Aesthetics of experimental electronic music

Abstract

This article aims to understand the aesthetics of experimental electronic music. It has three main objectives: 1) a return to an understanding of the aesthetics of listening to music prior to the emergence of electrical experimental music; 2) an understanding of the aesthetics of listening to electrical experimental music; and 3) a philosophical explanation. Catherine Malabou's concept of Brain Plasticity provides a summary for describing a new form of music perception that dismantled the power structure of traditional Western music cognition. In the past, listeners had to have prior experience in order to understand Western music styles. By using a form of knowledge that has a power structure to guide beauty from institutions or groups of people who used to have the power to decide what beauty or aesthetics should be. In this article it was found that the aesthetics of experimental music instead rejects the power structure of the traditional perception of the beauty of music. It reflects the transformative capacity of the brain through human perception, through which it is neither a single truth nor is it dependent on the determination of any one power mechanism. Rather, human perceptions change with the environment, which plays an important role in shaping the ever-changing human identity. Therefore, we cannot understand or perceive electrical experimental music forms using the perspective of traditional aesthetic cognition. This article is therefore a part of bringing a new understanding of the aesthetics of electric experimental music.