Making noises in the factory without walls

Danae Stefanou

Keywords: machinic capitalism, creativity, improvisation

The paper problematises some implications of the turn towards a virtualised creative economy for the conceptualisation of sound and music, and the political and social status of music-making in late capitalist society. Assessing how modes associated with improvised, DIY musical activity can become co-opted by private or corporate interests, it is argued that open, freely improvised practices can and should be critically differentiated from machinic models of openness, through small but decisive gestures that defy subsumption.