“This difference – between technology as a means of construction and as a means of expression – is important when considering the relationship between musicians, technical systems and music. It means we can redefine technology, not as a tool subservient to creativity or an obstacle to it, but as part of a wider context within which creative activity happens. Recently, the artist Ernest Edmonds brought together several pioneers of computer art for an event at Sheffield’s Site Gallery at which Manfred Mohr described his creative process as “a dialogue between me and the programming language” – not merely a one-way journey from imagination to implementation. I would go one step further. Recent studies in cognitive science refer to this dialogue as “coupling”, where the human agent and the technological environment become an integrated cognitive mechanism.”
Mark Fell, Collateral Damage, www.thewire.co.uk