Book Description

TRACING INVISIBLE LINES is a critical autoethnographic text built around Gregory Ulmer’s concept of the “Mystory.” Dedicated to the enhancement of imagination and innovation in a digital-media saturated society, Ulmer’s Mystory is a creative research method that draws narratives from three domains of discourse (personal, professional, popular). Analysing these domains means generating fresh insight into the deep-seated emblems that drive the creative disposition, or “invariant principle,” of the practice-led researcher. Here, the mystoriographical approach has mobilized an exploration of the interrelations between self and society, between memory and imagination, as well as between industry-driven design-arts education and experimental sound-art practice (prioritizing the sonic, the perambulatory, careering). As a result, the Mystory fosters critical awareness of the socio-cultural instruments of creative inspiration and perspiration. Reflexive in intent and experimental in approach, David Prescott-Steed’s hybrid writing style moves freely between art historical, biographical and autobiographical, academic and speculative moods. This book’s emphasis on an electronic, investigative sound-based practice finds it treading new ground between the sonic arts and the field of electracy; through its addition of sound and music to the genre, this book extends the scope of studies into Ulmer’s work beyond English literature and the ocularcentric arts, offering a new handbook for sonic conceptual art practice.