This article explores the accessibility of acousmatic compositional approaches to sound and installation art. Principally of concern is the consideration of intimacy to create a means of ‘connecting’ with an audience. Installations might be said to explore ideas of intimacy in two ways which increase accessibility for the installation visitor: through cultivating installation–visitor relationships, and through encouraging visitor–visitor relationships. A variety of ways in which various acousmatic compositional techniques relating to intimacy might be brought to bear on and operate as a way of drawing a listener into a work are explored, in particular as they relate to the consideration of space and spatial relationships. These include recording techniques, types of sound materials chosen, and the creation of particular spatial environments and listening conditions. Along with a number of instances of sound art provided by way of examples, my ongoing GRIDs series of sound sculptures will provide a case study of works related to an acousmatic aesthetic where these concerns find an outlet.

This paper explores the relationship between how we use and theorise frequency as musicians and how frequency is perceived by listeners within the technological and ideological context of electroacoustic music. With reference to work in perception, music theory and aesthetics, it is argued that thinking about frequency is still dominated by the idea of music’s abstract significance. It is suggested that although electroacoustic music presents a challenge to such ideology, this challenge is not reflected in current musical research, leading to a peculiar dislocation between practice and theory. In conclusion, it is proposed that studying the ways in which frequency structure contributes to meaning might provide a better understanding of the production and perception of electroacoustic music than studying frequency structure in itself.

Animated screen-based notation and visual representation of sound provide an important solution to visualising a range of musical phenomena and techniques including continuous parametrical changes, synchronisation with prerecorded audio or live processing, and nonlinear formal organisation. The limitations of human visual capabilities, however, place some constraints upon the efficacy of screen-based representation, particularly in regard to notation reading. Findings from sightreading studies exploring the manner in which notation is encoded, processed and executed are examined with the aim of identifying the perceptual and practical boundaries of presenting animated notation on screen. The development of efficient visual representation is proposed as an important requirement for alleviating the issues created by the time constraints of reading on screen. Studies in semantics and cross-modal activation are discussed as a foundation for the expansion of approaches to the visualisation of sound.

There are many excellent works for piano and tape; however, there have been an insufficient number of pianists widely performing these works. The purpose of this article is to critically analyse the rhythmic relationships between piano and tape, serving a pedagogical function for both composers and pianists in technical and aesthetic terms. Hopefully these techniques will encourage pianists to include music for piano and tape as part of their repertoire.

In the literature dedicated to twentieth-century music, the early history of electronic music is regularly presented hand in hand with the development of technical repetitive devices such as closed grooves and magnetic tape loops. Consequently, the idea that such devices were ‘invented’ in the studios of the first great representatives of electronic music tends to appear as an implicit consequence. However, re-examination of the long history of musical technology, from the ninth-century Banu Musa automatic flute to the Hammond organ of the 1930s, reveals that repetitive devices not only go right back to the earliest days of musical automation, but also evolved in a wide variety of contexts wholly unconnected from any form of musical institution. This article aims to shed light on this other, forgotten, history of repetitive audio technologies.

When, in 1998, I began my research into the analysis of electroacoustic music, analysis and representation were two distinct disciplines. One was an integral part of music research and the other was just a possible option for publication.

Music composition is traditionally regarded as an act of individual creation and expression, but can be approached, through the aid of digital platforms, as an activity that encourages learning through social participation. This article describes the development of a tablet-based app, Paynter, intended as a digital graphic interface for group collaborative composition and its experimental use in a primary school in Salford, UK, alongside musicians from the BBC Philharmonic orchestra. The app created a framework for a negotiated language of symbols used by two groups of students at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 to tell stories through sound and music. Its functionality enabled compositional thinking to emerge collectively from groups with relatively little exposure to the idea of composing and little knowledge of traditional notational or digital sequencing technologies. The research is grounded in a theoretical context of constructivist approaches to education.

