Several projects involving audio and video transmission between the University of Cincinnati and other sites over the high bandwidth Internet2 have ranged from the simple transmission of video material, to more complex interactive improvisation. A performance of Clotho, the life of Camille Claudel, a musical monodrama collaboration, was streamed in September 2000 over Internet2 to a widely distributed audience. The second project involved my real-time contribution from Cincinnati to a performance happening at Yale University of The Ankle Diver, with music by Matthew Suttor. A network improvisation project with the Soundmesh (formerly Internet Sound Exchange) software resulted in a number of improvisations involving the University of Cincinnati, Columbia University, Yale University and the Fall Internet2 Meeting at the University of Southern California. High-quality audio and flexibility of sound sources and processing is a strength of these improvisations.

This analysis explores how Barry Truax’s Song of Songs (1992) for oboe d’amore, English horn and two digital soundtracks reorients prevailing norms of sexuality by playing with musical associations and aural conventions of how gender sounds. The work sets the erotic dialogue between King Solomon and Shulamite from the biblical Song of Solomon text. On the soundtracks we hear a Christian monk’s song, environmental sounds (birds, cicadas and bells), and two speakers who recite the biblical text in its entirety preserving the gendered pronouns of the original. By attending to established gender norms, Truax confirms the identity of each speaker, such that the speakers seemingly address one another as a duet, but the woman also addresses a female lover and the man a male. These gender categories are then progressively blurred with granular time-stretching and harmonisation (which transform the timbre of the voices), techniques that, together, resituate the presumed heteronormative text within a diverse constellation of possible sexual orientations.

Within the context of discussing contemporary music the European tendency to overvalue abstraction is questioned. The use of environmental sounds in electroacoustic music is highlighted as an example of the questionable value of abstraction. Attention is then focused on a recent Truax composition, Powers of Two (1995) as a work of electroacoustic music theatre. The historical musical and poetic references, as well as the sound sources adopted for the work, are discussed, and placed within the human framework of relationship embodied in the piece. A concluding section summarises the work as an attempt to create a contemporary myth from historical sources, and as a dramatic expression employing electroacoustic forces.

Adorno's theory of musical reproduction is unfinished, inconsistent and attuned only to score-based acoustic music – but it has relevance for electroacoustic performance as well. His theory prompts contemplation about what ‘good’ interpretation, and interpretation itself, means for fixed electroacoustic music. A digital sound file is frequently, if not typically, viewed as more rigid and precise than a score. This article uses Adorno's theory to compare ontologies of score and digital file realizations respectively, thus questioning the above assumption. Do electroacoustic works truly exist apart from their performed features, or is a given work only its performances? Different answers imply different work concepts and interpretive strategies. Toward the essay's goals, we examine three features often viewed as nonontological to an electroacoustic work, namely performed spatialisation, equalisation, and amplitude balance. We consider the impacts of these features when they are manipulated in real time, or performance to performance. As Adorno asks how choices of timing or dynamics dictate a notated work's aesthetic ‘clarity’, this paper asks how performed choices contribute to an electroacoustic work's clarity, and to the unique interpretive potential of electroacoustic music. Tape music and acousmatic music, with its diffusion tradition, are central to this paper's thesis; but multi-channel works are circumscribed by it as well.

Witnessing a sound installation in person offers an opportunity to experience the qualities and elements of a work first hand and in full, multisensory effect. A thorough documentation of an exhibition and the work that goes into it is at the essence of preserving important information for future generations. Though information can be gathered from archives, some works of sound art are only marginally presented in the literature, making it difficult to fully grasp aspects of an artist’s technical, organisational and, most particularly, creative ways of working. Instead, already existing information is often reproduced. Previous documentation regarding Bill Fontana’s Sound Sculpture Distant Trains, exhibited in Berlin in 1984, offers an example of the possible loss of key details. This article aims to present new research findings that will examine and illuminate the full scope of this artistic project.

