Presentation

The Global Composition 2026, Dieburg, Germany, 3-6 September 2026

Description

This paper proposes to use the atomist physics of Epicurus as a basis for a post-human ontology consistent with ecological imperatives. In Epicurean physics the swerve, an infinitesimal deviation from laminar motion, acts to generate epiphenomena. This places uncertainty at the heart of the world, prefiguring quantum mechanics. Michel Serres has used Epicurus and Archimedes as the basis for a liquid ontology that refutes essentialism by foregrounding processes such as flow and vorticity. This framework will be used to contrast electroacoustic (acousmatic and musique concrète) works with environmental compositions. The former uses spectromorphology to transform sounds far from their origins, in the process demonstrating the dominion of the composer over their resources. On the other hand environmental compositions such as David Dunn’s Chaos & The Emergent Mind of the Pond foreground sound sources as affects of non-human autonomies. This provides an alternative to those Anthropocentric imperatives that regard Nature as a standing reserve of material awaiting our use. Liquid listening understands that the phenomenal world is already emplaced, already sounding before us, as part of an ongoing presence. Agency is relocated from the human perceiver to the thing being perceived. In this way liquid listening provides a framework by which we might meet the challenges of the Anthropocene.