appreciate. Landmark albums like Aphex Twin’s *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* shifted cultural attention toward texture, timbre, and sonic detail in unprecedented ways. I hope to reclaim and continue that legacy. IDM’s potential lies not only in innovation but in its ability to challenge and engage a broad audience, encouraging deeper listening and fresh perspectives on sound.
IDM has a unique role in pushing experimental sound design into the mainstream, raising the bar for what listeners expect and appreciate. Landmark albums like Aphex Twin’s \*[SLANT]Selected Ambient Works Volume II\*[SLANTX] shifted cultural attention toward texture, timbre, and sonic detail in unprecedented ways. I hope to reclaim and continue that legacy. IDM’s potential lies not only in innovation but in its ability to challenge and engage a broad audience, encouraging deeper listening and fresh perspectives on sound.
.PP
This book is aimed at intermediate electronic music composers working within the IDM tradition, which generally doesn’t rely on formal music theory—and often for good reasons. Personally, I don’t use theory in my compositions, and IDM rarely builds its complexity through traditional music theory. Instead, that complexity often comes from experimental sound design, processing, and texture. Overly elaborate musical structures can actually get in the way—dense harmonies and melodies tend to clash with detailed timbres, muddying the results. Many Boards of Canada tracks, for instance, use simple modal ideas—often just Mixolydian or pentatonic scales—but achieve emotional and sonic depth through dense processing. That is to say, complexity doesn’t have to come from synthesis itself.
.PP
By contrast, Mark Fell’s work exemplifies algorithmic rigor, using formal systems to explore how sound structures behave under constraints. He has also criticized the way some artists use data sonification—particularly when they map arbitrary musical scales onto non-musical sources like plant data—as if those mappings were intrinsic. A scale isn’t inherent to a plant’s structure; it’s a projection, a metaphor. This kind of aesthetic imposition can distort the reality of the source and flatten its complexity. By contrast, Ryoji Ikeda’s work with data sonification embraces abstraction more honestly. Rather than anthropomorphizing data, Ikeda uses raw binary streams—digital noise, sine tones, pulses—to let the system speak in its own language. His work doesn’t interpret data; it reveals its materiality. You feel it as a technological presence, not a musical narrative. Though this book doesn’t focus on algorithmic composition or sonification, these practices still inform IDM’s ecosystem of sound art, especially when they’re approached with this kind of formal clarity and respect for the data.
\".[
\"Fell <which page is the critique on conventional data sonification?>
\".]
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Fell 89
.]
.PP
If you’re struggling with basics like melody, harmony, or rhythm and want explicit tools to develop those, traditional music theory can help—but keep in mind IDM typically stays simple on the theory side while exploring rich sonic detail.
