Towards the open outcome record: a portfolio of works exploring strategies of freeing the record from fixity

The advent of sound recording in the late nineteenth-century has altered fundamentally how
music is made, distributed and experienced. The technology around the record has advanced
considerably since then, be it through improvements in sound quality, spatial presentation or listener convenience. The form of the sound-structure contained on the record, however, has seen very little change; it remains a fixed sound-structure encapsulated within a containing physical or virtual format.

Presented here is a body of works that looks toward a next-generation record medium, one
which embraces new currents of mobile digital technology and encompasses a change in how
sonic content is presented to the listener: instead of containing a single predetermined and
fixed sound-structure, this medium would have the capacity to vary the sound-structures it
outputs, thereby offering new listening experiences on each playback. If developed correctly, this medium, which I call the open outcome record, might put into place the conditions necessary for a revolution in the creation and experiencing of recorded music.

The submitted works are accompanied by this commentary, which begins with consideration
of the effects on the musical experience of the fixity privilege, a characteristic common to all
fixed media records. The discussion then turns towards the submitted works, with which I
chart a path through strategies aimed at freeing the record from its inherent fixity: I start
with the reanimation of commercial records by processes extrinsic to them; this is followed
by an investigation into the union of recorded materials with live broadcast radio, through
low-intervention, record-like interfaces; finally I present Futures EP, an open outcome record
designed for the iOS platform, featuring variance-inducing processes that are invoked on playback. I conclude this research by defining the place of the open outcome record amongst other 'post-record' media, and how it might go on to affect our experience of music.