Why and how do contemporary artists reinterpret musical aesthetics they have never directly experienced, using nostalgia as a way to imagine the music of tomorrow?
Have we stopped imagining the future when it seems so uncertain and troubling? Today, we are witnessing a growing societal pessimism, caused not only by the many limits of our capitalist system, but also by the rise of the internet and streaming, which have profoundly transformed the way we create, consume, and sell music.
Through music, nostalgia may have become at once a way to imagine alternative futures, a way to find comfort in past eras when the future still carried more optimistic possibilities, but also a tool for capitalizing on music — for instance by building myths around a supposed “golden age of music.”
Audio technologies now allow us to access sound with such fidelity that they erase its history and context of production. While “lo-fidelity” modes of production can summon nostalgia, they might also open new paths for imagining the music of tomorrow.
Master’s thesis – DNSEP Sound Design at Beaux-Arts du Mans @talm_lemans, in partnership with @ircam_paris