Dissensus, refusal and participatory music: Negation and rupture in Crowd in C

Abstract

In this paper, I will explore the formal, micro-political, and typically consensus-based space that participatory music works engender by analyzing Crowd in C by Sang Won Lee. Taking its moniker from Terry Riley’s well-known minimalist work, Crowd in C is a web-based instrument, computer music system, and participatory work of music that encourages social interaction by offering audience members the option to create and modify their own melodies through a simple graphical user interface (GUI). Focusing on the audio-visual documentation and the work’s codebase, I will analyse participant actions by applying Jacques Rancière’s logic of emancipation to the micropolitical and normative space of Crowd in C and show how these moments and actions evoke a theory of dissensus. Finally, I argue that the established framework for sensing and sense-making in this space can be ruptured by musical and political processes.