With the introduction of mechanical reproduction, the authority of the original over its reproductions is attenuated.　 For one thing, the process of mechanical reproduction itself is more independent of the original than manual reproduction.　 Moreover, process-oriented reproduction becomes capable of transforming the characteristics of the original.　 This capacity for transformation has its own formal, and therefore social implications.　 As such, while the new technology was introduced to facilitate the preservation of quickly dissappearing formal and social structures, its very introduction in fact hastened their dissappearance, clearing the way for radically new forms.

As one example, photography grew out of a technology of reproduction which replaced an older technology--oil and canvas--in order to perform "portraiture" without the requirements of a skilled draftsman.　 However, it quickly evolved to the performance of light and shadow, of shutter speeds, camera angles, enlargement, close-up.

Similarly, tape music grew out of a technology of reproduction whose purpose was to preserve a particular individual utterance: be it an address, lecture, or musical recital.　 this use of recording and reproduction technology quickly evolved to a performance of the technology itself.　 Pierre Schaeffer took reproduced sounds and speeded them up, slowed them down, mixed them together, thus ignoring the originally intended use for which the technology was invented.　 In Cologne, sounds themselves were composed and similarly processed, incorporating serial structure into the process of sound reproduction.　 A new kind of form became imaginable.

This presentation covers some of this ground during which recent work computer-assisted composition and sound synthesis is discussed.