Introduction: music practice - reaching out with technology

This introductory chapter starts with a look at evolving terminology in the field of what is loosely called ‘electronic music’. Terminology was originally bound into a very canonic view of history: musique concrète, tape music and elektronische Musik. To these terms have steadily been added computer music, electroacoustic music, acousmatic music. However live electronics is both the least defined and the most progressive (even subversive) practice. Terms derived from more popular musics added their vocabulary, too: electronica, IDM, glitch and so forth. Then we might add a group of practices variously described as Sonic Art, Sound Art, Sound Sculpture, Sound Installation. Such descriptions have varying emphases on materials, technical means and compositional approaches. New terms are introduced while existing ones subtly shift application. Emerging in the 21st century are new practices based on expanded notions of behaviour enabled by new human-computer interfaces. The second part introduces the specific topics and individual chapters of the book, focusing on how technology allows a ‘reaching out’, based on new multidisciplinary practices enabled by ‘smart’ means, fast AV networks, and new interfaces to neuro-scientific approaches. Such reaching out is literal and prosthetic (immersive and global), but also social (issues of exclusion), as well as further enabling to those whose physical capabilities may be limited.