Paulo Chagas
University of California, Riverside
Paulo C. Chagas is Professor of Composition at the University of California, Riverside, and currently Music Department Chair. A very versatile composer, Chagas has written over 100 works for orchestra, chamber music, electroacoustic music, audiovisual and multimedia compositions. His music unfolds in a pluralistic aesthetic, integrating the most diverse musical materials from different cultures, acoustic and digital media, dance, video, and audiovisual installations.
Chagas is also a prolific author of books and articles focused on theoretical, critical and analytical topics regarding contemporary music creativity. His writings incorporate ideas from philosophy, sociology, phenomenology, semiotics, cybernetics, and critical studies on media and communication. His most recent book, Unsayable Music: Six Reflections on Musical Semiotics, Electroacoustic and Digital Music, will be published in 2014 by Leuven University Press.
Articles of Paulo Chagas
Creativity with Apparatuses: from Chamber Music to Telematic Dialog
This article examines Flusser’s ideas on creativity with apparatus as a model for communication in a telematic society. By placing Flusser’s thinking in the post World War II context, it explores relations to Walter Benjamin’s criticism of technical reproduction and Katherine Hayles’ notion of the post-human. By focusing on Flusser’s suggestion of chamber music as a prototype of telematic dialog, it proposes an analysis of chamber music, electroacoustic music and digital audio technology aiming to critically illuminate Flusser’s utopian vision of telematics dialog from the perspective of music.