David Byrne Technology Quotations

Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Technology has altered the way music sounds, how it’s composed and how we experience it. It has also flooded the world with music. The world is awash with (mostly) recorded sounds. We used to have to pay for music or make it ourselves; playing, hearing and experiencing it was exceptional, a rare and special experience. Now hearing it is ubiquitous, and silence is the rarity that we pay for and savor.

The operators are not button-pushers, ... It's a give and take with the performers. In my work, technology is a performer.