Exploring sonic worlds: the significance of ‘instrumentality’

This paper develops the idea of ‘instrumentality’ to explore how the use of diverse tools or instruments involved in new music have the potential to (re)frame our engagement with the world. It will be argued that the choice of instrumental tools and how they are used in performance can not only enrich creative processes and outcomes for the artist but can also alter the audience’s relationship to the world by encouraging a conceptual engagement with one or more of its aspects. We are specifically interested in exploring this potential when interdisciplinary or intermedial approaches are taken to develop and realise new musical works. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s concepts of ‘revealing’ and ‘unconcealment’, and using contemporary work entitled Alluvial Gold as a case study, this paper interrogates the way in which new instrumental practices offer a renewed engagement with the world.