On the Ethics of Instruments

Vintage Materialities in Music

July 28, 2023

Henrik Frisk - henrik.frisk@kmh.se

Historically informed design of sound synthesis

A multidisciplinary, structured approach to the digitisation and exploration of electronic music heritage

Historically informed sound synthesis

A collection of electronic instruments [1] used by composers in Sweden during the 1960's and 70's collected by the Swedish Performing Arts Agency (Musikverket) and archived by the Performing Arts Museum (Scenkonstmuseet).

Toward a new Organology

"from a flexible variety of possible control configurations, the synthesizer eventually stabilised into a keyboard instrument"

(John Tresch and Emily I. Dolan, 2013)

Rendez-Vous

Karl Erik Welin: Rendez-Vous 1963 by Théodore E Libèr

Foucault: Practices of freedom

"Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection" (Foucault, M. and Rabinow, P. and Hurley, R., 1997 p. 284).

The care of the self as practice

When you take care of the body you do not take care of the self. The self is not clothing, tools, or possessions; It is to be found in the principle that uses these tools, a principle not of the body of the soul. You have to worry about your soul–that is the principal activity for caring for yourself. The care of the self is the care of the activity and not the care of the soul-as-substance.

(Foucault, 1997, Subjectivity and truth)

Ethical specificitites

Analytical perspective

  • The object in an of itself
  • The situation when a musician engages with object

Henrik Frisk