Somatechnics and Popular Music in Digital Contexts

'Laura Glitsos makes an important contribution to both somatechnics and popular music studies by asking how digital technologies act on our bodies as they experience popular music today. Her book, Somatechnics and Popular Music in Digital Contexts , explores the transformation of listening bodies through aspects of digital culture such as the touch-screen and personal computer and traces the changing dimensions and materialities of pleasure itself.'
—  Suvendrini Perera , John Curtin Distinguished Professor and Research Professor of Cultural Studies, Curtin University, Australia'Glitsos’s new book marks a turning point in the study of popular music. Utilising somatechnics, a phenomenological approach grounded in the body, Glitsos offers a new way of understanding how we experience popular music.   Somatechnics and Popular Music in Digital Contexts is a must read for anybody interested in how digitalisation is transforming listening practices, and that should be everybody involved in popular music studies.'
— Jon Stratton , Adjunct Professor in the School of Creative Industries, University of South Australia, Australia

This book is a celebration and explication of the body in the world and the ways that our body situates our consciousness as a lived formation, one which is oriented by the experience of music listening. The book examines the relationship between bodies, technics, and music, using the theoretical tools of somatechnics. Somatechnics calls for a recognition of the body in the world as an artefact wrapped up, entangled and  produced  by the materialities of that world. It traverses discussions on materiality, live music, touchscreen media, the personal computer, and new modes of listening such as virtual reality technologies. Finally, the book looks at music itself as a kind of technology that generates new modes of bodily being.

Laura Glitsos is an Adjunct Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. In addition to her expertise in the media and music industries, she has worked as a professional vocalist for which she was honoured with two Western Australian Music Awards. Dr Glitsos has published peer-review research in media studies, cultural studies, and popular music studies.  Somatechnics and Popular Music in Digital Contexts  is her first sole-authored book.