On a macro-level, a live electronics ensemble could be thought of as a modular system of interconnected human and non-human agents. By zooming in to a meso-level, each performer reveals their own ensemble of agents, configured and setup as unique musical instruments. By applying a perspective on a live electronics ensemble as being a scaleable modular system, a different analytical approach is enabled, through which the affordances of the meso-level constellations, and their respective interactions within the system, can be better understood.

The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the adaptation process required by musicians taking part in a live electronics ensemble. By analyzing the results of a survey taken by former students of the live electronics ensemble course at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH), taking both the aesthetic, ideological and pedagogic foundations of the course into account, these results will be correlated with other ensemble’s approaches as well as strategies and pieces developed within the KMH course since its founding in 2006. In order to situate the practice of the ensemble, the results are cross-compared and related to documentation of activities in similar ensembles, in particular with regard to a collaboration between the KMH ensemble and the Dirty Electronics ensemble at De Montfort University, UK. Hereby, the paper connects the innovation perspectives in the ensemble with an international outlook in the same field. 

By considering how the ontology of live electronic instruments affect the ensemble situation, a brief account of philosophical organology lays the ground for a discussion of how an effective instrument might look and thereby, how inclusive musicking might be facilitated. Questions regarding shared and distributed instrumentality and when the actual becoming of an instrument happens are central perspectives in this discussion. Drawing from the fields of cybernetics as well as actor network theory, ultimately, this paper will propose an alternate, and possibly more idiomatic, morphology for live electronics performance.