THE ICONIC INTERFACE AND THE VENEER OF SIMPLICITY:MP3 players and the reconfiguration of music collecting and reproduction practices in the digital age

Apple's iPod and MP3 players in general have risen to cultural prominence in recent years. Figures now indicate that in Britain as many as 48 per cent of 16–34 year olds own some form of MP3 player, Apple have sold nearly 60 million iPods worldwide since their launch in November 2001, and the billionth worldwide legal music download was recorded in February 2006. In this context of relative mass and escalating appropriation we are faced with a series of pressing sociological questions concerning the transformative capacities of these technologies. This paper attempts to set out some of these questions for further investigation. Here it is claimed that the MP3 player has reconfigured and recontextualized music in distinct yet interrelated ways: (1) the reconfiguration of music as a virtual (MP3) rather than a physical cultural artefact (vinyl record, tape, or CD), which has implications for music collecting/archiving; and (2) extending the work of the personal stereo, the MP3 player is recontextualizing music by moving it out across the spaces of everyday life, a process that transcends boundaries between public and private zones. The paper concentrates on the former and suggests that the reconfigurations afforded by MP3 technologies can be understood in terms of Katherine Hayles' conceptualization of 'incorporative' and 'inscriptive' practices allied with Apple's own theory of the iPod as an 'iconic interface' cultivating an auratic 'veneer of simplicity'. Keywords: MP3MP3 playersiPodinterfacecompressiondigitalizationmusic culturevirtualmobility Acknowledgements I would like to thank Barry Sandywell and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this piece. Notes 1. For more on the Apple iPod and its prominence see Consentino Citation(2006). 2. Perhaps the most significant recent technological development in this area, and which may point toward the future development of the technology, concerns the convergence of MP3 technology with the mobile telephone technology. Models such as the Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman Phone, Sony Ericson P910i, Samsung SGH-D500, Samsung SGH-Z107, Nokia 6230, Nokia N91, and Apple's new iPhone combine mobile telephone technology with digital music reproduction and digital photograph technology. The hybrid of MP3 and mobile telephone technology has the effect of creating always-already networked MP3 players, which can potentially link to the internet in order to access and reproduce any digital music file that is compatible with the device. This, then, is more than a music collection in your pocket: it is a portal or interface into vast sets of networked music collections. This hybrid MP3/mobile telephone technology, as well as the new iPod with video screen functionality, not only generates or suggests questions about the transformation of collections and the practices of collecting, it also generates questions about how these musical and visual digital files may be stored together and accessed simultaneously to stimulate memories and emotions (DeNora Citation2000, Citation2003). 3. The recent re-emergence of the vinyl record in the UK illustrates how retro culture, music scenes, or the desire for the physical object complicate this shift between media ages. 4. I distinguish here between a music archive and a music collection. A music archive is a more systematic and official database of music; a music collection is individualized and non-official, although it may be equally structured and ordered. 5. Walter Benjamin defines aura in terms of a sensory or aesthetic experience of a particular time and space. He describes this auratic sensation in the following terms: 'If while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch' (Benjamin Citation1999, p. 225). I have used aura here to attach the veneer of simplicity to the experience of the interface. However, the terms 'aura' and 'veneer' can be seen in counter-distinction; for Benjamin the aura is a natural quality that is true or real, whereas I suggest here that the veneer of simplicity is the product of marketing rhetoric and various images of the interface. I have persevered with describing this veneer as auratic as it served to evoke the material experience of the interface, despite this problem.