Ways of Feeling: the Transformation of Emotional Experience in Music

Faculty of Humanities Department of Media, Culture and Creative Arts Ways of Feeling: The Transformation of Emotional Experience in Music Listening in the Context of Digitisation Laura Glitsos This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Curtin University September 2016 Declaration To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgment has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. Signature: …………………………………………. Date: ………………………... 2 Abstract This dissertation argues that digitisation and Internet technologies are changing the emotional experience of popular music listening and explores the ways in which they may do so. I title this thesis ways of feeling to emphasise the relationship between music and affect as a product of time, place, and technological mediation. This research project is situated within the theoretical framework of affect theory. In the wake of Sara Ahmed’s work in The Cultural Politics of Emotions (2004), I approach affect in terms of “what sticks”: those contacts that leave impressions and work upon the outlines of what we delineate as the limit between I and Other. This is useful for an examination of music and affect because music can travel through the body, stick to the body and circulate around the body in ways that seem to cross the border of what is/is-not the body. I synthesise this approach with the field of somatechnics, in order to understand the body as always-already positioned in relation to the technological as well as in relation to the technosocial schema built through social and political forces. The somatechnical body enables a broader configuration of corporeal potentialities because it interrogates and confuses the limits between the human subject and non- human technologies, as well as pitching the body itself as technology. In terms of methods, I have conducted a cyberethnography of Internet users, in particular, users drawn from the online platform Reddit.com. I do not draw from this cyberethnography in a quantitative sense but rather a qualitative sense. That is, the theoretical position in this thesis was not drawn from the cyberethnographic research. Rather, the cyberethnographic research supports the weight of my suppositions and offers demonstrations and examples of the kinds of nuance I seek to provide. This thesis therefore describes and frames a listening culture that is in transition from building connections through traditional modes of listening associated with materiality and tangibility to building connections through sharing digital products on new media platforms. This transition is messy, non-linear, and at times, confounding. Different modes of consumption can and do exist simultaneously, however, they also produce conflicting emotions and destabilising effects in their differences. 3 AcKnowledgements I wish to acknowledge the following individuals who have helped shape, guide, and support the completion of this work over the past four years. My supervisor, Professor Suvendrini Perera, who has encouraged and supported me to strive for excellence in this work. My former supervisor Professor Jon Stratton, without whose help and extraordinary guidance I would not have pursued a doctoral project. Dr Robert Briggs and Dr Helen Merrick for their invaluable advice and direction in writing and editing this thesis. My partner, Cain Cressall, for his unwavering emotional support during the most difficult periods of writing and for always being there through both success and dejection. My family, Michael Glitsos, Patricia Glitsos, and William Glitsos, who always believed in my abilities and capacity to complete this dissertation—and for all the home-cooked meals and words of encouragement. To the Cressall Family, whose positivity and kindness during difficult times will forever be appreciated and valued. All my friends. In particular, I would like to thank Tammy Geddes, for the discussions on theory and concepts, and the hours and hours of talking that kept me going. I would like to thank Anthony Roe, who has believed in my writing ability for more than twenty years, and kept my spirit up with many special dinners and hours of laughter and jokes. I would like also like to thank Karl Hiller, who challenged me to never give up and never stop until I reached my goal. I offer my sincerest thanks to everyone who has supported my progress. This work would not be possible without all of you. 4 Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Introductory Chapter: Braiding A Rope ................................................................................................................ 6 Chapter One: The Specificity of Feeling ................................................................................................................ 31 Chapter Two: Bringing Touch to the Fore ........................................................................................................... 57 Chapter Three: The ‘Creative Listener’ ................................................................................................................. 82 Chapter Four: The Camera Phone in the Concert Space ............................................................................. 105 Chapter Five: Screen as Skin ................................................................................................................................... 125 Chapter Six: Vaporwave, Or, Music Optimised for Abandoned Malls ................................................... 143 Concluding Chapter: The Braided Rope ............................................................................................................. 167 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................................. 173 5 Introduction: Braiding A Rope “Undoubtedly, music is a play of mirrors in which every activity is reflected, defined, recorded, and distorted. If we look at one mirror, we see only an image of another.” (Attali 1985, 5) This dissertation argues that digitisation and Internet technologies are changing the emotional experience of popular music listening and explores the ways in which they may do so. My research objective emerged after reading consistent narratives about the changes taking place in relation to popular music—not just within the music industry, but to the listening experience itself. Over the past several years I have witnessed frequent discussions arise in popular media sources and in online forums that have deployed a dramatic emotional lexicon pitched around mourning and death (Attias 2011; Dettmar 2008; Heawood 2013; Krepps 2014; Rall 2015). Music fans report feelings of loss and grief around losing old ways of listening and the ways that those practices made them feel. I wanted to know what was behind these claims and whether there was any substance to them besides nostalgic re/constructions of the past. Yet, at the same time, many reports are celebratory and privilege a new culture of sharing and community based on feelings of belonging. This thesis both describes and frames a listening culture that is in transition from building connections through traditional modes of listening associated with materiality and tangibility to building connections through sharing digital products on new media platforms. This transition is like any other; it is messy, non-linear, and at times, confounding. Different modes of consumption can and do exist simultaneously, however, they also produce conflicting emotions and destabilising effects in their differences. In order to explore and examine this tension, I have conducted an ethnography of Internet users, or what is called a ‘cyberethnography’. In conducting a cyberethnography of Internet users, in particular, users drawn from the online platform Reddit.com, I reveal an expansive emotional architecture designed, both directly and indirectly, by the generation of new, or at least newly invested, affective phenomena resulting from the interaction of the body with nonorganic technologies. The shades of emotional expression I have analysed are measured in the subtlest of gradients, which range from the most intimate and private of encounters to the most outward expressions of rapture or even grief. This research is entitled ways of feeling, rather than ways of ‘hearing’ or ‘listening,’ in order to indicate the insistence of emotions and affect in music listening in relation to “techno- concorporealities”. This latter term is borrowed from Margrit Shildrick and designates 6 non-organic technology working prosthetically or ‘side-by-side,’ as well as weaved within, the organic body (2009, 133). The digital context and the digital connection In this project, I suggest that new media forms do not cultivate new emotional experiences only for individuals who are active in digital Internet technology but for everyone situated within the framework of the digital context. It is the social and historical moment of digitisation as a contemporary phenomenon that I theorise, rather than just those practices we can single out as specifically digital (although, I do take single practices as examples in order to illustrate my points). For example, listening

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