20 - Technologies and the Serial Attitude

Summary

Serialism is often canonically pinned to a few mid-century acoustic pieces, but this textbook definition is unnecessarily narrow. Would it be possible to consider computer music, EDM, and hip hop as serial, in some way? This essay argues that a ‘serial attitude’ emerges in the dialectic between analogue and digital ways of musicking. Electronic technologies – from generators to drum machines – crucially mediate such attitudes and behaviours. In sum, serial attitudes shape and are shaped by technological affordances. Case studies include the analogue electronic studio of the WDR, early computer music laboratories at Utrecht, Bell Labs, and Columbia-Princeton, and the vernacular musics of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Afrika Bambaataa. I explore resonances between these disparate scenes, while also arguing for their particularity. This essay rethinks serialism as a practice imbricated with technology, extending beyond the narrow confines of high-art academic institutions.