Research presentation Örebro

24 April 2024

I was invited to the musicology department at Musikhögskolan, Örebro University, to talk about my doctoral thesis and current research on music, nature and AI. My research on contemporary music and culture is situated at the intersection of the Sixth mass extinction and the Fourth industrial revolution, both which are products and problems of late capitalism, globalisation, and neoliberal culture. Covering a whole lot of material, I argued for why some composers and music work actively, ethically, and aesthetically to respond to these challenges, such as John Luther Adams’ music with environmental themes, or the Swedish composers Maria Lithell Flyg, Marie Samuelsson and Karin Rehnqvist. There are also many aspects of contemporary musical culture that are part of the destructive aspects of our current era, using vast amounts of natural resources and human labour for technological advancements in AI, for example. To answer to these problems, musicology needs to reach towards critical theory and particularly posthumanist perspectives to understand the interrelations between music, technology, and the Anthropocene.

This illustration was mainly a tool for myself to understand where I position certain composers, companies, and ideas in relation to the “Problem”.