Introduction: Music-Making and StorytellingJonathan ImpettToo Cool to Boogie: Craft, Culture, and Critique in ComputingAlan F. BlackwellIllusions of FormDavid RosenboomWhat to Ware? A Guide to Today’s Technological WardrobeNicolas CollinsToward a Critical Musical PracticeAnn WardeThe Composer’s Domain: Method and MaterialNicholas BrownDissociation and Interference in Composers’ Stories about Music: The Renewal of Musical DiscourseJonathan ImpettPlatesThe Impossibility of Material FoundationsScott McLaughlinThinking Liveness in Performance with Live Electronics: The Need for an Eco-systemic Notion of AgencyAgostino Di ScipioExperiment and Experience: Compositional Practice as CritiqueLula RomeroDesigning the Threnoscope or, How I Wrote One of My PiecesThor MagnussonA Few Reflections about Compositional Practice through a Personal NarrativeDaniela FantechiTemporal Poetics as a Critical Technical PracticeKarim HaddadCollaborative Creation in Electroacoustic Music: Practices and Self-Awareness in the Work of Musical Assistants Marino Zuccheri, Alvise Vidolin, and Carl FaiaLaura ZattraParlour Sounds: A Critical Compositional Process towards a Cyberfeminist Theory of Music TechnologyPatricia Alessandrini and Julie ZhuChanging the Vocabulary of Creative Research: The Role of Networks, Risk, and Accountability in Transcending Technical RationalityAmbrose FieldDesigning Audience–Work RelationshipsMarko CicilianiOnline MaterialsNotes on ContributorsIndexThe potential for critical technical practice in the creation of musicThe practices and perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of discourse in both expert and public spheres. Internet pioneer Philip Agre observed a discourse deficit in artificial intelligence research and proposed a critical technical practice, a single disciplinary field with "one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique. ... A critical technical practice rethinks its own premises, re-evaluates its own methods, and reconsiders its own concepts as a routine part of its daily work."This volume considers the potential for critical technical practice in the evolving situation of composition across a wide range of current practices. In seeking to tell more honest, useful stories of composition, it hopes to contribute to a new discourse around the creation of music.The potential for critical technical practice in the creation of musicThe practices and perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of discourse in both expert and public spheres. Internet pioneer Philip Agre observed a discourse deficit in artificial intelligence research and proposed a critical technical practice, a single disciplinary field with “one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique. … A critical technical practice rethinks its own premises, re-evaluates its own methods, and reconsiders its own concepts as a routine part of its daily work.”This volume considers the potential for critical technical practice in the evolving situation of composition across a wide range of current practices. In seeking to tell more honest, useful stories of composition, it hopes to contribute to a new discourse around the creation of music.