Preparing Organised Sound's thematic issue on ‘gender in music technology’ has been exciting and challenging. Exciting, because this field is young with only a few publications around. Such a thematic issue offers an opportunity to bring people together who are active in this field, and thus works towards the creation of a ‘critical mass’. Hopefully it will stimulate others to think and write about these gender issues as well. But the area itself also posed a challenge. Would we receive enough submissions? Would we be able to publish a sufficiently interesting issue on gender?

The history of music in the twentieth century is viewed as a process of expanding the sonic material of music to include all sound. Technological barriers to the full exploitation of the domain of sound are suggested as causing the process to take more time than it would otherwise due to cultural or aesthetic factors alone. Important historical developments in music over the last century are reconsidered to be, at least in part, strategies for circumventing technological limitations to manipulating and accessing all sound. Support for this perspective is found in the words of artists and composers of the time and in comparisons between the technologies available for creation in the visual and the sonic arts. Sound modelling is examined as a post all-sound paradigm holding promise for normalising the relationship between sound and music.

Project Arbol:Deer-B-Gone is a an outdoor sound installation of indefinite duration for twenty-three speakers. It takes on a guerrilla approach to sound installation art. Low-tech concepts and supplies, such as car amplifiers, aircraft cable, inexpensive cassette players, coupled with an overall irreverence for mainstream consumerism, created something like a Disney World theme park gone awry. The installation, which was site-specific, took place in a backyard in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Yards and yards of cable were woven through the trees. Speakers were later mounted on the cable. Once in place, the speakers moved slowly along the cable. Each speaker played its own sound track. While there were some technical difficulties that plagued the project throughout its development and performance, overall Project Arbol proved to be a resilient installation.

This article is part of PhD research dealing with gender issues in electroacoustic music, focusing on the voice. The first part of the article begins with a discussion of the musical material under research. Thereafter follows an elaborate overview of the number of male and female composers, vocalists and recorded voices in several series of CDs of electroacoustic and computer music. The gendered roles of the live, pre-recorded and synthesised voices are discussed and the musical couple of the male composer and the female vocalist emerges. The second part touches upon several issues raised by the results of part one: the roles of the performer and the composer, (dis)embodiment, femininity and technology. This is a preview into some of the remaining research. In section 2, other music than the CD series of section 1 is discussed as well. The gender patterns are interpreted in a broader context. The role of the female vocalist is many sided. Cyborg voices relate to old patterns as well as new possibilities.

Gender is a category that is mostly unexplored in the field of new music interface technology. This paper explores some aspects of gender within the field. First, it studies the academic literature of the last five years with regard to the gender of the participants and the gender awareness of its content. Men are found to outnumber women in the field. The inspection of the literature shows a marked absence of documented gender awareness in the field. Then, the paper explores gender in new music interface technology performances of the last five years: two by male and two by female performers. It is discussed how they individually and in their cross-relationship speak to gender constructions. The analysis suggests that female performances seem to speak to gender issues whereas male performances seem to show an absence of gender as category. Finally, a further device is contrasted with these performances. I suggest that this technology is of particular interest for the artistic exploration of gender by making the body the recipient of performance.

As the techniques used in creating audio art and electronic music become more diversified and increasingly use some sort of computer-oriented notation, the question of analysis of this wide repertoire is revisited. While there are still many obstacles in its study, this topic attracts more attention today than in the recent past. In this article, I emphasise the need to consider that, when analysing audio art and electronic music, technology, technique and musical style are to be taken in account. To this end, I introduce concepts put forth by the Russian Constructivists as a basis for reflection.

This article discusses the responsive sound installation Reeds. The Reeds project was commissioned by the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts in 2000, and first exhibited in November and December of that year on the Ornamental Lake at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. It consists of twenty-one large floating sculptures, modelled to represent clusters of river reeds in immaculate man-made plantings. Each reed pod contains a collection of electronics for either the gathering of weather information or the reception and dispersion of sound. The sound installation gathered data from two real-time weather stations, and produced eight channels of musical output by interpreting the machine unit pulses of the weather data as pulse inputs to Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) algorithms. The Reeds project focused on a consideration of multiple streams of chaotic and constantly varying sound. I was interested in exploring whether the sonic environment would remain homogenous even though, unlike a musical ensemble, the control inputs varied randomly and independently of each other. The sound installation was site specific, reflecting directly upon the environment it inhabited, both in terms of its visual quality, and aesthetic of the sound.

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 suggests a framework for the articulation of ambiophonic and geometrical spaces in electroacoustic composition and performance. Space-ambiophony explores the global perception of space, which is derived from the archetypal perception of surrounding environments. The term applies to usually large-scale observation but it can also include shifts in the listener's attention from gestalt perception to micro-structural observation. A spatial analysis of Smalley's Base Metals demonstrates the methods by which space-ambiophony is integrated into the composition. In space-geometry, relations and analogies are established between composed sonic events and principles of geometry and stereometry. Three primordial geometrical elements, drawn from Wassily Kandinsky's theoretical work on painting, serve as metaphorical cells for the construction and projection of this type of space: the point, the line and the plane.

The interaction between the acoustic qualities of listening spaces, the configuration of loudspeakers, the composed space (sonic trajectories, background, foreground) and its projection by the interpreter in a concert, are all issues that occupy parts of the article.

The origins of women's pioneering contributions to the repertoire and history of electroacoustic music can often be linked to the growth of academic and commercial electronic and computer music studios in North America. A signific ant number of early female composers in the medium received their initial training and experience in the United States and their accomplishments begin in the earliest decades of the twentieth century. Women's achievements in the educational and entertainment sectors have laid the foundation for subsequent generations who have influenced the aesthetic and technical path of electroacoustic music.

