Kaija Saariaho's NoaNoa for flute and electronics consists of two materials: the live flute part and the electronic component, which can be further divided into real-time and pre-recorded material. The sound mixtures of live instrument, pre-recorded material, and real-time electronics create diverse instrumental positions, which also have effects on the musician's experiences of self and gender. This article examines the live flautist's embodied identity during the real-time reverberation and the pre-recorded part. Different performances of NoaNoa by different performers introduce diverse embodied flautist identities where the negotiations of gender and self are constantly redefined.

This article traces the development of the EMS VCS3 synthesiser from the inception of its precursor, the Don Banks Music Box, through its prototype to its commercial release. The nature of the design team and their technical and aesthetic choices are also discussed. The VCS3 is significant in that it was the first commercial European synthesiser and the team that created it – Tristram Cary, David Cockerell and Peter Zinovieff – were key figures in the development of British electronic music. This detailed study of the genesis of the VCS3 and some of the factors that influenced its design touches on many technical and historiographical strands that may be examined in more depth by future scholars.

There is a rich literature on the design of formal languages for music representation on computers. Over the last thirty years, several generations of software technology have been applied to this problem, including structured software engineering, artificial intelligence, and object-oriented (O-O) software technology. This article introduces the basic notions of O-O software technology, and investigates how these might be useful for music representation. In particular, the author's Smalltalk music object kernel (Smoke) music representation language is described and examples given that illustrate the most important of Smoke's features.

Many software packages for computer music encourage the composer to take either a time domain approach or a frequency domain approach. This paper examines the possibilities afforded by recent software developments of working at the intersection of these two domains. It investigates the relationship between the FOF algorithm, originally used in the CHANT program, and more traditional approaches to granular synthesis, and considers how they can be combined. The author's compositions are used as illustrations of these techniques. The significance of using the FOF algorithm in granulating sound files is explained (FOG). Methods of using and controlling the FOG unit-generator are explained. Compositional and aesthetic issues arising from working with sound at this ambiguous intersection are investigated.

Drawing on Deleuze’s work about cinema (the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image’), this article explores formal and aesthetic resonances with sound-based music, distinguishing between aesthetics of energy, articulation and montage, and aesthetics of contemplation, space and virtual relations. A second perspective is given, focusing on how listening behaviours may impose a ‘movement-image’ or a ‘time-image’ lens through which we could experience and remember a work’s form. This is exemplified with a short analysis of the first section of Chat Noir (1998–2000) by Elizabeth Anderson.

It is a habit to invoke Aristotle when dealing, within the arts, with ‘Nature’ – that the Man–Artist (and not only the musician) would be, he says, ‘inclined’ to imitate. It is true, the history of music clearly attests to the temptation and of the ‘pleasure’ (as Aristotle also says) found in mimesis. We know that very lately in history musique concrète gives a new perspective to this question as well as to other questions, and changes the deal: because the sound objects of the world, of the whole world – the ‘noises’ – that needed to be imitated, can now be easily captured through technology, almost in a photographic way, and then they can be gathered, kept, and finally be composed. Hopefully Pierre Schaeffer, its genial inventor, has, concerning the question of nature within new music, a position that tears him apart, which is paradoxical, uncomfortable, fundamental: that the nature that is so easily captured, he does not want to exhibit; to understand the lessons, the hidden musical lessons, he only wants to examine it. This almost heroic model will only be partially followed by the composers (concrète, electroacoustic, acousmatic, anecdotical composers) who have been working during the last sixty years in this passionate domain. At the end of this article, the sketch of a typology, based on musical examples, tries to clarify the way nature is dealt with, when it appears in musique concrète.

This article explores possible strategies for appraising electroacoustic and computer music to enhance ‘marketability’. It is proposed that the specific aesthetics, characteristics and function of a work may be more salient features than those of the medium of composition (e.g. computer) to many listeners. It is suggested that the common practice of focusing on chronology, geography and specific schools is becoming less relevant due to a proliferation of home studios, the internet, and an increasing saturation of electronic sounds in new media contexts. On the other hand, aspects of form, mood, timbral palette, rhythmic complexity, etc., may become very useful bases for choosing works for a compilation CD or concert programme. The inadequacies of musicians' discourse for describing such attributes leads to the incorporation of analogies from visual and performing arts as well as a discussion of other possible approaches to ‘labelling’ and the inherent dangers in such a task. In conclusion, it is proposed that the time is ripe for shuffling the categories and regrouping composers' works according to aesthetic preferences, regardless of the percentage of electronic/computer content.

