This article documents the resolution of a problem encountered during the design of a semi-permanent interactive sound and video installation currently being installed at a tram station located in Dublin, Ireland. This artwork generates video and multi-channel sound output in real time, responding to changes in traffic patterns on an adjacent street. While the visuals are composed from pre-recorded content, the sound environment explores the use of site-specific sound within public urban space by sampling and processing sounds that occur naturally in and around the station. Regulations involving the artwork's volume resulted in the sound output being reduced to a level at which it was too subtle to be noticed amidst the busy activity of the station. It was therefore necessary to strengthen the artwork's aural presence without interfering with the subtleties of the site-specific sound environment. A dynamic field of sine tones and rhythmic glitches was composed to augment the more subtle sounds of the installation. This juxtaposition of site-specific sound with compositional structures associated with the popular musical genre known as microsound proved to be effective, calling attention to the mediated sound environment even at low volume levels and balancing the artwork's presence with the other functions of the site.

This article explores the similarities and differences between live coding and traditional music performances. The focus is on how bodily movements are expressed and whether pre-reflective processes may be activated during a live coding performance. While reports from practitioners vary on percepts of embodiment, the community is missing a theoretical background that reflects on practice. Understanding pre-reflective processes in live coding can benefit performance practices and tool development. As a live coder, I reflect on personal experiences and explore what I call ‘interactivity variations’, a term to denote different gestural manners of interactions during a performance. I observe patterns of embodiment among various live coders who use diverse performance systems from online videos. Out of 11 examples of performance systems, two cases demonstrate interactivity variations that can activate pre-reflective processes while another exploits direct manipulation. I present some implications for the patterns of bodily movement during a live coding performance and discuss how descriptive and prescriptive notation can be important and potentially influence our sensorimotor network. The article contributes a first account of a sensorimotor theory on live coding performances, reflecting on practice and embodied music cognition by presenting an aesthetic analysis of 11 online video examples.

Cheryl E. Leonard is a San Francisco-based composer, performer and instrument maker who utilises sounds from natural objects and field recordings to create innovative compositions that are aesthetically appealing and also promote environmental awareness. This article examines Leonard’s work Antarctica: Music from the Ice (2009–2014), which comprises ten context-based pieces created from sounds produced with natural objects (such as penguin bones, rocks and shells) and field recordings the composer collected during her visit to Antarctica in 2008–9. In particular, the article focuses on the pieces Lullaby for E Seals, White on White, Greater than 20 Knots and Ablation Zone, showing how Leonard draws attention to pertinent environmental issues through her work, while at the same time producing compositions that are aurally pleasing and engaging for performers and listeners alike.

By comparison to contemporary artists in other disciplines, such as the visual and literary arts, composers of sound-based art and electroacoustic music sometimes appear strangely diffident in articulating their motivations in other than material-based terms, or at least seem so within scholarly debate. Reception-based investigations (such as Weale 2005) seem either at a relatively early stage or understandably inconclusive, with an emphasis on how the listener accesses, or might access, the work. While this might appear a semantic nicety, I suggest that it could be fruitful to proceed instead from considerations of how the work might ‘access’ the listener, via considering diverse experience, rather than direct associative responses to sound, as material that is organised in both creating and listening to sound-based work – and by whom left open to negotiation.

Assuming that perception works as a constant dialectic between sense-data and concept, this paper presents a perceptual analysis of J. C. Risset‘s Sud according to a conceptual framework based on a complementarity between intrinsic and extrinsic connotations in electroacoustic music. From this perspective, Sud may be perceived as an encounter between human imagination and nature in two of its most powerful symbols: the sea, alluded to through the sounds of the waves, and the forest, alluded to through the sounds of birds and insects. The piece presents an exploration of the essence of these environmental sounds, which are either modified or recreated with different substances. In its appeal to images widespread in a variety of cultures, as well as in its unique use of traditional musical materials, Sud is more than a strongly programmatic and visually evocative piece.

Relations between histories, sources and preservation problematics are explored by evaluating how Dutch electroacoustic musical life is discussed in international histories of electronic music. Some Dutch cases consisting of different generations of interdisciplinary, live, performance-based electroacoustic work are discussed: the work of Dick Raaijmakers, Michel Waisvisz and Huba de Graaff. These cases point to some important aspects of preservation and the formation of histories. An emphasis in electronic music histories on technology and on technological innovation comes at the expense of information on the musical and artistic aspects. For greater interest in musical aspects, it is crucial to have more access to the music itself. The works and practices of Dick Raaijmakers, Michel Waisvisz and Huba de Graaff seem to resist documentation, ontologically and practically but, on the other hand, there is a desire for its documentation and dissemination. For their work, preservation means: making something new while being faithful to the past. It is therefore that I propose to regard preservation as performance. This music only remains alive when we are not solely interested in linear innovation, but in a profound relation with the past, in reworking the past.

