The background to the creation of an international resource organisation is discussed. The author goes on to describe various activities of the Foundation, including the provision of hard-to-obtain CDs and access to other materials of interest to the electroacoustic community. The Foundation maintains a substantial presence on the World Wide Web: http://www.emf.org

With the development of modern high-speed communication our sense of local and global are blurred to the point that these two topological extremes are often conflated as ‘glocal’. This paper examines the significance of this change and assesses its effects on the productivity and creativity of electroacoustic musicians. More profoundly, it also considers whether this shift in social geography had any bearing on the constitution of an explicit electroacoustic community.

To specifically carry out this analysis we consider how an understanding of the system of social relations as a non-random network changes our perception of proximity and distance. We then derive a typology for the contemporary critiques of new technologies and highlight the opportunities it offers to interpret social relations anew. This analysis helps firm up the notion of virtuality that we use to explore our understanding of electroacoustic musical creation with respect to the benefits it can derive from a ‘glocal’ environment. It also establishes the premise of a collective subject emerging from ‘glocal’ communications that may serve as a seed to a renewed electroacoustic community.

The ‘comprovisation’ (Dudas 2010) of electroacoustic music in an affective manner through Internet2, using a directed dramaturgy approach, poses unique scoring problems. Building on prior work (Whalley 2009, 2012c), GNMISS (Graphic Networked Music Interactive Scoring System) was developed to address this. The system has four visual layers that illustrate the structure of works, represented on a circle with parts for each player. One layer maps emotions to colours based on associated words as a primary basis for gesture and timbre representation. A second layer gives musical motives and frequency information for participants to follow. A third allows for more detailed indications of gesture and sound archetypes through representative symbols. Finally, an inside layer represents macro key centres. For timing, the circle score turns in clock time with the current playing position always at noon, and a central metronome shows speed independent of clock time. Technically, client programs sit on distributed machines across the Internet, with data being coordinated by an OSC Server. Distributed scores can be built by a composer or by a team, and all content can be altered simultaneously across client machines. Two works are discussed as initial examples of its implementation: Sensai na Chikai and SymbolAct.

In this article I describe the development of a performance practice with a new electroacoustic instrument – the FAAB (feedback-actuated augmented bass). Drawing on a background in improvisation, I discuss how the feedback-induced behaviour of the instrument sets it apart from an acoustic bass and how the implementation of operationally closed digital signal processing algorithms facilitates greater systemic autonomy. In identifying resistance as a key feature of improvisation, I propose the term ‘diachronic mastery’ as a way of addressing the equilibration of sensorimotor schemes in the context of developing a performance practice with a complex hybrid system such as the FAAB. Through a discussion of the term ‘agency’ as it appears in recent literature, I develop a preliminary framework for addressing both the immediate experience of agency emerging in performance ecosystems and the biologically informed definition of the term that may be useful in the design of increasingly autonomous instruments and performance systems.

The SndObj Sound Object Library is a C++ object-oriented audio processing framework and toolkit. This article initially examines some of the currently available sound processing packages, including sound compilers, programming libraries and toolkits. It reviews the processes involved in the use of these systems and their strengths and weaknesses. Some application examples are also provided. In this context, the SndObj library is presented and its components are discussed in detail. The article shows the library as composed of a set of classes that encapsulate all processes involved in synthesis, processing and IO operations. Programming examples are included to show some uses of the system. These, together with library binaries, source code and complete documentation, are included in the downloadable package, available on the Internet. Possible future developments and applications are considered. The library is demonstrated to provide a useful base for research and development of audio processing software.

There is growing evidence of widespread acceptance of timbre as a primary surface feature and as a structural device in music across genres. This is a result of a growing body of source material available in musical contexts through recording and sampling. Composers using new sounds are creating new musical syntax and structures, and consequently, new contexts and paradoxical or ‘synchretic’ situations that motivate resolution by the listener. New source materials, syntax, structure and synchresis pose challenges for the analyst in this largely non-notated music as well. Research in perception and the formation of conceptual frameworks is providing key information towards understanding this growing timbral common practice and how to talk about it with cogency and depth.