Reflecting upon Max Neuhaus’s and Alvin Lucier’s first electronic works on electroacoustic feedback, I will consider how their research into live electronic music, meant to be performed on stage, announced a whole other form of creation, which was paradoxically emancipated from the concert hall and essential to the emergence of sound art: sound installations. If both musicians first appropriated the electronic medium for its possibilities in sound transformation, it appears that these experimentations, and more precisely those using feedback, quickly extended into areas other than research on tone and the live dimension of electronic performances. Indeed, electroacoustic feedback, as a phenomenon of retroaction, goes beyond the mere relationship to the instrument: by manifesting itself in the looping of the electroacoustic chain (microphone-amplification-speakers), it straightaway inscribes the electronic device in a spatial dimension that is linked to the propagation of sound. By analysing Neuhaus’s and Lucier’s first experiments with feedback, the specificities of their apparatuses and the experiences they aimed to create and foster, this article wishes to question the role these experiments played in the emergence of both musicians’ concern with space, which is at the core of any understanding of their later works. We can then re-read their contribution to the history of live electronic music in the light of both bifurcations and lines of flight inherent in their respective bodies of work, in order to look into the emergence of a certain art of sound installation, in which the liveness of live electronic music, far from being pushed aside, seems to lead into other forms of creation and specific aesthetic questions.

This paper provides an account and interpretation of Hugh Davies’s electronic music research and documentation from the period 1961–1968. It is argued that Davies, particularly via his International Electronic Music Catalog (published 1968), characterised electronic music for the first time as a truly international, interdisciplinary praxis, whereas in the preceding literature the full extent of that international, interdisciplinary scope had been represented only partially, and in a way that was heavily biased in favour of the ostensibly ‘main’ Western European and North American schools. This argument is demonstrated by referring to a range of published sources dating from 1952 to 1962, which represented the praxis of electronic music as somewhat fragmented and parochial, and to a range of Davies’s published and unpublished writings, which conveyed a sense of the various international, aesthetic and disciplinary threads coalescing into an apparently coherent whole. An interpretation of Davies’s motivations for representing electronic music in this way is provided, which has to do with his belief in international and interdisciplinary exchange as catalysts for the development of the electronic idiom. Many subsequent publications rely upon the data provided in the Catalog, which continues to be, arguably, the most complete record of international, interdisciplinary electronic music activity up to the end of 1967. Some examples are given that illustrate the influence of the Catalog upon subsequent studies. It is concluded that further work is needed in order to fully understand and evaluate the historiographic consequences of the Catalog’s influence upon discourses of electronic music history.

Pietro Grossi was the first pioneer of computer music in Italy. During his activities from 1961 to the 1980s he devoted much research to algorithmic composition. Grossi’s first experiments in this field are discussed, dealing particularly with three important phases of his work: initiating algorithmic composition at the S 2F M studio in Florence, writing digital programs at the CNUCE Institute in Pisa, and realising a musical algorithm by translating the curve designed by the mathematician Peano into a sonic form.

Sentire is a body–machine interface that sonifies motor behaviour in real time and a participatory, interactive performance in which two people use their physical movements to collaboratively create sound while constantly being influenced by the results. Based on our informal observation that basal social behaviours emerge during Sentire performances, the present article investigates our principal hypothesis that Sentire can foster basic mechanisms underlying non-verbal social interaction. We illustrate how coordination serves as a crucial basic mechanism for social interaction, and consider how it is addressed by various therapeutic approaches, including therapeutic use of real-time auditory feedback. Then we argue that the implementation of Sentire may be fruitful in healthcare contexts and in promoting general well-being. We describe how the Sentire system has been developed further within the scope of the research project ‘Social interaction through sound feedback–Sentire’ that combines human–computer interaction, sound design and real-world research, against the background of the relationship between sound, sociality and therapy. The question concerning how interaction is facilitated through Sentire is addressed through the first results of behavioural analysis using structured observation, which allows for a quasi-quantitative sequential analysis of interactive behaviour.

Ongoing development of audio and informational technology has had an impact on almost every aspect of the musical arts. Cultures and subcultures have cross-pollinated through the rapid exchange of information and have metamorphosed into new fields of technology-based art forms, one of which is the integration of technology in Asian ethnic musics. This article specifically focuses on the integration of technology with the traditional music of India, Indonesia, China, Japan and Korea. By reviewing the history of this metier, we explore the various applications of technology in traditional Asian music and its future.