In this article I outline the idea of an empirical/experiential reconnection to the natural non-human world through the practice of deep listening. I believe that the aesthetic experience is central to a more ecological positioning of the human being on earth and that aesthetic experience should involve a ‘rewilding of the ear’. To discuss this concept, I build an argument from Edgard Varèse’s music as ‘organised sound’ and approach it from a perceptual point of view. This leads to the discussion of other concepts, such as David Dunn’s ‘grief of incommunicability’ (Dunn 1997) and Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue’s ‘sharawadgi effect’ (Bick 2008). Further to this I discuss parallels between Truax’s continuum (Speech–Music–Soundscape) and Peirce’s semiotic system. Taking points from these theories, we can discuss the possibility of the re-tuning of our ears to the wider sound palette of the world. I consider George Monbiot’s concepts of ‘rewilding’ and ‘rewilding of the human life’ (Monbiot 2014), in order to create a parallel to our relationship with the soundscape.

Notation is the traditional method for composers to specify detailed relationships between musical events. However, the conventions under which the tradition evolved – controlled relationships between two or more human performers – were intended for situations apart from those found in electroacoustic music. Many composers of electroacoustic music have adopted the tradition for mixed media works that use live performers, and new customs have appeared that address issues in coordinating performers with electroacoustic elements. The author presents generative music as one method of avoiding the fixedness of tape music: coupled with real-time notation for live performers, generative music is described as a continuation of research into expressive performance within electroacoustic music by incorporating instrumentalists rather than synthetic output. Real-time score generation is described as a final goal of a generative system, and two recent works are presented as examples of the difficulties of real-time notation.

The challenge of composing both sound and moving image within a coherent computer-mediated framework is addressed, and some of the aesthetic issues highlighted. A conceptual model for an audiovisual delivery system is proposed, and this model acts as a guide for detailed discussion of some illustrative examples of audiovisual composition. Options for types of score generated as graphical output of the system are outlined. The need for extensive algorithmic control of compositional decisions within an interactive framework is proposed. The combination of Tabula Vigilans Audio Interactive (TVAI), an algorithmic composition language for electroacoustic music and realtime image generation, with MIDAS, a multiprocessor audiovisual system platform, is shown to have the features desired for the conceptual outline given earlier, and examples are given of work achieved using these resources. It is shown that ultimately delivery of new work may be efficiently distributed via the World Wide Web, with composers' interactive scripts delivered remotely but rendered locally by means of a user's ‘rendering black box’.

As Jonty Harrison himself acknowledges, a significant body of acousmatic music exists which has, directly or indirectly, challenged aspects of the Schaefferian theory from which acousmatic music first developed (Harrison 1995). Few pieces, however, have so clearly and deliberately confronted Schaeffer’s notion of the ‘sound object’ as Harrison’s Unsound Objects. Harrison does more than merely reject Schaeffer’s definition of the sound object through the use of expanded compositional strategies. Rather, he both employs Schaeffer’s methodology and subverts it, systematically demonstrating the potential and the limitations of Schaeffer’s epoché and its product, the sound object. The result is what might be aptly termed the ‘unsound object’: a sonic entity which both demonstrates and defies Schaeffer’s ideals, and exemplifies the rich ambiguities which can arise from the compositional exploitation of referentiality and association, in addition to the intrinsic, morphological characteristics emphasised within Schaeffer’s reduced listening. Throughout his engagement with Schaefferian theory, however, Harrison never abandons the fundamental musical radicalism at the heart of Schaeffer’s project: positing ‘concrete sound material’, rather than ‘abstract concept’, as the basis for the language of electroacoustic music (Chion 1983: 37).

Electroacoustic music, since its inception, has been situated in a cross-disciplinary no-man's-land, with areas of interest spread in many directions; from ideas of musical structures ordered through traditional pitch-classes to research on physical modelling and analysis of sound and compositional structures through the use of neural networks. Much of the material found in computer music has been developed through processes of appropriation, both from sound recordings of physical events and from the application of various principles found in the natural sciences.

This paper describes TAO, a system for sound synthesis by physical modelling based on a new technique called cellular sound synthesis (CSS). The system provides a general mechanism for constructing an infinite variety of virtual instruments, and does so by providing a virtual acoustic material, elastic in nature, whose physical characteristics can be fine-tuned to produce different timbres. A wide variety of sounds such as plucked, hit, bowed and scraped sounds can be produced, all having natural physical and spacial qualities. Some of the musical and philosophical issues considered to be most important during the design and development of the system are touched upon, and the main features of the system are explained with reference to practical examples. Advantages and disadvantages of the synthesis technique and the prototype system are discussed, together with suggestions for future improvements.

