Discussion of the Concepts of Technological Determinism / Voluntarism in Relation to Bob Dylan and his Electric Circuit
Within the world of music production and performance the available technology of the time has certainly had an impact on the process of creating music with new functionality, utility and sound available for use through new hardware and software. This has transformed the production process from the way music was made 50 years ago.
This essay will discuss the extent to and effect of which technology holds in determining the nature of change within audio production against the concept of voluntarism, exploring the dynamic between the creative influence and control of technological utilisation and the questionable inevitability of results due to the use that comes along with emerging technology. I will be aiming to establish whether the guiding factor of change rests within the creativity of the user or the tool in use and to what extent within the creation of music does technology hold influence over the producer in determining the change seen in music production. Are artists merely vehicles for artificial technological preconception, or is authenticity and originality still intact if you’ve “got to have it inside your head to get it out at all?” (Gilmore, 1972).
Technological determinism is defined as the theory which states that the driving instigator of change within societies and industries is the technology utilised. This is due to its prevalence as a step forward in terms of efficiency, sophistication and in its application.
The deterministic viewpoint is firm that the progression of change is down to the technology in question rather than the use of said tool. However, this has led to a schism in this area of thought with two viewpoints from a soft and hard perspective. The hard angle could be stated as “characteristically one of evolutionary progress or development, in which productive technique obeys a logic in trajectory of its own; and, in the process, acts as the principal determinant of institutions and social relationships” (Scott, 2014). However, this contradicts the foundations of individual free choice and is considered flawed and reductionist, lacking in realistic logic which underpins it as beyond the influence of those that individually and freely create and use it. Technology as a tool for a task rather than for its own self serving independent development and evolution. Use of the word “obey” in this definition sensationalises and implies there is a receptive cognition but with technological hardware and software being inanimate there is no more reciprocation of an order than there is within a saw if we are to pick it up. It simply does, therefore it cannot determine.
By stating the development of productivity drawn from technology evolves by its own logical rules, the theoretical statement rejects grounding in the designers of such technology being users themselves. As production technique lends part of its scope to the technology utilised, with studios today containing arrays of electronic equipment, it is flawed to state it as principal determinant in the process of production as technology itself develops most typically out from groups of individuals within institutions and wider society. These groups taking the form of companies, institutes or organisations, design technology with specific use and functionality in mind however its application once in the hands of users can go any direction, with it serving as a causal tool to create an effect.
Within the discussion of technological determinism, we also have the soft view which positions the technology in question as a guide over an inevitable deterministic force. Softly, it is something which acts as a “guiding force in societal change” directing us and influencing the decisions we make with our free will as acknowledging “society still has agency to make decisions” (Wyatt, 2008). When we consider its use in this light, we are not handing over our understanding of it as the agent of change to take control and direct our decisions and trajectory. Instead, it can be seen that the process of its use in the chain of production is second to the creative, logical or preferred direction the user themselves determines when they’re utilising the technology no differently to any other tool to reach a desired end through the available means. This places the influence of technology as analogous to a key, it may guide us towards and open more doors of possibility to developers and producers, and this may sway us into new trajectories of music production, style and sound, but it still fundamentally rests the overarching determinator in the hands of those utilising it.
Voluntarism sits at the other end as a theory which consists of “a doctrine or system based on voluntary participation in a course of action” (Collins, 2014), underlying the fundamental agent within the nature of change to be the will over the intellect. Positionioned also as a philosophy encapsulating this idea further into the vein of “theory that the will rather than the intellect is the ultimate principle of reality“, and as with this philosophical approach in our context again it may be beneficial to specify this ultimate principle as the agent of the nature of change. Within this perspective counter arguments can be found to the hard technological deterministic viewpoint which is simply with the existence of will and the capacity to decide ourselves with free choice where we move, individuals and users of technology must retain the position of primary mover within the context of any technologically driven field due to the lack of evidence for will within the operations of a technological system.
It can therefore be argued that this applies to the field of audio production being a medium in which technology is essential to the recording and reproduction of live sound. As time has brought forward new processes within the creation of music, it is down to the producer’s will to utilise the technology available to them and not the other way around. All that is within technology resides in the arena of the intellect, being a product of it and lacking sentience. With this said, it cannot be stated from a voluntaristic perspective that technology has any agency at all for change other than what is ascribed to it by the user. Within our context of music production and development more than just the intellect within us is used to create music itself as before the intellect decides it is down to the emotive aspects of our own cognition when determining what we’re ourselves striving for with self-expression.
Both these approaches to the understanding of technology and our use of it helps grasp aspects of what is at play between our relationship to technology. With the voluntaristic approach to the deterministic, we can begin to pin the influence of technology within music. However, we cannot state that technology is no driver of change or progress when the world around us is forever advancing technologically.
As people work with technology and shape its usage and form, technology too shapes us and our own approaches and processes, by influencing the will of the user into it.
