Sublime systems: sound synthesis and the great outdoors

Increasingly portable instruments have facilitated the movement of electronic musicking beyond studio environments to gardens, parks, forests, riversides, mountain ranges and even volcanoes. Such sites are increasingly commonplace in the audiovisual documentation of systemic approaches to electronic music among amateur and professional practitioners. The aim of this article is to understand the significance of this visual framing of contemporary systemic musicking—particularly in modular and algorithmic forms—to investigate the allure of such locations and the perceived resonances between systemic approaches to electronic musicking and sites evoking ideas of nature and wilderness. This visual framing is contextualised through the frequent recourse of artists to narratives of exploration and navigation when explaining their approach to composing (with) systems. Original interviews conducted by the author reveal systemic musicking to be situated within a broader systemic thought wherein nature is conceived as one of a number of vast and interconnected systems that can engender overwhelm and provoke response via creative practice. Consequently this practice is analysed via critical engagement with the conceptual framework of the sublime. Composing (with) systems is framed as an aesthetic of cognitive mapping, seeking orientation in the systemic sublime. This presents a distinctive approach to discerning the significance of contemporary systemic musicking through its integration into the lifeworld world of composers and a distinctive, recursive realisation of the sublime in the context of contemporary electronic music, locating it in compositional responses to systemic thought by way of systemic musicking.