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.
