ECCOWARE: music as virtual aesthetic environment
Creators: name: DOWER, Jeremy
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 360503
subject: Digital and electronic media art
classificationCode: 360504
subject: Interactive media
classificationCode: 500301
subject: Aesthetics

description: The aim of this research was to explicate the methods and thought processes involved in my creative practice and to present the new concepts, creative methods, and creative products that emerged through this project of creative experimentation and reflection. All research findings have come from a trans-disciplinary perspective of practice, incorporating music production, graphic art, painting, printmaking, and 3D printing. The research builds on 20 years of professional creative practice, across multiple disciplines, but is not only an account of a pre-existing, or static practice. This PhD was also a tool used to aid in the reinvention of my personal creative identity.
The creative focus and practical output of the research is a series of three Eccoware: These tangible music vessels are essentially novel reconfigurations of the various components of conventional, physical music media. Each example incorporates original music recordings, graphic art prints, 3d printed objects, as well as an embedded MP3 decoder, or a USB chip (UDP flash drive). The aim was to create novel physical objects, in limited editions, small enough to distribute through existing (DIY and independent) music industry channels. Eccoware was designed to be experienced in an intimate, domestic context ¿ a use case modelled on the contemporary consumption of physical music media. The research casts the physical object, as well as its visual and tactile materials, not as merely supplementary materials, but as essential constituents of the aesthetic experience of music.

The overarching philosophical theme of the research: music as virtual aesthetic environment, was formulated as a means to articulate my understanding of the creative process, and addresses the question what is music? The concept draws from territories of philosophy, aesthetics, neurology (via the humanities), and affect (via ethnomusicology). It synthesises Iris Murdoch's concept of disunity, Gilles Deleuze's philosophical understanding of virtuality, Gabriel Starr's neurological model of aesthetic experience, and Anahid Kassabian's interrelated concepts of ubiquitous music and inattentive listening. Though crucially, the virtual aesthetic environment concept pivots away from the perspective of reception - inherent in the theories of Murdoch, Starr, and Kassabian - to my own view from within the practice of creative production.

Another significant influence on the research was Vaporwave: An online music and visual arts subculture, that deals with themes of obsolescence, decay, cultural alienation, and political disaffection (through aestheticised nostalgia and clandestine methods of appropriation). The examination of Vaporwave music, culture, and visual-art was instrumental in the development of the virtual aesthetic environment concept. The Eccoware project was, in part, a product of research into the prevalence of physical media consumption in Vaporwave culture. Furthermore, experimentation with Vaporwave aesthetics and methods led to an array of new production techniques and concepts, each of which has informed the conception, design, and production of Eccoware and its various audio, visual, and tactile components.