Producción de música electrónica y audiovisuales en el metamodernidad: (re)producción digital, identidades digitales, retrotecnia y technostalgia

(re)producción digital, identidades digitales, retrotecnia y technostalgia

Abstract

The use of electronic music in audiovisuals has come a long way to the present day. In this sense, although electronic music continues to be associated in the image with the clichés of the genres of science fiction, terror or technology, it has become part of audiovisual products of other genres, and their multiple hybridizations, in addition to building new layers of meaning and different forms of identification with the public at the height of the digital age or metamodernity. The new tools for music production –DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) and VST Plug-ins (Virtual Studio Technology)– have enabled the creation of new sounds and audiovisual landscapes. In a parallel way, this software has mediated the construction of a collective imaginary that sets its sights on the audiovisual products of the eighties of the last century, and especially on video games and their 8 and 16-bit music, as a canonical period of popular culture. The creation of new virtual instruments, inspired by the sounds of that decade, and the reuse through «sampling» of eighties rhythm machines, bass lines and synthesizers, as «retrotechnics» and «technostalgia» have experienced continuous growth in the most recent audiovisual productions and have enabled transmedia narratives. The nostalgic look at the canonical products of that time has been progressively extended to the nineties and more recent times. In this article we will focus on different audiovisual products (movies and series on streaming platforms) from the last decade. We will analyze some of these productions with the aim of knowing how digital music production tools, and specifically certain virtual instruments linked to dance culture and rave music, mediate the construction of meanings, the creation of digital identities and the management of the emotions of the spectators.