Acousmatic music is heavily informed by a central duality which lies at the heart of the art form, between the musical layer on the one hand, and the narrative layer on the other. Emphasis shifts between these two layers, and they interact to construct further layers of meaning. In his book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, David Huron proposes that our responses to musical stimuli are in fact identical to our responses to real-world stimuli, and follow the same processes. This appears to negate somewhat the dichotomy of musical and narrative layers. We propose a shift in perspective away from a vision of parallel musical and narrative layers, and towards a dualism built from staggered response times to different aspects of the same material.

Guided by the idea of participatory culture, networked pulse synchronisation and live coding have been core approaches in the activity of the Cybernetic Orchestra, an electronic performance ensemble at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. Following general discussion of the way in which networked pulse-based music and live coding work within this orchestra, there is specific discussion of a number of compositional models and practices that have been found effective, including code-sharing, instruction-scores, code as material, and physical performance.

An aspect of the local/global binarism in music regards the cultural identity of the sounds, musical styles and grammars of a composition. This article intends to explore the role of the local/global issue in the context of the semantic dimension of sounds, both during the composition of a musical piece and during its reception.

In the first part of the article the local or global identity of a sonic event will be examined from two different perspectives: on the one hand that of the composer, starting from his or her attitudes with regard to the semantic aspects of the sonic material and the compositional processes used; on the other hand that of the listener, starting from the cognitive processes (s)he activates in the search for a musical and an extramusical meaning. Based on this analysis, in the second part of the article the usefulness of describing the cultural identity of a sonic event and more generally its semantic dimensions in terms of ‘shared connotations’ will be explored. Finally, some of the interactions between connoted sonic events will be analysed, mainly focusing on global and local cultural identities.

Edgard Varèse's Poème électronique can be viewed as a bridge between early twentieth-century modernism and electroacoustic music. This connection to early modernism is most clearly seen in its use of musical juxtaposition, a favoured technique of early modernist composers, especially those active in Paris. Juxtaposition and non-motion are considered here, particularly in relationship to Smalley's exposition of spectromorphology (Smalley 1986), which in its preoccupation with motion omits any significant consideration of non-motion. Juxtaposition and non-motion have an important history within twentieth-century music, and as an early classic of electroacoustic music, Poème électronique is a particularly striking example of a composition that is rich in juxtapositions similar to those found in passages of early modernist music. Examining Poème électronique through the lens of juxtaposition and non-motion reveals how the organisation of its juxtaposed sounds encourages the experience of sound structure suspended time.

In my dissertation Gender Perspectives in Vocal Performance Art, I examine the history and aesthetics of the genre. The core of my work is a vocal database that focuses especially on the extended vocal techniques of the natural voice. In this article, I concentrate on the electronic aspect of vocal performance art. While I provide a brief historical overview of the developments of vocal performance art and its technological developments from the 1970s to the 1990s, the central question of this article is whether gender patterns exist when these practices are combined with electronic sound technologies.

This article is an introduction to the specialised area of spatialised broadcasting experiments associated with radio art practices. This subject is investigated primarily from two perspectives: artistic works that explore the dissemination of radio waves (the ‘spectrumscape’) and the multichannel broadcasting/listening experience. It also discusses some of the history and ideas that form the undercurrents for radio art practice and explores radio art’s uses and concepts of spatiality.

Arrangement has always played an essential part of transmitting, preserving and disseminating works in the musical practice of both ‘high art’ and popular music. However, at present it is rarely practised in electroacoustic music, which can partly be explained by the nature of electronic technology and current thinking about authenticity. Despite this context, there are benefits to performance opportunities through the diversity created by arrangement; therefore, the process of adapting the electroacoustics of Scelsi's Aitsi is explored. The work offers this opportunity, since it lacks precision in its musical documentation, has received a number of quite different renditions and shows ontological malleability as it exists in another form, Scelsi's Fifth String Quartet. The new electroacoustic adaptation exploits Max/MSP software to extend the electroacoustic treatment of the piano beyond previous interpretations, whilst attempting to remain consistent with the aesthetic of the work. The article aims to encourage the composition and adaptations of works that afford performers interpretative licence with the electroacoustics in order to promote the distinctive and evanescent nature of mixed acoustic-electroacoustic works in concert performance, and encourage its continuation through an evolving performing tradition.

