Marking Minimalism: Minimal Music as a Sign of Machines and Mathematics in Multimedia

Minimalist music’s ubiquity in multimedia may be owed to the encoding of minimalism as a sign for the machine and rationality, an enculturation afforded by minimalism’s characteristics and its prior use in film and concert works. This paper traces these signs through multimedia including Koyaanisqatsi, Pepsi’s "No Brainer," and Proof.