For over twenty years, Swedish artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff (born 1956 in Linköping) has been giving shape to a range of works which push the boundaries of sound experimentation and reach out into installation art, photography, video, performance and curating projects. Stemming from his experiments with tape and investigations into EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and setting up a number of ongoing collaborations with artist Leif Elggren and with a wide range of experimental musicians in the collective, site-specific sound installation freq_out, von Hausswolff's work spans the undefined territory between sound and the visual arts – he has done so, also by organising exhibitions such as the 2nd Göteborg Biennial in 2003. His audio production, using devices such as oscillators, tone generators, microphones attached to electricity circuits, is inextricably linked to his visual and conceptual research, always addressing issues of borders, interior/exterior, liminal states and hidden fluxes of energies. At the forefront of international experimentation, his work has been featured in some of the most important exhibitions and museums in the world, and his audio pieces have been published by the most remarkable avant-garde labels.

In three previous issues of OS (10/1, 2005, 13/3, 2008 and 19/2, 2014) a range of scholars explored non-Western instrumentation in electroacoustic music. These issues addressed concerns about sensitive cultural issues within electroacoustic music. This article builds upon this discussion through an examination of a number of electroacoustic composer-performers using non-Western instrumentation. This discussion will include the voices of ‘Western’ electroacoustic composers using non-Western instruments or sounds sources. It will also document some of the work of non-Western electroacoustic composers who incorporate traditional material or indigenous instruments in their music. Special attention will be given to the complexity of being in-between musical cultures through a critical engagement with theories relating to hybridity, orientalism and self-identity. In particular, this article will focus on my own practice of composing and performing electroacoustic music with the North Indian lute known as the sarode. It will discuss both cultural and artistic concerns about using the sarode outside the framework of Indian classical music and question whether Indian classical music can ever be ‘appropriately appropriated’ in an electroacoustic context. Two of my recent compositions will be explored and I will outline the development of my practice leading to the creation of a new ‘hybrid’ instrument especially for playing electroacoustic music.

This paper addresses some aspects related to the use of sound to create referential and representational discourses in sound art. We concentrate on the particular use of sound in this repertoire whose delimitation is still increasing among practitioners. As a relatively new art genre it oscillates between aesthetical and organisational strategies that are commonly found in the domain of both music and visual arts. At the same time, it resists being fully incorporated by these two domains as it develops a discourse that is very specific to its own. To analyse these relations we focus on two fundamental aspects for the study of sound art: space and time. The sound art repertoire approaches these two aspects in a very particular way, placing them at the core of its creative process and establishing connections with conceptual and referential aspects that are put in evidence by sound. We will concentrate on two different points of view: on one side, we analyse how sounds can build temporal discourses that become attached to specific spaces; on the other side, we consider the use of a space that emerges from contextual connections triggered by sounds.

The author has written articles and papers on the possibilities of differentiated spaces in the composition of electroacoustic music (Emmerson 1994, 1998). He extends this into a more practical discussion on the spaces used for the presentation of electroacoustic music (acousmatic music and ‘live electronic’ music), sound installations and other sonic art. The move into more informal ‘club’ environments is not without controversy. The ‘sampling’ approach to the very act of listening and ‘consuming’ sonic art has challenged traditional concert hall presentation. This paper brings various possibilities into plans (at once conceptual but also intended to have practical application) for a multi-space ‘Sound House’: a centre for the performance of the sonic arts. This centre is socially embedded within interpersonal human interaction and is not to be found in the current performance possibilities of the Internet – though it may be connected to others of its kind through this means.

the history of electronic music composition, technologies and institutions is traced from the founding of the state of israel in 1948. core developments are followed beginning with the founding generation including joseph tal, tzvi avni and yizhak sadai, continuing with the second and third generations of musicians and researchers, living in israel and the united states. the institutional and political dynamics of the field in this country are explored, with a focus on the challenges of building an audience and institutional support, as well as prospects for the future.

