Cheaply available high-quality digital recording equipment, and the ubiquity of computer music tools and the Internet make the creation of electroacoustic music in diverse localities, and its dissemination around the globe, extremely easy. This raises important questions about the relationship of local sound worlds and cultural experience to a potentially global audience. This quandary is examined through the compositions Globalalia (which deals explicitly with speech material from many languages) and Fabulous Paris – a virtual oratorio whcih uses speech in different ways to contrast our relationship to the local and personal with our relationship to the mass experience of the globalised mega-city. The problems in relating to both a local and a global audience are considered in relation to the composer's current project recording speech materials in local communities in the North East of England.

The phenomenon of contemporary composers reaching across cultures in search of inspiration, musical materials and forms, and new ideas is not a new one, but it is occurring now with greater frequency. Some seek to join inherited traditions from within their own ancestral cultures with new traditions from the West or with new technologies. Some are Westerners exploring traditional musical forms and aesthetics from cultures different from their own. The process of engaging interculturally raises complex issues, at times challenging historical attitudes towards the culture of ‘the other’. The author considers a wide range of motivations for this emerging body of work, surveying the range of approaches that composers have taken, and urges the cultivation of cultural sensitivity. This essay proposes what the author terms a ‘reflective compositional process’ with which composers can explore their motivations and compositional strategies and consider the relationships inhering between materials and cultural origins. Implications for works engaging new technologies are considered throughout the essay.

Four compositions for cello and string quartet on tape by American intermedia artist Phill Niblock originating from 1974 to 2003 are discussed. The interdependence of compositional approach and available technology is considered, leading to the observation that the electronic music composer's technique is considerably independent of the available technology. Where a dependence of artistic development on factors not originally musical has to be acknowledged, these nonmusical factors lie not so much in the technology but in Niblock's interpretation of it. This is discussed within the context of philosophical observations on art and technology by Theodor W. Adorno, Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer.

statics is a non-standard sound synthesis program that uses functional iteration to both generate sound events and organise them temporally. This paper gives a brief history on the use of functional iteration in music composition and then describes how it is implemented in statics. Also discussed is the conception of program design as compositional process. Since statics was designed by a composer with musical goals in mind, the program is itself is a collection of compositional decisions. Furthermore, the unique timbres and structures created by statics are a direct result of these decisions. Accordingly, I discuss my compositional process in two stages: those choices that are embedded into the program (general decisions) and those choices that occurred post-design (specific decisions). Using as examples the three individual compositions created with statics (congruent, convergence and cyclian), I delineate the effects of both types of decision on the compositional process and then describe how these three compositions embody different characteristics of my implementation of functional iteration.

This paper describes a survey of contemporary approaches towards the use of spatial design in electroacoustic music, focusing on the type of spatial systems used by a sample of composers and the way they conceive the use of space in their music. Comparing the results with information gathered from seventeen articles by composers written on the topic in 1997, it is shown that composers nowadays are more used to working with different types of spatialisation systems than before. There is also a considerable increase in the use of surround 5.1 as well as four- and eight-channel systems and a decrease in the use of stereo. The compared results also show that, in general, composers nowadays seem to be less concerned with performance and interpretation issues as well as technical aspects of spatialisation. Further studies could consider a more detailed investigation of how the new spatialisation tools have shaped the aesthetical character of the music composed in recent years.

Following Marshall McLuhan's concept of a global village as a form of universal organisation in a technically dominated world, terms of globality and locality, and the concepts of world and village as social constructions in order to organise perception in an enhanced social environment are discussed in matters of their relevance in the context of electroacoustic music and especially its studies. In relation to historical as well as to more theoretical examples from the field of electroacoustic music, problems of perceiving spaces, places and locations are introduced. The solutions proposed here are primarily based on system theory approaches (as for instance Luhmann and Bühl) and newer network theory concepts (as for example Castells and Nowotny). The network is proposed as a kind of explanatory model in today's media-dominated world. Focusing on a model oriented to difference, ‘global’ and ‘local’ are regarded as categories guiding perception in matters of equality and difference. In this way the problem of listening to the other in opposition to the self is introduced. Thus it is demonstrated that there can never be a global sound or even a sounding globality. The phenomenon of soundscapes is discussed as a central theme in relation to its role as a listening strategy, its appearance in music and its own musicality.

Composers have spent more than fifty years devising computer programs for the semi-automated production of music. This article shall focus in particular on the case of minimal run-time human intervention, where a program allows the creation of a musical variation, typically unravelling in realtime, on demand. These systems have the capacity to vary their output with each run, often from no more input information than the seeding of a random number generator with the start time. Such artworks are accumulating, released online as downloads, or exhibited through streaming radio sites such as rand()%. Listener/users and composer/designers may wish for deeper insight into these programs' ontological status, mechanisms and creative potential. These works are challenging to dissect; this article makes a tentative start at confronting the unique problems and rich behaviours of computer-program-based generative music, from the social and historical context to the backwards engineering of programs in relation to their sound world. After a discussion of exemplars and definitions of generative art, strategies for analysis are outlined. To provide practical examples, analyses are provided of two small scale works by James McCartney.

One main issue in the field of algorithmic composition is the relationship between the algorithm and the final musical structure. This article investigates that relationship further and presents a method of algorithmic thinking in which the musical form is the starting point. Kimon, an object-oriented programming environment for computer-aided composition in which one creates abstractions of musical form, will be introduced. The aim is to take algorithmic composition closer to the musical output in order to work systematically with form and dramaturgy. An electroacoustic piece that has been conceived and generated in its entirety by the system will also be presented.

Organised Sound publishes a DVD annually in its issue 3. As of the current issue, 13/2, Cambridge University Press is publishing all media examples online when the issue comes out. Furthermore, all media examples in volumes 1/1 to 13/1 will be appearing in the near future on the Cambridge Journals Online site. The following media examples are mentioned in this ‘Global/Local’ issue. They can therefore be found online and will also appear on the 13/3 DVD.

The HIEMPA project combined a team of people with technical, artistic, environmental and cultural expertise towards an artistic outcome aiming to extend the New Zealand sonic art tradition. The work involved collecting audio samples from the aquascape of the Ruakuri Caves and Nature Reserve in Waitomo, South Waikato, New Zealand; and samples of a variety of pütorino – a New Zealand Mäori wind instrument. Following a machine learning analysis of this audio material and an analysis of the performance material, hybrid digital instruments were built and mapped to suitable hardware triggers. The new instruments are playable in realtime, along with the electroacoustic manipulation of pütorino performances. The project takes into account the environmental and cultural significance of the source material, with the results to be released as a set of compositions. This paper discusses the background research and process of the project.

This DVD contains both audio and video files. The DVD will play audio and audiovisual tracks either on a standard DVD player or on your computer. Full information related to this DVD can be found in the relevant articles.