Somatechnics and Popular Music in Digital Contexts

Book excerpt: This book is a celebration and explication of the body in the world and the ways that our body situates our consciousness as a lived formation, one which is oriented by the experience of music listening. The book examines the relationship between bodies, technics, and music, using the theoretical tools of somatechnics. Somatechnics calls for a recognition of the body in the world as an artefact wrapped up, entangled and produced by the materialities of that world. It traverses discussions on materiality, live music, touchscreen media, the personal computer, and new modes of listening such as virtual reality technologies. Finally, the book looks at music itself as a kind of technology that generates new modes of bodily being.