MAGISTER THESIS
This thesis outlines the contours of global musical phenomena that could be described as ‘internet music’ or music for the ‘post-internet’ generation. A phenomenon that started around the early 2010s and still continuing today, internet music is not just defined as music on the internet, but music heard as being shaped by, symptomatic of, or straightforwardly about the perceived effects of the internet.
The term ‘electronic online underground’ would be more appropriate to describe internet music as a ‘style’, as this phenomenon goes beyond a mere audible output and often engages with conceptual dimensions (see the debates on accelerationism, hauntology, posthumanism and gender and identity politics) as well as connections to the art world (the so-called ‘post-internet art’). Through a historical, cultural and musicological analysis, the ‘high-tech’ aesthetics of this ‘online underground’ is also compared to its predecessor, that is the ‘indie’ aesthetics. On this point, the thesis has investigated the modes of popular music production, their aesthetics as well as their function as ‘counterculture.’
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Christopher von Frankenberg studied Culture and Technology with an emphasis on philosophy at TU Berlin. He received his MA degree at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design with a thesis on the phenomenon of ‘internet music.’