The genre of world music and its market’s reliance on musical exoticism, othering, and the audience’s insatiable quest for musical authenticity have influenced and shaped the way artists construct and negotiate their musical representation. With the popularization of democratized music platforms such as Bandcamp, artists have greater autonomy in terms of artistic representation and musical distribution in the online world. Although the internet has in some ways disrupted the old power structures of the music industry, the old forms of world music marketing have been reinscribed into a new context. Old stereotypes and narratives of authenticity in world music have permeated the digital representation of artists and their music. Music recommendation algorithms also shape the way artists are represented in digital environments. Semantic descriptors such as social tags play a vital role in musical identification and recommendation systems implemented by streaming platforms. The use of social tags such as #worldmusic homogenizes diverse cultural sounds into a single umbrella genre. #World music also creates avenues for old stereotypes and narratives of authenticity to re-emerge. This re-emergence of the old tropes of world music creates less equitable recommendation and representational outcomes for musicians operating within the genre. In the age of streaming, where does world music belong? How do artists negotiate representation online? This thesis explores the dynamics of representation and the projections of “authenticity” between world music artists and record labels inside of Bandcamp’s digital ecosystem. By juxtaposing the traditional framework of “world music” marketing with new and evolving methods of distribution and artistic representation, it is possible to see how digital media are reshaping but also reproducing some of the old paradigms of world music. I also propose that a new framework needs to be established to study the impact digital streaming has on the genre of world music. This new framework, which I call “World Music 3.0,” will encompass how algorithms, tech companies, and the democratization of musical practices interact within a globalized community.

This thesis explores the creation of queer community and embodied connection through physical and digital spaces during Covid-19. The BodySleuth Project was an experiment in prototyping social somatic experiences - discovering the limitations and possibilities for technology to deepen social camaraderie and self awareness through movement. The BodySleuth Project was a transmedia dance theater game that incorporated live and pre-recorded performances and real time interactivity across a virtual world. Characters or “Guardians” acted as movement guides and story facilitators across the Gather.Town landscape of Rolyrbee Island. Players worked together across time zones and geographical space in their own homes to uncover tactile and digital clues and explore their own bodies. Participants occupied a completely queer universe that has been designed for and by an LGBTQIA+ community.

Never Fully What It Is is an electronic/pop music performance constructed with the intent of exploring the interplay between digital sound and gender in the context of my own transition throughout the past year. Thematically, the project focuses on issues of emergence and authenticity in the contexts of trans identity and queer feminism, drawing from literature regarding debates about queer assimilation and gendered associations within systems of genre. It aims not to encapsulate the whole of my transition, but rather to focus on the forces shaping it. From a sonic perspective, the techniques used are largely drawn from hyperpop and other experimental and/or queer genres. The resultant performance is an attempt to understand itself, as a digital body and as an encapsulation of how it feels to be young, transgender, and online.

In the field of electronic music, haptic feedback is a crucial feature of digital musical instruments (DMIs) because it gives the musician a more immersive experience. This feedback might come in the form of a wearable haptic device that vibrates in response to music. Such advancements in the electronic music field are applicable to the field of speech and hearing. More specifically, wearable haptic feedback devices can enhance the musical listening experience for people who use cochlear implant (CI) devices.
This Honors Thesis is a continuation of Prof. Lauren Hayes’s and Dr. Xin Luo’s research initiative, Haptic Electronic Audio Research into Musical Experience (HEAR-ME), which investigates how to enhance the musical listening experience for CI users using a wearable haptic system. The goals of this Honors Thesis are to adapt Prof. Hayes’s system code from the Max visual programming language into the C++ object-oriented programming language and to study the results of the developed C++ codes. This adaptation allows the system to operate in real-time and independently of a computer.
Towards these goals, two signal processing algorithms were developed and programmed in C++. The first algorithm is a thresholding method, which outputs a pulse of a predefined width when the input signal falls below some threshold in amplitude. The second algorithm is a root-mean-square (RMS) method, which outputs a pulse-width modulation signal with a fixed period and with a duty cycle dependent on the RMS of the input signal. The thresholding method was found to work best with speech, and the RMS method was found to work best with music. Future work entails the design of adaptive signal processing algorithms to allow the system to work more effectively on speech in a noisy environment and to emphasize a variety of elements in music.

The LeapMax Gestural Interaction System is a project which utilizes the Leap Motion controller and visual programming language Max to extract complex and accurate skeletal hand tracking data from a performer in a global 3-D context. The goal of this project was to develop a simple and efficient architecture for designing dynamic and compelling digital gestural interfaces. At the core of this work is a Max external object which uses a custom API to extract data from the Leap Motion service and retrieve it in Max. From this data, a library of Max objects for determining more complex gesture and posture information was generated and refined. These objects can be are highly flexible and modular and can be used to create complex control schemes for a variety of systems. To demonstrate the use of this system in a performance context, an experimental musical instrument was designed in which the Leap is combined with an absolute orientation sensor and mounted on the head of a performer. This setup leverages the head mounted Leap Motion paradigm used in VR systems to construct an interactive sonic environment within the context of the user's environment. The user's gestures are mapped to the controls of a synthesis engine which utilizes several forms of synthesis including granular synthesis, frequency modulation, and delay modulation.