Touch the Screen, Wild the Sound: Expressive iPad Performance in Nature

Resumo

Although the touch-screen interface on the iPad is often derided as an interface for live music-making, there is something uniquely satisfying about it when played with certain apps designed to take advantage of its unpredictability. This essay emphasises what makes each of those apps favourable to playing live, especially outdoors along with electronic-sounding plants and animals heard underwater in rivers and ponds, suggesting how different species respond to these kinds of indeterminate sounds. It articulates a tentative aesthetics of touch-screen electronic performance in and with the sounds of nature.