Summary: <strong>Algo-Rhythm and Mello-dy: A Consideration of the Relationship between Technology and the Embodied Performance of Music</strong> Dan Black Music, Culture and Society: Dan Black <strong>Algo-Rhythm and Mello-dy: A Consideration of the Relationship between Technology and the Embodied Performance of Music</strong> Dan Black For some time, a distinction between musical performance and practices such as sound engineering, arranging, playback, and even computer programming has been becoming progressively more difficult to draw. Harmonies can be constructed on the fly using computer algorithms and arrangements can be generated in a random and evolving fashion in realtime by computer programmes, while original music is produced in a way which precludes its live performance and DJs win fame as virtuoso performers despite being unable to play or compose music in any traditional sense. This paper considers the evolution of technology, changes to ideas of originality and reproduction, and the phenomenology of physical performance to reach some tentative conclusions about the nature of musical performance today. Dan Black is Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies, School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University. He has a BA(Honours) from Melbourne University and a Ph.D. from RMIT University, and has written for journals such as <em>The Journal of Popular Culture, Fibreculture,</em> and <em>Continuum</em>. His ongoing research interests focus on the relationship between the human body and technology. The impact of embodiment and our interactions with other human bodies on the design and use of technologies; attempts to simulate the human body using technological means; and the interplay between understandings of human life and technological artefacts are of particular concern in his current work.