This article shows how the theremin as a new musical medium enacted a double logic throughout its century-old techno-cultural life. On the one hand, in an attempt to be a ‘better’ instrument, the theremin imitated or remediated traditional musical instruments and in this way affirmed the musical values these instruments materialised; simultaneously, by being a new and different medium, with unprecedented flexibility for designing sound and human–machine interaction, it eroded and challenged these same values and gradually enacted change. On the other hand, the theremin inadvertently inaugurated a practice of musical instrument circulation using electronics schematics that allowed for the instrument’s reproduction, starting with the publication of schematics and tutorials in amateur electronics magazines and which can be seen as a predecessor to today’s circulation of open source code. This circulation practice, which I call instrument-code transduction, emerged from and was amplified by the fame the theremin obtained using its touchless interface to imitate or remediate traditional musical instruments, and in turn, this circulation practice has kept the instrument alive throughout the decades. Thus remediation and code-instrument transduction are not just mutually dependent, but are in fact, two interdependent processes of the same media phenomenon. Drawing from early reactions to the theremin documented in the press, from new media theory, and from publications in amateur electronics, this article attempts to use episodes from the history of the theremin to understand the early and profound changes that electric technologies brought to the concept of musical instruments at large.

the purpose of this paper is to articulate some of the ways in which australian sound practitioners are already designing sound in the public domain so that current trends and practices can be examined, compared and contrasted. this paper interrogates the new hybrid art form, public sound art, and the design processes associated with it as it occurs in public space in australia. the right to quiet has been defined as a public commons (franklin 1993). public space in australia is becoming increasingly sound designed. this article investigates the variety of approaches by sound artists and practitioners who have installed in public space through a representative sample of works drawn from the australian sound design project's online gallery and article, http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au, a site dedicated to the multimedia publishing of diverse sound designs installed in public space in australia, as well as its international outreach hearing place. works include permanent public and ephemeral sculptures, time-dense computerised sound installations, museum designs, exhibits in airports, art galleries, car parks, digital and interactive media exhibitions, and real-time virtual habitats on and off the web. the degree of interactivity in the sound-designed artworks varies greatly from work to work. stylistic features and design processes are identified in each work and compared and contrasted as a basis for examining the characteristics of the genre as a whole and its impact on the soundscape now and in the future.

this article gives an overview of the music machines created by bosch and simons from 1990 until the present. special attention is given to vibratory projects which have been their main focus since 1993. as a consequence of physical properties – all of them being complex sprung constructions – the movements and sounds created by these machines can change almost imperceptibly from order into chaos and vice versa. the concept behind the software which controls the oscillation motors, used in this series of projects, is for the most part defined and restricted by physical conditions. this software does not dictate movement and its sonic consequences, it simply intensifies the inherent properties of the constructions. the music machines have been shown under numerous conditions which can be divided in two groups: the public vs the private space. the authors have a clear preference for the latter. this does not have to be a traditional art environment like a gallery or a museum, but at least it should be a space that offers the public a free choice to go to the exhibition. this way their work can be met with the rest and concentration needed to discover the often slow and subtle processes that take place. in the volatile atmosphere of a public space this is rarely possible.

In Western countries and in Japan, experimental practices of music have developed into larger communities that share a common musical aesthetic and language, and are generally associated with genres such as noise music, free improvisation, or experimental music. However in South East Asia, and particularly in Indonesia, these categories are of little use for finding artists making unique music. Instead, distinctly individualistic styles and a form of musical experimentalism is found at the edge of more popular genres such as punk, metal, or as a result of incorporating traditional and indigenous musical influences. Ensembles Asia is project that aims to explore these forms of musical experimentations that slip through conventional categorisations of music. The project also tries to cultivate a new network of musicians through playing together in a large improvising ensemble.

On reflection upon my own experience as a composer in theory and practice, I find that terms not only define but also propose. In finding words for spatial texture, I have discovered that spatial texture itself is always proposing: motion of sound suggests texture of space. The texture of space creates an elusive materiality. Form is no better than formlessness.

The use of video as a performance medium, concentrating on interactive digital video used synchronously with realtime interactive audio, is outlined. Specifically, the author's experiments with realtime video in Macromind Director and in Opcode's Max are explored, working with motion-sensing systems in performance environments. A number of experimental pieces using sonic and visual environments driven by realtime motion-sensing performance systems are described, using Max to re-map incoming sensing data and using Macromind Director to control MIDI sequences, digital sound files, and digital video in realtime. Some of the compositional challenges presented by realtime systems are also explored, particularly the compositional issues arising from the addition of video into the (real)time domain. The author's current work in the development of a CD-ROM published in 1996 is also explored. The CD-ROM attempts to provide a genuine degree of interaction significantly more sophisticated than the usual point-and-click navigation, allowing the viewer a degree of creativity in his or her interaction with the material.

