Various algorithmic techniques are available for generating music, many of which come from the field of artificial intelligence, which is rich with potential in this regard. However, the musical appropriateness of these techniques is less clearly understood. In this paper, I will report on a study that aimed to describe the characteristics of two of these techniques, rule-based and genetic algorithms, as they apply to melody generation. The appropriateness of these characteristics in contributing to well-formed melodies was judged by aesthetic criteria. The results indicate that most combinations of rules, mutations and evolutionary selection result in poor or average melodies, but that careful combination of these techniques can generate melodies that are not simply well-formed but in many cases display some elegance and novelty.

This article explores the distribution of creative agency between artists and audiences in participatory sound art through the lens of perspective theory. In contemporary creativity studies, perspective is taken to mean the way in which an actor’s perception of the environment is structured by their intention to act. According to Vlad Glaveanu, constructing and taking new perspectives constitutes a necessary condition for creative acts as it reveals new affordances of the creator’s materials. In this article, I investigate the perspectives of sound artists and participants through ethnographic case studies of Katrine Faber’s participatory performance Let Us Sing Your Place and Benoît Maubrey’s interactive Speaker Sculptures. In Faber’s performance, the participants use their voices to recreate the soundscape of a place described by one of them. Maubrey’s sculptures are large structures built out of loudspeakers through which the participants can play their own sounds via Bluetooth, phone lines or directly plugged-in microphone. Analysing ethnographic observations and interviews with artists and participants in the two case studies, I discuss how their perspectives are constructed and communicated through artwork’s materialities. Exploring the particularity of perspectives induced by participatory sound art, I show how it challenges a number of conventional ideas about sound and auditory culture.

The author examines visual design considerations in the development of real-time screen scores. Such scores are shown to lend themselves particularly well to the representation of non-linear musical processes and the articulation of non-linear musical forms. The author argues that the foregrounding of such scores, through their projection for an audience and meticulous design, draws especial attention to the manner in which such non-linear processes are represented and in turn decoded by performers. While the transparency of the decoding process is shown to vary across a wide spectrum, the central role of the notational schema in works such as these is shown to align them in many ways with a broader interface aesthetics, promoting rich fields of creative and artistic enquiry.

During the past decade, embodied knowledge has provided novel important insights to rethink mediation technology, thereby paving the way for a transdisciplinary approach to wearable technologies. Stemming from a phenomenological-based approach and considering current trends in sonic interaction design, this article proposes an extensive account on embodied approaches to mediation technology and underlines the increasing importance of somatic knowledge within the field. It also presents an autoethnographic analysis of my own performance, which provides an original contribution to the artistic application of wearable technologies. Stemming from an ongoing research-creation on musical improvisation with biophysical technologies, the case study emphasises how an embodied and visceral approach to interaction can transform wearable devices into an active sensory-perceptual mode of experiencing, which is capable of stimulating the performer’s sensorimotor metaplasticity. The reconfiguration of a body’s automations through the use of sound feedback is a process that unfolds with a high degree of sensitivity in which the body can be poetically understood as an emergent territoriality, inhabited and transfigured by the sound.

This paper introduces the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site project (EARS), taking a tripartite approach: first outlining the project's philosophy, then reporting on work-to-date and finishing with a discussion of the project's ambitions and aims.

The project's aim is the development of a dynamic, multi-lingual, international, publicly available Internet-based bibliographical resource designed to enhance the scholarly infrastructure of electroacoustic music studies, in particular, the musicology of electroacoustic music. Through the use of hypertext structures and linking systems the site will help to contextualise specific research within the broad field of electroacoustic music studies, as well as making helpful links between related areas/items of scholarship. The project aspires to assist access to current, past and evolving areas of scholarship and will attempt to redress certain imbalances in the ease of access to areas of research within the field. The project will strive to conceive of electroacoustic music in its widest possible sense, acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of the field, and aspire to the greatest possible breadth and inclusiveness. The EARS project is coordinated by an international consortium, is directed by the authors and can be found at http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/EARS