Excerpted from several chapters of the author's historical series on women composers and music technology, the article outlines the contributions of several of the earliest women in the United States to the utilisation of music technology in creative work. Also discussed are research precedents in this area and issues regarding women and music technology in the United States today. With the creation of her book series outlining the achievements of women working with music technology, the author hopes to offer a valuable contribution to research on the history of electroacoustic music in general and women's representation in the genre in particular.

The main focus of this article is the work of Daphne Oram, composer of electronic music, who founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958 and went on to run her own independent studio from where she composed several significant pieces of electronic music, designed and built a new audio recording machine, and lectured and wrote extensively on electronic and concrète music. The paper will endeavour to show that Ms Oram is deserving of recognition as an innovative composer of electronic and concrète music, as well as possessing interesting and valuable insight into the practice and theory of this medium. It will critically examine her work, and methods for achieving completed pieces, and compare and contrast her compositional work and the thinking behind it, to the work of other significant composers of the time.

This paper describes the musical and technical design and the realisation of a large-scale sound installation produced and realised by Centro Tempo Reale for the inauguration of Renzo Piano's new Auditorium in Rome. The installation, conceived by Luciano Berio, was mainly dedicated to electroacoustic music: the complex technological set-up offered a new instrument for which electroacoustic pieces were transcribed. The techniques and the aesthetic implications of this transcription process within the context of an installation are discussed.

This paper takes a systemic perspective on interactive signal processing and introduces the author's Audible Eco-Systemic Interface (AESI) project. It starts with a discussion of the paradigm of ‘interaction’ in existing computer music and live electronics approaches, and develops following bio-cybernetic principles such as ‘system/ambience coupling’, ‘noise’, and ‘self-organisation’. Central to the paper is an understanding of ‘interaction’ as a network of interdependencies among system components, and as a means for dynamical behaviour to emerge upon the contact of an autonomous system (e.g. a DSP unit) with the external environment (room or else hosting the performance). The author describes the design philosophy in his current work with the AESI (whose DSP component was implemented as a signal patch in KYMA5.2), touching on compositional implications (not only live electronics situations, but also sound installations).

Project Lovelace is a school-based programme for students aged twelve to eighteen years interested in learning about making music by using technology. The programme is designed to encourage equal and equitable participation by male and female students through instruction in technology-enhanced music performance, improvisation, composition, analysis and notation. Project Lovelace is named in honour of the contributions of the female mathematician Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, who in 1842 predicted that computers could be used for musical composition (Roads 1996).

The goals of Project Lovelace are to develop collaborative-based methods for gender-balanced school music technology programmes, amass a gender-balanced repertoire suitable for school music technology programmes, nurture creativity and analytical skills in music technology, and conduct a longitudinal study that documents the changing attitudes and perceived competencies of participating students and teachers.

The motivation to initiate Project Lovelace was the timely convergence of two vexing issues perennially facing music technology programmes in higher education, specifically at the University of Michigan: the proportionally small number of female applicants to university music technology programmes and the need to continually upgrade or replace laboratory equipment. Why not allocate second-generation university laboratory equipment to the schools with the intent of building school-based music technology curricula that lead to a gender-balanced university applicant pool?

Spiral Fiction is a piece of interactive performance staged by the authors in 2002. The paper provides detailed information about the technology used, the nature of the interactivity employed, the artists use of the Bodycoder System© and the aesthetic and theoretical issues arising out of the work. The paper addresses the problematic nature of the audience gaze, the seductive qualities of new technology, creative balance in the presence of new technologies and the problem of placing interactive performance along side analogue and single art form disciplines. The paper also explores the psychophysical nature of the interactivity associated with the Bodycoder System and will discuss cross-modal perception and sensation. The authors draw on aspects of postmodern theory to further expand their observations.

The Live Room was a temporary site-specific installation presented in building N51, room 117 on the MIT campus on 7 May 1998 and concluded on 10 June 1998. Using small acoustic-intensifying equipment which mounted directly to the structure of the foundation at the site, the system created an enhanced scale of ‘tectonic charging’ through vibration. The system engaged the architecture by running impulsive energy throughout, creating sound and vibration in direct relation to the building and the dimensions of the space. The project describes an intensified site where machines fuse into architecture and combine active forces with the building forms. The action was an attempt towards the liberation of tectonics from the limitations of the static, creating a place where resonant structures vibrate in sympathy with induced frequencies. By using various transducing devices and signal-generating equipment, the project effectively ‘tuned in’ the location by delivering resonant frequencies. The installation engaged directly with a unique floor system which was already present at the location. Mechanical oscillators were mounted into this floor system so that frequencies were imparted into the building, the floor and the persons who were situated in the room. With this work, I was interested in TRANSDUCING ARCHITECTURE, driving the space with external influences of a vibro-kinetic nature.

The ability to create a virtual world in computer code and implement audio that will follow the physical laws of that real world provides enormous flexibility to the composers working in the computer game industry. The multiple layers of sound that are nonlinear, interactive and dynamically mixed and effected in real time, place this media well outside the restrictions of traditional film, television and music and allow for experiences difficult to create in a more traditional real-world setting. The process of designing a broad concept audio environment for a computer game world can become a blueprint for the creation of a surround sound experience that has many similarities to sound installation practice. Creation and implementation of the sound content, the way in which it becomes interactive and the rules that drive the dynamic mixing are the processes by which the artist defines his or her vision of the final sound work. This paper aims to approach the use of a ‘next generation’ game console as a sound installation space, and discusses the ways in which a virtual audio environment created for a computer game is similar to a more traditional installation space. There are very real limitations for the implementation of soundscapes on computer game consoles, but a balance to these limitations is the capabilities of the surround sound hardware, support of powerful 3D audio engines and accessibility to a wide and diversified audience.

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.