This article is an attempt to demonstrate the relation between appreciation of morphology and structure in form on the one hand, with higher symbolic structures – crucial for meaning formation routines – on the other, and to evaluate their significance in transmedial narratives, primarily in the case of media-based artworks. The use of catastrophe theoretical models to classify forms, their structure and dynamics is proposed, and the question of how these models can give us insight into the meaning that is carried through transmedial narratives (referential or abstract) is examined. Finally, the value of these insights for the composition and practice-based analysis of multimedia art forms is demonstrated.

Portraits polychromes are a series of books associated with multimedia documents presented on the Internet site of the GRM since 2001. In releasing this collection, our primary concern was to increase awareness of the electroacoustic repertoire and the reserves in the GRM archives. The GRM, being a pioneering centre of electroacoustics, is fortunate to possess a consistent and significant reserve dating back to the beginning of the 1950s. At present, the catalogue contains around 2,000 works, accompanied with supplementary documents: composer's biographies, reviews, photographs, documentary movies, radio broadcasts, recorded public lectures, theoretical research work, transcriptions and analyses. In addition to the heritage value of the GRM's collection, the enterprise of the Portraits polychromes, with the aid of multimedia tools, aims to advance the progress of research on analysis and the transcription of musical works.

A casual listener may not have the relevant cognitive tools to relate to electroacoustic music as an independent art form. Even music students who have had several years' formal training may not know how to listen purposefully to it. The authors investigate the hypothesis that by engaging in the composition of musique concrète, students will become more informed listeners to electroacoustic music in general. This study describes a teacher and ten 16-year-old high school students who use a digital audio editor (Cool Edit Pro) to manipulate sound and to structure sound events. A variety of teaching approaches are tested. Having experienced the creative process, the participants display a growing ability to engage in higher-order critical thinking skills in relation to electroacoustic music.

Reaction–diffusion systems were first proposed by mathematician and computing forerunner Alan Turing in 1952. Originally intended as an explanation of plant phyllotaxis (the structure and arrangement of leaves in plants), reaction–diffusion now forms the basis of an area in biology which is as important as DNA research in the field of biological morphogenesis (Kauffman 1993). Reaction–diffusion systems were successfully utilised within the fields of computer animation and computer graphics to generate visually naturalistic patterning and textures such as animal furs (Turk 1991). More recently, reaction–diffusion systems have been applied to methods of half-tone printing, fingerprint enhancement, and have been proposed for use in sound synthesis (Sherstinsky 1994). The recent publication The Algorithmic Beauty of Seashells (Meinhardt 1995) uses various reaction–diffusion equations to explain patterned pigmentation markings on seashells. This article details an example of the application of reaction–diffusion systems to algorithmic composition within the field of computer music. The patterned data produced by reaction–diffusion systems is used to create a naturalistic soundscape in the piece cicada.

The Museum of Music in Paris possesses a collection of 280 instruments from the twentieth century. Most of them belong to the general families of electric and electronic musical instruments, which we will call ‘electrophones’, in deference to the name chosen by Curt Sachs (1940). The instruments are gathered in families so that the whole collection illustrates the milestones of the twentieth century; for instance, the museum has a large set of diverse Ondes Martenot. However, due to its scarcity, the Trautonium is represented by one of Oscar Sala's Mixtur-Trautonia.

Like any museum, we have to encourage the conservation of this heritage. To maintain a large collection of electrophones like the one we have, a specific knowledge base has to be developed. We have been working on this aspect of the project for the past two years. From the onset, it was decided to start the collection with the Ondes Martenot. Our aim was to define a model approach that could also be applied to other electric and electronic instruments. This work involves organising the instruments, studying them in order to outline conditions of appropriate conservation, and determining which kind(s) of restoration should be undertaken.

A first step has been to gather all information necessary to understanding the instrument and its mode of performance. With this goal in mind, we have taken a complete inventory of our collection with the aim of coming up with a first assessment of the state of the instruments and determining whether to allow performers to play them. Thanks to this work, we were able to start taking precautionary measures against degradation; we are now also able to answer many questions relevant to the restoration and conservation of this collection.

Art always does more than subsist upon technical progress; for centuries its practice has merged with it, and we should never forget that the first meaning of the word art was technê. However, never before has the relationship between art and technology raised so many questions and provoked so much misunderstanding. As a matter of fact, at the same time as the frontiers of technique continue to recede, the frontiers of art seem more and more difficult to grasp. (Couchot and Hillaire 2003: 15)