Historical models may often provide some of the greatest inspiration for the creation of new technologies. A DIY approach appropriating older paradigms in technology is discussed, with special attention paid to how old concepts can become relevant within a modern context. The author's electronic instrument, the Phantastron, is introduced as an example of this DIY approach. The Phantastron's creation is detailed in practice and methods such as repurposing, redesigning, hacking and circuit bending upon a historical design are described. A wider angle is then cast upon the concept of repurposing older technologies, and the works of other artists and DIY makers are considered. The concept that antiquated technology is in the common domain and ready to be utilised in the synthesis of new ideas is discussed. Finally, a generalised DIY approach to integrating historical ideas into new creations is posited.

Live coding is a celebrated practice that is used in many areas, combined with a variety of artistic fields. Code poetry is a form of poetry with many variations, all of which have a common rule: the code that is or produces the poem must compile without errors. The meeting point of live coding and code poetry seems to have not yet been thoroughly explored, leaving space for experimentation and research. Certain attempts have already been made, where live coding is either approached through natural language or used to break up and merge chunks of existing poems, forming new ones. Computer code has also been used to write deterministic opera librettos, following the code poetry paradigm. This article focuses on the literary and artistic attributes of code, on code poetry and on the existing attempts to combine it with live coding. It also highlights the narrative attribute of musical live coding to formulate a rationale for combining live coding with code poetry in a musical context. The goal is to examine the possibilities of this combination, as well as how this can be achieved, from a technical point of view.

This paper describes a large, interactive sound installation that was presented in Oslo during October 2002. The installation, in broad terms, brought the presence of the whole country into the one location through sound, and made the sound available for the public as material to play with or explore in a more structured fashion. The sonic results were streamed to the Internet, together with images from the exterior of the installation. The installation was located at the central train station in an area where thousands of people pass through every day. The curatorial idea was developed by two institutions, as an answer to their missions of providing interesting sonic material and events for the whole country. The idea was given concrete form by three composers, and brought up on a national level through co-arrangement with a large festival of contemporary music. Funding for the installation was provided by both private and public organisations. The installation serves as an example on how a large and complex work of art can be developed through institutional curatorial effort, artistic intentions and activity, and commercial interests. The installation maintained a high degree of artistic integrity while being accessible and attractive for large audiences.

This article describes the design and implementation of MidiVisualiser, a virtual environment which provides an interactive visualisation of MIDI music data. Section 1 explores music visualisation in general and examines the role of computers and virtual environments. Section 2 briefly surveys existing music visualisation research and places MidiVisualiser in context. Section 3 examines various techniques of visualisation and discusses composite dimensions and ‘Benediktine cyberspace’, including a description of how visualisation techniques derived from them were used in MidiVisualiser to overcome some of the difficulties associated with representing large numbers of data attributes simultaneously. Sections 4 and 5 contain an overview of the implementation and evaluation of MidiVisualiser, while section 6 discusses future work and conclusions.

As a composer in the very late twentieth century my goal is to inject as much intelligence and substance into the process of music-making as possible, to present listeners with sensory and intellectual metaphorical tools that enable them to perceive relationships of time and space in ways that might otherwise go unnoticed. Music-oriented researchers in the fields of psychoacoustics and cognition in recent years have viewed the computer as a means of simply extending and rationalising traditional music theory and form, rather than summarising the base of musical knowledge we have inherited and then breaking free of those constraints. Performers, composers and producers in the field of popular entertainment continue to use technology to narrow rather than broaden aesthetic boundaries in the so-called creative arts.

A new aesthetic paradigm is needed . . .

Technology provides us with the tools we require in order to build a genuinely new method of music creation and listening. I propose that it is time to invest our energies in the creation of visionary learning tools that enhance our ability to evolve in our relationship to ourselves, to one another, to the planet, and perhaps ultimately to the stars. It is the author’s strongest desire to allow for the full realisation of what computer music has long held the promise to provide – limitless variation with infinite control.

