Towards a response-able com-position practice: entangling with humans, more-than-humans and materials

Abstract

This dissertation proposes an artistic research model that springs from a socio-musical imagination for composition. The research investigates and articulates various relational possibilities and positions of the poietic process by knotting various agents (human, more-than-human and material) together in a co-authored, multivalent compositional space. Possible realizations for response-able composition practices, follow various feminist, non-anthropocentric, and new-materialist strands of thought, focusing on concepts proposed by Karen Barad, Donna Haraway and the ensemble Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari. The Response-able Com-position model offer engaged practices for learning to live and negotiate in a world of multiplicity and difference; offering recipes for making with others through multivalent socio-sonic and embodied sound engagements, which have potential to cultivate aware, caring and thoughtful processes for our sound practices.