This article proposes a framework as a contribution to the expansion of compositional practice. It analyses and problematises different dimensions of architectural thinking and practice, and transposes them to the field of music. This way it suggests and develops compositional strategies that are more deeply engaged with the several spatialities of music creation, performance and listening. Material, site, drawing, programme and use operate as conceptual tools to articulate music and architecture in a discussion towards a more comprehensive understanding of music composition. This was the theoretical ground of a practice-based PhD research in which I developed a portfolio of works. I will describe some of these to contextualise and demonstrate the contemporary relevance of this framework.

The diverse practice of soundwalking is approached through its constituent parts (walking and listening) as an ideal ‘way in’ to the appreciation of new sonic art. It is argued that, because it engages the subject in a manner that encourages an aural perception of the environment not only as a physical space but also as a space of social and political tensions, divisions and flows, it can act as an experiential foundation for understanding how sound inflects our thoughts about and our relationships to agencies, human or not, that we interact with. This in turn renders possible modes of listening that are particularly adapted to contemporary forms of sonic art. Furthermore, soundwalking ties in to important contemporary discussions about participation, its potential for radical engagement of audiences and also the various forms of mediation it involves.

The Alternative Histories of Electronic Music conference in 2016 reflected a rise in research that explores new and alternative directions in electronic music historiography. Accordingly, attention has been focused on practitioners previously either ignored or thought to be marginal; a significant number of these figures are women. This fact has caught the attention of print and online media and the independent recording industry and, as a result, historical narratives of female electronic musicians have become part of the modern music media discourse. While this has many positive aspects, some media representations of the female electronic musician raise concerns for feminist scholars of electronic music history. Following the work of Tara Rodgers, Sally MacArthur and others, I consider some new media representations of electronic music’s female ‘pioneers’, situate them in relation to both feminist musicology and media studies, and propose readings from digital humanities that might be used to examine and critique them. This article expands on a talk given at AHEM and was first conceived as a presentation for the Fawcett Society event Sound Synthesis and the Female Musician, in 2014.

Historically, network music has explored the practice and theory of interconnectivity, utilising the network itself as a creative instrument. The Machine Orchestra (TMO) has extended this historical idea by developing the custom software suite Signal, and creating a shared, social instrument consisting of musical robotics. Signal is a framework for musical synchronisation and data sharing, designed to support the use of musical robotics in an attempt to more fully address ideas of interconnectivity and embodied performance. Signal, in combination with musical robotics, also facilitates the exploration of interaction contexts, such as at the note level, score level and sound-processing level. In this way, TMO is simultaneously building upon the historical contributions and developing aesthetics of network music.

This article documents the early experiments in both Australia and England to make a computer play music. The experiments in England with the Ferranti Mark 1 and the Pilot ACE (practically undocumented at the writing of this article) and those in Australia with CSIRAC (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer) are the oldest known examples of using a computer to play music. Significantly, they occurred some six years before the experiments at Bell Labs in the USA. Furthermore, the computers played music in real time. These developments were important, and despite not directly leading to later highly significant developments such as those at Bell Labs under the direction of Max Mathews, these forward-thinking developments in England and Australia show a history of computing machines being used musically since the earliest development of those machines.1

In this paper, I will focus on the musical work as a self-organising entity within a systemic framework. In particular, two significant and inter-related systemic concepts will be mentioned: self-organisation and open system. Firstly, I shall explain the two concepts within the context of systems thinking with reference to a graphical model of second-order cybernetics. This section will conclude with a discussion of the difference between natural and artificial self-organising systems. I will then extend the systemic perspective, describing what I call self-organising music, and discussing my algorithmic composition Ephemeron as a case study.