becoming machine

The drama of becoming machine is always a response to the crisis of the privileging of human presence. Across many musical domains this drama played itself out quite visibly in the 70s from James Brown to Kraftwerk to Steve Reich. That the drama has gone out of our becoming machine, is a readout on the loss of this privileging. It is not that the post-human is no longer felt to be a threat, it is that the distinction deliminated by “post” is perhaps no longer available to us.