THE RESISTANT BODY IN SOUND: CRIPPING MUSIC CREATION THROUGH TECHNOLOGY, EMBODIMENT, AND DISABILITY PHILOSOPHY

ORCID

Abstract

We are currently in a period where many music organisations are beginning to engage with disabled artists as a part of their diversity agenda. However, practice seems limited to questions of physical access to spaces and asks little around the philosophies of disability and how that might change the way that we think about working with disabled creatives. If issues of physical access are all that are taken into consideration we risk creating projects which embed ableists assumptions and practices into our disabled music making, which results in negative experiences for disabled artists. In order to make the progression of incorporating disabled artists into the professional music field a positive one, it is vital that we learn from prior work done in Disability Studies and incorporate this into our music making and project structure. What knowledge can we take from Disability Studies to inform music making practice by disabled artists? Can we incorporate Disability Studies knowledge into music making projects in order to make them more accessible to disabled people?The thesis and portfolio of work aims to shift discourse from disabled music technology being primarily around creating ‘aids’ for disabled people to participate in an ‘abled’ framework, to considering how we might reimagine the process of making music in a disabled framework. What could we change about how we interact, make work, and perform work, which would make the experience of being disabled present in the foundations?I use interviews, embodied knowledge, quantitative and qualitative research to inform an experimental creative practice. Each chapter describes a different creative project which uses research around Disability Studies to inform its methods and practices. Each piece explores different approaches to embedding disabled theory into my creative practice. The project focuses on mainly experimental music at the interface of body sensors, music technology, performance art and contemporary classical music. It focuses on disabled art making as a professional practice as opposed to a community activity or a therapeutic activity. The works touches briefly on Posthumanism as it relates to disabled people, but stays as a passing comment as the subject is too big to incorporate into the work as it stands. My creative practice shows that we can incorporate Disability Studies theory into our creative practice in terms of project structures, creative practice, relationships and creative material to better reflect the experience of disabled people. Key examples of this include rethinking the way we engage with time is a major part of disabled life, inclusive design of interfaces, flexible timeframes, the use of technology as an extension of the disabled body, working from home, extended residency periods, flexible performance options, plain language, simplified administrative processes, a focus on the Social Model of disability, and an openness to assessing our own internal ableism. These are all positive approaches to the development of creative music making for disabled artists. My research shows that there is a need for Disability Studies theories to be incorporated into music making projects in order to remove barriers for disabled artists and to make the progression of incorporating disabled musicians into the professional music world more positive for disabled musicians. The works shows that there is a need for the music industry to listen to the knowledge in the disabled community when designing creative projects. There is also a need for the industry to understand the conversations that disabled artists may have through their work, and how ableism creates frameworks for creative judgement which are unhelpful to disabled artists. This will enable us to go beyond removing physical barriers to music making and to address inherent ableism in creative practice, and to value the voices of disabled artists independently of value systems created by an ableist framework. As organisations begin to work with disabled artists, this research can guide them to question their own inherent ablism, to liaise with the disabled artists around their needs and approaches, and to re-evaluate what a successful project might look like for a disabled artist.

Awarding Institution(s)

University of Plymouth

Supervisor

Jane Grant, Antti Saario, Eduardo Miranda

Keywords

Disabled Music, Disabiity Music, Music Technology, Composition, Disability, Feminism

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2025

Embargo Period

2026-08-29

Deposit Date

August 2025

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

This document is currently not available here.

This item is under embargo until 29 August 2026

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