This article discusses technical and aesthetic aspects of sound synthesis in the context of anacoustic modes of sound construction – a neologism that underscores the unique ontology of information in the digital domain. Anacoustic modes address the computer at its most fundamental level: the syntactic level of information. This changes the nature of signification as sound is considered first as an informational construct rather than a material circumstance, rupturing the front-loaded meaning that arises from our acoustic experience. Following certain concepts encompassed by N. Katherine Hayles’s posthumanism, anacoustic modes can be viewed as an expression of the materiality of information.

Understanding laptop music requires more than a new perspective on the configuration of a ‘weareable computer and an audio interface’ as a musical instrument for performance. It combines the strategies and traditions of electronic media-related music composition of the twentieth century, like reproductive music, electronic music, computer music and Net music in a single, digital, multi-purpose device originally designed for business and multimedia applications. Consequently, what we hear is mostly not a genuine laptop music, but one facet of the information-technological transformation of music that has been the result of the digital integration of these established traditions. This article gives an overview of the aesthetic implications of these traditions and with respect to laptop performance and musical style.

The experimental music of Chinese musicians including Yan Jun, Li Jianhong, Jun-Y Chao, Shen Piji and the Tea Rockers Quintet embodies a particular mode of thinking rooted in Chinese qi-philosophy known as shanshui (山水)-thought, which considers nature and the environment as secret and nurturing. Shanshui-thought cultivates an existential gesture of following rather than obeying or conquering; it requires tacit resonance rather than object knowing. Shanshui-thought enables us to recognise the cosmic, aesthetic and moral values of music qualities of dan (淡) (quiet and bland) and you (幽) (inward expandedness), once described as ‘poverty’ and ‘darkness’ by the composer Christian Wolff of what he calls ascetic minimalism.

Standard histories of electronic music tend to trace the lineage of musique concrète as lying mainly in the Futurists’ declarations of the 1910s, through Cage’s ‘emancipation’ of noise in the 1930s, to Schaeffer’s work and codifications of the late 1940s and early 1950s. This article challenges this narrative by drawing attention to the work of filmmakers in the 1930s that foreshadowed the sound experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and thus offers an alternative history of their background. The main focus of the article is on the innovations within documentary film and specifically the sonic explorations in early British documentary that prefigured musique concrète, an area ignored by electronic music studies. The theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the documentary movement’s members, particularly their leader John Grierson, will be compared with those of Pierre Schaeffer, and the important influence of Russian avant-garde filmmaking on the British (and musique concrète) will be addressed. Case studies will focus on the groundbreaking soundtracks of two films made by the General Post Office Film Unit that feature both practical and theoretical correspondences to Schaeffer: 6.30 Collection (1934) and Coal Face (1935). Parallels between the nature and use of technologies and how this affected creative outputs will also be discussed, as will the relationship of the British documentary movement’s practice and ideas to post-Schaefferian ‘anecdotal music’ and the work of Luc Ferrari.

The ‘technological revolution’ that took place in music during the twentieth century is equivalent to the revolution that took place between the twelfth and fourteenth century, which transformed musical notation into applications of technology related to creation. This second revolution, as well as the first one, concerns not only musical form, but also the social organisation related to music. The aesthetic of sound is the key factor (in all the genres of contemporary music), which is a major challenge for musical analysis. Society is reorganising itself, favouring the appropriation and amateur practices within musical creation. Musical research institutions – and particularly the GRM – develop new forms of collaboration with their audience and contribute to the constitution of a ‘horizontal’ society, based on exchange, in frank opposition with the ‘vertical’ society, based on a reduced number of producers and a large amount of consumers.

This article discusses how the notion of performance provides impetus for the design of interactive digital environments. These environments can ultimately be regarded as user-spaces; a condition which replaces the ‘fixed’ art-object with a configuration of interactions. Our understanding of space, as suggested by Lefevbre (2001), defines the ‘inhabitant’ as a full participant, a user, a performer of space. What is at play when the installation artist designs environments that invite performative exploration? The issue of improvised performance in the inhabiting of installation spaces is exposed. Two interactive installations by the author and works by others in the field provide a context for discussion and analysis.

This paper introduces the concept of variable-coupled iterated map networks and explores its application to generation of musical textures. Such networks consist of one or more interlinked nodes. Each node consists of an iterated map function with a time-delay factor that schedules successive iterations. The value broadcast by a node can drive the variables and time-delay factor of any other nodes in the network, including itself. Lehmer's Linear Congruence Formula, an iterated map normally used for production of pseudo-random numbers, is explored for its own potential as a pattern generator and is used as the iterated map in the nodes in the examples presented. The capacity of these networks to produce richly gestural behaviours and mid-term modulation of behaviour is demonstrated.