Hi guys,
A question came up in my academy about who are the currently active contemporary composers that work (mostly) in SuperCollider, and I came up stumped… Would love to collect a list here of people that identify as such! Feel free to list yourself or just someone you know about… I’m mainly looking for what would fit into a more academic “art music” type of genre, but anything adjacent is also very interesting.
The wiki is a good resource for this as well
A troublesome question is: what defines “academic ‘art music’”?
For instance, Paul Lansky is an academic composer (who, I believe, has used SuperCollider – at least he was on the old mailing list) whose work eschews the mannerisms and “signifiers of seriousness” that mark a large proportion of computer music conference concert fare.
Does “academic style” prefer fixed media over live performance or generative or improvised approaches? If it does prefer fixed media, then I’m out; if it doesn’t, then I’m in (except that I use diatonic modes in my work, uh oh, and pulse, oh dear, that’s not very academic).
Or, to what extent does academic electronic music favor rupture over continuity? Based on ICMC last fall, I’d have to say, rather heavily favors rupture. Is that a necessary assumption?
A whole lot of interesting topics here (which maybe belong in another thread – wouldn’t mind if mods felt that this post should be split off to another topic).
hjh
academic “art music” type of genre
In my personal experience – even at university! – the term “academic music” is usually meant as an insult (dry and boring) 
No composer I know would label themselves as “academic”.
There’s a lot of dance music in academia these days. Is it now academic music? When does it become it? What ‘academic’ traits does it have?
True story – at KEAMS 2013, I read a composer’s bio that was all, “I studied with these people and won all these prizes”… and that’s exactly what the music sounded like: the aesthetic had no purpose except to win prizes, and the bio accurately reflected this. It was (sadly) easy to predict what the music would sound like. I think this is the sense of “academic” you’re suggesting here.
It’s natural for subcultures to emerge, and “academic art music” can be viewed as a subculture. In that case, then, there are artistic features that are “in” or “out” of that subculture. Those features either are or aren’t important to the original question in this thread (but were important enough to mention from the start). So I was just teasing a couple of those out.
hjh
I understand “academicism” as simply the denial of art, not necessarily having to do with universities. Art’s intrinsic value in contradiction with a neoliberal economic framework is a much more negative force, by the way.
When I hear the word in those contexts, I don’t put too much weight on it, since the problem is much larger.
The last testament on artistic freedom, I believe, still is Breton, Rivera, and Trotsky’s FIARI / Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art. Nothing changed since its publication, and nothing stated the problem so clearly.
The problems are rarely the words, nothing has ever been achieved fighting against words 
My understanding of academic “art music” is music that has at least one or all of the following characteristics
In computer-based electroacoustic music, some of these tendencies seem to emerge as compositional workflows using specific programming languages such as SuperCollider, Max, Csound, pd, or other utilities that may require expertise (often including coding skills) to use, rather than conventional popular software programs.
Little old me, https://youtu.be/tRFPDGTPHSk that is a part of my PhD.
Beautiful stuff @jordan!
Point taken, the wording was a bit more clumsy than I’d normally allow myself. What I (probably) mean when I say the words art music and academic is music that’s primarily research-based and exploratory; stuff that’s going into possibly new sonic territories and driven by some personal obsession. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is a very large bag… Any definition of anything within the arts is in any case going to run into trouble very soon, which is why I usually don’t even bother too much anymore trying to put stuff into solid categories. I’m more interested in the experiential aspects than possible post hoc explanations. Obviously there’s a place for analysis, but this will mostly be reductive to the point of near meaninglessness.
@prko some of us would think that what you define was true 50 years ago… but maybe my view of academia is too progressive. As for my view of contemporaneity… anyway.
@kflak the other part of your question that is ambiguous is around the concept of ‘mostly’ - again most people I know who do inspiring stuff rarely stick to one tool. There are exceptions, but the beauty of the last 20 years of progress is that there is easier ways to navigate the many angles in and out of various platforms and methods of musicking with machines… which is not to say that certain solutions are not favouring certain outcomes. there are cool papers on this.
Anyway, is live coding academic and/or art enough, I don’t know, but that whole scene seems to strive on SC or stuff built upon it.
I have almost no connection with music departments at universities any more. I would like to hear your opinion. It can broaden my perspective and update my outdated views or biases.
Wow this is a beautiful question… and a complicated answer to give!
I would say that a lot of departments would still fit within your definition/list. Then there are a lot of departments that have started to teach popular musicking and musicology and techniques, after they started to do the same with jazz. The most progressive did that 40 years ago so that opened a door to other departments who tried to widen the definition of what today’s music is and should be. And that is ruffling a lot of feathers. I have on my social media feeds a lot of people who have a nostalgia of a moment when they imagined a clear line was made between high and low art. Funnily, they are almost exclusively people from the former
In the meantime, some of us try to uncork student’s ears and brains, and listen to them as they will uncork ours. Things are moving slowly in a more inclusive and diverse view of what makes today’s musicking beyond the very few commercially viable modes of music making.
I hope this non-answer sounds more positive than my original post - re-reading it comes across as more blunt than I wish.
Orestis Karamanlis: https://orestiskaramanlis.net/
My CuePlayer quark is jointly created with Orestis and he is also using Cactus.
We have a paper on composing for mixed media of which CuePlayer is the implementation: Composing and Performing Mixed Electronic Works - Archive ouverte HAL
Check his music at: Orestis Karamanlis
EDIT: Didn’t pay attention to who posted the question and just now recognised your name from GitHub 
So you probably know about all that 
Hi @Dionysis!
Wasn’t aware of that paper. Thanks for the pointer ! And, of course, thanks for the link to Orestis’ music.
True story – at KEAMS 2013, I read a composer’s bio that was all, “I studied with these people and won all these prizes”… and that’s exactly what the music sounded like: the aesthetic had no purpose except to win prizes, and the bio accurately reflected this. It was (sadly) easy to predict what the music would sound like. I think this is the sense of “academic” you’re suggesting here.
There’s also a type of music which is truly experimental, where a composer innovates with new techniques. Which in and of themselves may be fascinating, even while the music itself is deadly tedious.
Something that annoys me (and I think you’ve mentioned this in the past James) is when you’ll see a piece which would be radically better if the composer just learned to use basic tools of the trade. Compression, eq, mixing… This seems to be a trait of a lot of ‘academic’ music unfortunately.
In computer-based electroacoustic music, some of these tendencies seem to emerge as compositional workflows using specific programming languages such as SuperCollider, Max, Csound, pd, or other utilities that may require expertise (often including coding skills) to use, rather than conventional popular software programs.
Any ‘platform’ will have things it is good at, and the cliches of that platform will reflect that. The cliches of Ableton are repetitive (and dull) looping music. The cliches of Modular music are bleeps and bloops that never really go anywhere. The cliches of programming music are that we tend to get caught up in our own cleverness. Most music is mediocre, because composing music is really hard. The miracle is that anyone ever makes anything good.