Toward this end, I document here (i) a theory of music that attempts to assimilate the infinite and subtle interconnectedness of the human experience into a single symbolic structure, and (ii) the application of this theory to the extension of an emerging genre – the environmentally interactive computer music system – designed for eventual use by people not necessarily aware of the underlying technical and aesthetic principles at work, but fully appreciative of the profound personal benefits to be found embedded therein.

Owing to space limitations, I will focus almost exclusively on the theoretical and aesthetic issues that have driven the software development, and leave a detailed discussion of the system specifications and its operation to a separate article.

This article introduces the recent sound works of Heidi Fast, a Finnish voice and performance artist. Fast’s creative practice operates between art and philosophy, and articulates several ‘zones of becoming’: what Fast designates as ‘the clinical’, ‘the virtual’ and ‘vocal thought-material’. Using a methodology of routing, the article shows how these zones emerge as aesthetic, ethical and political concerns within Fast’s work.

Since 2005, Fast’s sound works have variously taken shape as miniature concerts, social sculptures, imaginary soundscapes and environmental music performances. Drawing upon the writings of theorists who have helped shape her practice, this article argues that Fast uses sound and voice to propose an ‘actualising philosophy’. This philosophy actualises virtualities (unrealised potentials), affecting transformative shifts through tiny mutations in perceptions and behaviours.

Urban Portrait: Thessaloniki is a sonic art installation by this author, presented at the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts of Middlesex University, London, in May 2008. This article constitutes an exploration of sonic representation of the experience of place as a central element of the work. The term psychosonography is introduced to encapsulate the described method and references to its supporting concepts. Urban Portrait is about representation of experienced locality, as well as the emergence of relationships among a collection of such localities through their sonic embodiments. Ultimately, it takes the form of the sonic equivalent of a psychogeographical map, to be navigated by aural means.

over the past century, an art form has emerged between the realms of visual art and music. created by composers and sculptors, ‘sound art’ challenges fundamental divisions between these two sister arts and may be found in museums, festivals or public sites. works of sound art play on the fringes of our often-unconscious aural experience of a world dominated by the visual. this work addresses our ears in surprising ways: it is not strictly music, or noise, or speech, or any sound found in nature, but often includes, combines and transforms elements of all of these. sound art sculpts sound in space and time, reacts to environments and reshapes them, and frames ambient ‘found sound’, altering our concepts of space, time, music and noise.

This paper examines the integration of traditional New Zealand Mäori instruments with digital music technology, and the use of these instruments in making new works. The focus is on the work of performer/composers Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns, as well as recent collaborations that Richard Nunns has undertaken with some composers and musicians in genres other than Mäori music. Aesthetic, practical and cultural considerations in the composition process are explored.

In this contribution to the twentieth anniversary issue of Organised Sound, I first recall the reasons for dedicating a periodical to organised sound which I mentioned in my answer to inquiries from Cambridge University Press before the journal existed. The digital era is still in its infancy and it will permit a host of new ways to organise sound. I suggest in particular the development of an intimate relationship between acoustic and digital sounds; the extension of structural notations of sound and music and their exploitation for novel musical transformation; the amplification of the use of functions and combinations of functions. I evoke some issues discussed in Organised Sound, elaborating in more detail some problematic topics: analysis and reconstruction of computer music, live electronic music performance, perception of musical sound and sensory aesthetics.

