of all digital technologies, they have lost some of their original magic.

In the post-
digital viewpoint, digital technology is not seen as a pure tool, but as including its
cultural implications.

The starting point for postdigital upheavals is digitality and its properties of
computability, discretization and fragmentation. But the implications meant here
emerge only in the subsequent step: in the broad use and cultural integration of
these technologies. Consequently, a number of elementary reference points are now
available for social and artistic disposal. Central are questions of manipulability
(this being simplified and more strongly established by digital tools) and connected
to this, of authenticity. Easy access to processing and synthesis techniques as well
as to large amounts of data has enabled the creation of qualitatively new potentials
here (and also democratized their availability). 5 6 Also affected are representation
in general and of physical bodies in concrete terms. A changed depiction and
reception in the context of the postdigital shift goes hand in hand with virtualization
and leads to an increased decoupling of original and image, as well as cause and
effect. As a consequence, aspects of body perception, identity, authenticity and
social interaction are affected.

Parallel to social development in the age of digitalization, the use of electronic

media in the arts – and also specifically in art music – has changed. In multi-
media music, electronic content and processes are, by now, rarely an end unto
themselves; rather, they are used representatively – i.e.exemplarily, descriptively
or symbolically. Comparable to the stagnation of material progress in instrumental
composition 7 8 , there has been a change in the way digital tools and content are
used. Sound effects, projections, synthesis programs and transformations are,
for the most part, established techniques that are increasingly seldom sufficient
as the sole raison d'être for a work. Then again, the creative field of research
is all the more diverse, searching for forms of presentation and interaction that
discursively deal with our changed reality of life, and therefore, with digital tools
and representations.

5 Cornell, Lauren and Halter, Ed: Hard Reboot: An Introduction To Mass Effect,
Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 20.
6 Weibel, Peter: ‘The Post-Media Condition’, in: Metamute (2006),
online: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/lab/post-media-condition (Retrieved: 20.7.2019).
7 Lehmann, Harry: Gehaltsästhetik [ Salary Ethics ], Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2016, p. 197ff
8 Lehmann, Harry: Die digitale Revolution der Musik [ The Digital Revolution of Music ],
Mainz: Schott Verlag, 2012, p. 92.

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1.2 Personal Motivation
Ever since I owned a computer as a teenager, the interplay between analogue
and digital content has been a central element both in my private life and in my
artistic work. My musical (and artistic) activity has always been characterized
by integration or interweaving of electronic content and techniques as well as
analogue material. Since the beginnings of my compositional work, making music
has meant cutting, collaging and editing samples and audio tracks. My socialization
is characterized by an electronic production environment. Nevertheless, the
analogue, wild, spontaneous, gestural, direct has always played an important role
in my life. I love being performative, sleeping outdoors in the open air or playing with
acoustic instruments. These opposite poles have always driven me to produce art.
So, in the beginning, I mixed field recordings with electronic simulations of nature,
composed acoustic music albums and then, in the course of time, deconstructed
one track after the other, or integrated electronic performance setups into free jazz.
The friction between these contrasting elements and the resulting and questioning
of each one inspired me: to see the electronic as an analogue object and to
simulate the analogue through the electronic. I wanted to represent the virtual, the
constructed and the artificial in a setting that was not technical, cold and clear. The
digital should always shimmer through, through a tangible, warm, human surface.
This central duality contains a number of ambiguities that are either connected to
it or directly result from it. These include aspects of authenticity and physicality,
for example. Over the last twenty years, this activity has evolved from an intuitive
approach to an increasingly consciously reflective approach. Last but not least,
the formulation of this text represents a further step in the concretization of these
aspects.

1.3 Postdigital Change in Perspective as a Compositional Strategy

If one understands the postdigital shift as a change in the perception of digital
content, or as a reorientation of position in relation to digitality, the question
arises as to how art can, or should, behave respectively. I find this issue
extremely relevant in the context of multimedia composition. Due to the social
connotation of digital media, I would even go so far, in the sense of a postdigital
imperative, as to say that these connotations can no longer be blanked out. The
implications of digital technologies have become an integral part of the digital itself.
An artistic examination of this range of themes offers the chance to make these
aspects sensually perceptible and directly tangible. Because the consequences
of post-digitality particularly influenced perception, experience and also physical
interactions, it is obvious that this level should also be dealt with. The technique of
perspective-comparison I have proposed should enable the possibility to compare
different modes of perception and interaction. In this way, opposing modes
of presentation and communication are juxtaposed and thus made tangible.
By this, I understand the process of visualization. 9 It is intended to bring into
9 In the German text the word “Sichtbarmachung” is used, which does not only refer to how something
is visualised–but rather, that it is visualised.

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 focus those consequences of digitalization which are invisible, unnoticed or
disregarded. As there is a noted disappearance of technology in the wake of post-
digitality, art can offer space here, to once again make characteristics an object
of observation. In my own artistic practice, I realize this approach essentially
through the construction of immersive settings with technical contents. So, firstly
scenarios are constructed, which can then be deconstructed and contrasted
with another perspective. The continuous comparison of opposing modes of
observation provides the space for the audience to form its own opinion. In this
sense, my compositions contain no clear moral conclusions, but instead, offer
an experimental setting that challenges the audience to take a stand. I regard
this process as artistic research since it explicitly involves neither illustrative nor
descriptive works of art, but rather, experimental setups with an open outcome.
Many of my pieces are setups that deal with digitally-mediated perception. This
enables the sensual experience of the technical content and then the evaluation
by the audience (and by myself). These approaches are exploratory, in the truest
sense of the word, as I want to learn, together with the audience, something
about the changing modes of perception and interaction in the postdigital age.

1.4 Thesis Structure

The presented text is divided into two main parts. In the first part, I describe my
compositional strategy and its contextual classification (Chapters 2–5). In the
second part, I present a collection of essays and magazine articles about the
thematic field that I have written in recent years (Chapter 6). Therefore, I will first
present my approach to postdigital techniques in contemporary composition and
place it in the context of cultural studies. I will exemplify and substantiate this with
various shorter contributions.
Initially, I will introduce the terms “post-digital”, “post-internet” and “new
aesthetic”(Chapter 2). Originating with a description of the basic digital
characteristics (Chapter 2.1), their consequences are explained and systematized
in the context of the postdigital turn (Chapter 2.2). As a central point, the digital
error as an artistic tool is also discussed in this section (Chapter 2.2.5). A further
direct consequence of digitalization, the term “post-internet” is used to describe
the repercussions of widespread distribution of the internet, first socially and
then artistically (Chapter 2.3). The “new aesthetic” proposed by James Bridle is
a collective term that attempts to describe the impact of digital techniques on the
visual language of the present day (Chapter 2.4). The visibility of technology itself
and its technical influence on society are discussed as central points in this chapter.
This summary represents the content basis and motivation for my own work.
Subsequently, I will situate my artistic activity within the context of artistic
research (Chapter 3). First, I will outline the basic characteristics and issues of
artistic research (Chapter 3.1), focusing on the production of knowledge through
sensual insight, the aesthetics of production, and the interplay between the
researcher/subject and the object under investigation. I will then correlate these
approaches and observations with my own practice (Chapter 3.2). The development

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