The authors describe various experiences regarding the use of sonic materials from local musical cultures and soundscapes in the field of electroacoustic music as applied to the creative documentary. The introduction concentrates on the general characteristics of the process of ‘globalisation’ now underway and on the various different interpretations of it that have been developed over the last fifteen years.

A number of methodological and ethical questions are then asked in relation to the debate regarding the global/local dichotomy in the context of electroacoustic and audiovisual elaboration, especially when phonic material originating from the most varied geographic-cultural areas is artistically restructured and reconfigured.

In the third part of the article the accent is placed on the personal experiences of the authors regarding the production of pieces of electroacoustic music and documentaries realised in Morocco, China and Lapland.

In the last section the article concentrates on a possible diachronic perspective (i.e. studying a phenomenon in its passage through time) by means of which one can come to a relationship with soundscape sounds, and some sonic and visual examples from works realised in Catania and London are supplied.

The role of spatial design in music has become more prominent in recent years, mostly because of the affordability of powerful software and hardware tools. Although spatial audio tools are widely used nowadays in studios and concert halls, there are only few examples of robust and comfortable wearable sound systems with a suitable acoustic response. A wireless body-worn loudspeaker prototype featuring original costume elements, a hybrid full-range loudspeaker array and an improved acoustic response was designed and implemented. The size, shape and acoustic performance of the prototype was optimised using data gathered from anechoic measurements and interviews with performers and audiences. Future developments of this project will consider the implementation of an extended multi-channel performance platform to explore sonic and spatial relationships created by several wearable devices on stage synchronised with a multi-loudspeaker diffusion system.

This article will, in a broad sense, discuss technology-based music from its early radio beginnings to the current participation practices, and seek to place both technical and musical development within broader trends of social development. The introduction of new technologies in industry, composition, mediation and consumption has, in a lasting manner, changed the way most of us listen to, participate in and make use of music in our daily lives. Electronic aesthetics has finally, following a development of nearly a hundred years, started to fulfil its initial promise of becoming widely accepted and popular outside of the narrow circles of musical expertise – a ‘democratic’ music unhindered by the hierarchies of the fine arts in their different configurations. But has it really fulfilled the original promise? Is it rather not so that both the music and its promise have changed over the years?

One thing is certain, our pre-adaption to aesthetic experiences has undergone extreme changes over the last twenty years or so. A paradigm shift brought about by digital media and distribution, as well as the networking of things, has directed large parts of humanity towards a new existence in the cross-section of technology and humanity, an existence where cyborgian qualities increase day by day.

This article proposes an analytical perspective on the aural analysis of human–machine interaction. Starting from Pierre Schaeffer’s musical thinking, it focuses on the perception of sound morphologies that generate from human–machine interaction. This interaction, usually interpreted under the perspective of the devices and technological innovation, will be interpreted through the perspective of musical perception and semantics. In the article, the author applies the criterion of ‘allure’, that permits the analysis of the sound object’s sustain and indicates the sound agent as mechanical, living or natural. ‘Allure’ is used as a theoretical framework for the analysis of human–computer interaction (HCI) in music. Inspired by a hypothetical perceptive Turing’s test, the author employs the ‘allure’ criterion as a conceptual tool for an aural analysis of human–machine interaction: aural analysis can indeed reveal the interaction of sound agents through the cognitive mechanism of motor imagery. This approach can be extended and developed in music information retrieval. The author will develop this reflection showing the actuality of Schaeffer’s perspective in HCI analysis. Finally, to highlight the interaction between human and electronic sound sources, the author will consider a case study: the first movement of Traiettoria for piano and electronics by Marco Stroppa.

this paper explains the concept, technology and reality of the sound installation adsonore. the important aspects of adsonore are that it is interactive, continuously changing, permanent and located in a public space. the functioning of the human immune system lies behind its interactive design, the real-time sound processes and the physical construction. adsonore is therefore directly related to the building in which it is housed – a new building for biological basic research.