The word ‘acousmatic’ has a strange and complicated history. Recent Schaefferian accounts have replicated François Bayle's sketch of the ‘histoire du mot’ from his Musique acousmatique – in particular, the assumed synonymy between ‘acousmatique’ and ‘acousmate’. However, this synonymy is mistaken. The word ‘acousmate’ was first coined in an article from 1730 to describe a strange noise heard one evening in the small French village of Ansacq. A discussion of the article follows, which shows how the word is unrelated to the Pythagorean acousmatics, and how its author understood his ‘acousmate’ in the context of contemporary natural science. Additionally, a sketch of the term's changing signification in three discourses – scientific, psychological and literary – is presented. The goal of this article is to articulate a set of problems concerning the historiography of acousmatic listening in the Schaefferian tradition. These problems include: 1) the need to authorise a practice of musique acousmatique, which has limited historical investigation to moments where the word ‘acousmate’ or ‘acousmatique’ appear in the archive; 2) a mistaken assumption that ‘acousmate’ and ‘acousmatique’ are synonymous, which has forced together historical moments that are not in fact affiliated; 3) an adherence to this affiliation, which has foreclosed the opportunity to consider acousmatic listening as a set of culturally and historically specific practices concerning the relationship of seeing and hearing.

This article arises from the need to reflect upon the possibility of developing new ways of teaching electroacoustic music, based on the opportunities recently offered by technology and the theories about learning that have been developed in recent decades. After taking into consideration the limits of the current teaching methods, the article examines various theories and approaches that involve questioning the objectivity of the learning process, the concept of multiple intelligences, the concentration on the experience as the focal point of learning and so forth. On the basis of these reflections, and after evaluating various teaching experiences over the past twenty years, the authors make some practical proposals, without imagining a curriculum, but rather by outlining several possible activities within an organic teaching project. To this end, a software program is described and realised in which the learner is engaged through the use of an interactive game format that can be played by the individual or in a group, and that encourages the development of the capacities of analysis, perception, practical skill, knowledge, imagination and creativity.

This short article presents the author’s ideas about different score formats for instrumental performers of mixed electroacoustic music. Following a trajectory from initial understanding through effective rehearsal and ending in performance, different score formats are discussed. Each is based on and addresses performers’ needs and improves documentation and transmission of the composer’s intentions and the performer’s contribution. The author bases these suggestions on her experience as a performer/commissioner and composer of new mixed electroacoustic works, many of which are collaborative creations.

This article provides four viewpoints on the narratives of space, allowing us to think about possible relations between sites and sounds and reflecting on how places might tell stories, or how practitioners embed themselves in a place in order to shape cultural, social and/or political narratives through the use of sound. I propose four viewpoints that investigate the relationship between sites and sounds, where narratives are shaped and made through the exploration of specific sonic activities. These are: sonic narrative of space, sonic activism, sonic preservation and sonic participatory action.

I examine each of these ideas, initially focusing in more detail on the first viewpoint, which provides the context for discussing and analysing a recent site-specific music improvisation project entitled ‘Museum City’, a work that aligns most closely with my proposal for a ‘sonic narrative of space’, while also bearing aspects of each of the other proposed viewpoints.

The work ‘Museum City’ by Pedro Rebelo, Franziska Schroeder, Ricardo Jacinto and André Cepeda specifically enables me to reflect on how derelict and/or transitional spaces might be re-examined through the use of sound, particularly by means of live music improvisation. The spaces examined as part of ‘Museum City’ constitute either deserted sites or sites about to undergo changes in their architectural layout, their use and sonic make-up. The practice in ‘Museum City’ was born out of a performative engagement with(in) those sites, but specifically out of an intimate listening relationship by three improvisers situated within those spaces.

The theoretical grounding for this article is situated within a wider context of practising and cognising musical spatiality, as proposed by Georgina Born (2013), particularly her proposition for three distinct lineages that provide an understanding of space in/and music. Born’s third lineage, which links more closely with practices of sound art and challenges a Euclidean orientation of pitch and timbre space, makes way for a heightened consideration of listening and ‘the place’ of sound. This lineage is particularly crucial for my discussion, since it positions music in relation to social experiences and the everyday, which the work ‘Museum City’ endeavoured to embrace.