The first aspect of the case to discuss this dynamic between deterministic preconception and voluntaristic approach to the development of music generally within its own culture is the moment when Bob Dylan went electric. This moment is considered to be pivotal for the folk genre which he inhabited but also to the wider reaches within the evolving modernisation of the music industry at the time.
With the rise of electronically enhanced instrumentation in the rising scope of popular music with the first declarations of classic rock, rock’n’roll and psychedelia, which would all later lend its influence into the progression of defining the music of the 60s and 70s, there was a visible shift in the style of music being produced hitting the top charts of popularity containing electronically driven instrumentation over traditional acoustic equipment. Acoustic guitars were swapped for electric guitars, double bass and brass traded for bass guitars and amplifiers. Through the lens of technological determinism we could interpret this as an inevitability and something which was predetermined by the existence of such equipment, however this is unreasonable as it lacks the crucial element of free-choice which is brought to our attention through voluntarism. Which takes us to the question of whether Dylan was the agent of cause and change which led to the controversial concert circuit.
One of the most controversial gigs of his career, on May 16th 1966, Dylan performed in Manchester shortly after the studio release of his album Blonde on Blonde. There was a visible conflict between old and new reaching right into the format of the gig itself, with the setlist first half consisting of soft acoustic classics from his earlier work, to the second half being the electric focused repertoire which was hit back with fury (Fleming, 2016).
As Dylan took to the stage we cannot assume what was going on through his mind, therefore we must look from an objective point of view with this discussion. If we’re to state through the voluntaristic perspective that Dylan solely decided that night to pick up an electric over the acoustic due to his fundamental free will, with no other influence other than simply because he could, then there is no argument to be made. He volunteered to use an electric guitar and as we have the reality of his choice was set and the course of popular music took the shape we see today, with his will determining the change. This however still misses aspects to take into account because Dylan was not just an object, and although it’s difficult to put ourselves into the shoes of such a figure, we must be able to assume within him there was influences of what was going on in the world around him. One could infer there was the influence of his senses, the tug of his emotions and the sway of his intellect, as we read “The more pissed Dylan and his musicians would get in response, the more mercurial, magisterial, untouchable the music became” (Fleming, 2016). Now while his will was the determining factor within this circumstance of change we cannot ignore the influence of technology, as something born from the intellect of wider society, on Dylan’s own internals and decisions.
With the setlist showing a clear distinction between the two aesthetics Dylan was embracing, the approach by Dylan to utilise the technology available to him in a provocative way lends that this was fundamentally a creative choice that was decided by the emotive influence of his own passion. Aesthetically entering into the otherside of intellectual use of the technologically advancing equipment available to him. The one phrase caught before the finishing lines after an audience member had branded him a liar going back on his word, “Play fucking loud!” was what Dylan responded with to his band, and this perhaps perfectly encapsulates the prevailing approach to the use of technology within the context of music production. When it comes down to the wire, the leading determinator of change does not rest in the technology, nor in the application of its uses or even the voluntary action of those utilising it, but in the emotion and passion behind the artist who decided to pick up the burden of its integration and development against backlash and outcry.
Dylan may have seen chart records being smashed by bands rocking electric gear and decided to buy into that as those who cried “Judas!“ proclaimed, but perhaps it is rather through this connection between the user and the producer, whose existence birthed from the same place, which calls to one another and draws together and apart. The technological influence at play is not in an active dictation emanating from the technology itself, but in the reverse as users are emotively drawn towards, and as is passed through the wider societal and cultural intellectual scope the phenomenon of technological influence may thus be stated as that which meets and steers with the unity of both will and intellect must be technological, yet binded by emotive drive.
As this reflects the shift of those on both sides of the industry, producers and consumers, within the music culture of being drawn to and wanting a particular sound, aesthetic or form, while some hunger for what had been before and some for that which was new, loud and exciting. We can safely state this new form of electronic sound was what would take sway as it did, which was deemed as the height of popularity (Hawtin S et al, 2011) with artists such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, reaching stratospheric heights displayed in hits of the day such as Ticket to Ride (The Beatles, 1965) and Satisfaction(The Rolling Stones, 1965), displaying that with this monumental shift in sound so too did other artists in their own right shift and perhaps adjust their approach to music from the influences they’re placed under from individual aspiration and cultural impact imparted on them by audiences and the wider sociological context of such a scene.
With the 1965 smash hit “Mr Tambourine Man” taken from Dylan's repertoire and transformed into a psych-rock/pop classic by The Byrds (The Byrds,1965) in the year previous to the electric Dylan controversy, the ask for electric oriented work by audiences had been stated, and therefore the shift of Dylan’s is something which could be said to fit the natural progression of himself working to maintain in the electrified circuit of popular music.
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Reference list
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Gilmore, D. (1972). Pink Floyd - Interview and Backstage - Live at Pompeii - 4k Resolution Part 1 - Subtitles e Tradução. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G61W-fmGzLg [Accessed 3 Aug. 2022].
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