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Textons and the Propagation of Space in Acousmatic Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2011

Erik Nyström
Erik Nyström*
Affiliation:
City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V OHB, UK
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The concepts introduced by Smalley in the context of space-form (2007) have firmly put acousmatic music on a discourse of spatial exploration, holding much potential for the developing of aesthetics in new directions. This article approaches space from the low level of musical structure, with a multi-dimensional attitude to space-form, exploring spatial texture, a concept introduced by Smalley to describe the temporal formations of space in spectromorphology (1997). Spatial articulation is investigated in the context of granular-oriented textures, proposing a micro-spatial, perceptual morphology – the texton – as an aesthetic approach to acousmatic music. This follows Albert Bregman's speculation regarding equivalents to visual perception in texture, where the theory of textons was first developed by the neuroscientist Béla Julesz.

The article discusses acousmatic textons, in terms of intrinsic properties, the way they propagate in time, and how they organise in distributions to form spatial textures. The emergent macroscopic qualities of textonal formations are also reflected upon in the introduction of a group of textural states, where source-bonded spaces and abstract musical thinking coalesce.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 16 , Issue 1: Denis Smalley: his influence on the theory and practice of electroacoustic music , April 2011 , pp. 14 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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Discography

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