In presenting Obsession as artistic research, electroacoustic music composition is used as a methodology to investigate intertextual relationships between experimental music works that develop around the idea of virtual or immaterial instruments. The fact that this exposition was produced in tandem with much of the sounds heard in the piece challenges the traditional idea of an objective scholarly distance as being a necessary condition for producing research. This idea of author experience is supported by other recent writings that explore music composition as a research methodology, which suggest how the composer is uniquely positioned to discuss narrative in electroacoustic music and present their sound work as research in which compositional decisions expose latent features that resist traditional analysis. Obsession is premised on the notion that effects processing, such as elaborate delay, looping, and audio filtering, can recreate and even exaggerate characteristic performance techniques that are associated with the guitar. It is also part of my ongoing fascination with using digital audio artifacts and effects processing as source material capable of expressing the conceptual bases of a composition. In Obsession, the interrelationship between the acoustic guitar and software and sound synthesis techniques affirms the status of the guitar as a uniquely electroacoustic instrument – one that moves between acting as a found object for abstract or textural electronic sounds and an instrument with associated performance tropes that can be used as rhetorical devices to convey virtuosity or point to specific genre practices. As a creative presentation of artistic research, I hope that this work shares knowledge about instrument synthesis as a historical trend in electroacoustic music and draws others to speculate about how AI/ML might fit into a post-acousmatic music. Ultimately, Obsession explores how composing fixed media can be a compelling approach for thinking about our relationships with instruments and how we can rethink liveness in a digital music context.
[Image 9: excerpt of digital audio workstation session showing the juxtaposition of sound files representing different kinds of virtual guitar sounds through the use of IRCAM's RAVE plugin and Native Instruments FM8 software. Playing with sonic referentiality while using sound synthesis techniques like FM and chords, which are marked in the item names (e.g., B9 refers to pitches Bb, D, A, C, and D9 with the pitches D, F#, C, E). This links Obsession to the changing nature of acousmatic composition and the development of a post-acousmatic aesthetic]