Instrument making in the conceptual art paradigm; transformative projections of luthiery on postmodern sound design spaces

In the 20th century, when the "functional" and "conceptual" properties of sound as a design material began to be discovered, the sound paradigm shifts experienced were reflected in avant-garde music and instrument-making practices and led to radical changes. The successive "conceptual" transformations throughout the century deepen this process. On the other hand, the sonic awareness experienced allows the phenomenon of sound to become even more interesting as an expressive design tool and language and, in parallel, enables artists to produce innovative and creative works with conceptual backgrounds, whereas this process deepens even further in the later periods of the century. As these in-depth productions that prioritized conceptualism began to emerge, this multivariate approach to composition, performance and instrument design, which was challenging to understand and control and which the established music canon could not master properly, happens to take shape but was not accepted easily and "otherized" for a long time. Many composers and the creative instruments they produced regarding radical changes, especially in scale systems and respective musics were not understood or ignored much in the 20th century, but form the building blocks of the innovative instrument-making understanding of the 21st-century music. This understanding is further reinforced by technological systems such as mechatronics, digitals, artificial intelligence, etc. As a reflection of all these, in the 21st century, the structural and "conceptual" boundaries of artistic fields such as sound art and sound sculpture and fields such as innovative/creative instrument design have become blurred and reflect similarities. Instrument-making fields, which realize various transformations in accordance with the Zeitgeist of the century we live in, are academically affected by all these transformations. In this thesis, while examining the academic positioning of all these innovative and creative instrument-making practices, the term "Conceptual Instrument Design" is proposed as an alternative and innovative approach, and in general, "Can a conceptual art and design-based production approach be a solution to the depleted design and production practices of instrument-making processes?" happenes to be the question focused on.