We present a novel efficient algorithm for scaling the frequency content of an audio signal by any desired factor in the range 0.5 (minus one octave) to 2.0 (plus one octave) enabling a recording to be played in any desired key without affecting the tempo. The algorithm uses an adaptive overlap-add (AOLA) technique to realise the desired frequency scaling without affecting the duration. Informal listening tests show output quality equal to that of a conventional overlap-add algorithm used in many commercially available systems, but offering significant computational saving relative to that algorithm. The algorithm can also be used to simultaneously change both the tempo and key of a recording.

In this article the authors present an overview of the current situation in Ukraine, with regards to the question of analytical terminology applied to new methods of creation in electronic music composition. The article establishes the differences and the similarities between the analyses of instrumental and electronic music structures, while considering the role of technology in the creation of new electronic music works. This paper also establishes a link between the origin of current analytical processes and electronic music practice in Ukraine, taking into account the function of a given terminology and its characteristic elements relating to a local geographical and cultural context. The authors underline the importance of integrating new music forms in academic circles and discuss external influences in the development of new musical systems. This is demonstrated by exposing selected musical materials, which can be considered representative of the creative and theoretical processes found in the field of electronic music in Ukraine.

In German, the word Holzwege means ‘paths that lead nowhere but that are not inconsequential’. They are paths which, without a goal, facilitate the transforming experience of a journey that can gently, yet profoundly, touch our physical, emotional and intellectual self. In this paper, Holzwege is metaphor for a reflection on aesthetics and computer/electroacoustic music, a reflection that does not seek to demonstrate but to suggest. Thus, rather than considering and refining the abundance of concepts and definitions which seek to circumscribe the aesthetic characteristics of these musical idioms, this reflection goes beyond definitions to outline a path of no-aesthetics which highlights their creative potential.

Sonification has become a commonly used tool for data analysis, auditory feedback and compositional inspiration. It is often described in scientific terms as a means of uncovering previously unknown patterns in information or data through the use of the auditory sense. This goal seems to be objective, but the results and methodologies can be highly subjective. Moreover, the techniques and sources of information are strikingly similar to those used in mysticism, especially mysticisms of negation, even though the frames of reference and underlying perceptions of the world are markedly different. Both practitioners of sonification and apophatic mystics believe that certain types of information are incomprehensible through traditional analytic means and can only be understood through experience. In this way, sonification can be thought of as a source of mystical information.

In this paper, I will discuss the similarities between sonification and apophatic mysticism, or the mysticism of negation. I will argue that the practice of sonification, as a source of mystical information, is ideally suited for creative contemplation, particularly in electronic music. I will start by providing some historical background on the mysticism of negation. I will then present several ways in which sonified knowledge (sound) is often imagined, discussed and perceived akin to a mystical object. Finally, I will discuss specific ways in which sonification exemplifies apophatic mysticism and reveals mystical information. This information – whatever its nature – can be used for creative contemplation and is a potentially invaluable source of compositional and spiritual inspiration.

Public art invariably involves the drawing of individuals into the roles of audience and participant by virtue of it being in the public domain – in public places where those individuals are getting on with their everyday lives. As such, a large proportion of the ‘audience’ is an unwitting one, subjected to the art rather than subscribing to it. This is equally true of public sound art, where response to an intervention may vary from engagement to non-engagement to indifference to unawareness, along with a variety of transitional states between. This essay seeks to investigate this ambiguous territory in public sound art, proposing it both as an area rich in possibility for creative exploration and as a means by which artists may reveal and encourage sensitivity to the existing characteristics of a site (thus accommodating the pursuit of agendas relating to acoustic ecology). In particular it investigates and presents a case for the use of lowercase strategies in sound art as ways in which the public might be invited into a dialogue with works (invitation rather than imposition) and thus empowered as partakers of public sound art.

Bringing together an array of interdisciplinary subjects, this article seeks to proffer a theory of political aesthetic preference emergent within participatory musical works. Beginning with an overview of imitation in music and then recapping the critical work advanced by Kofi Agawu and Jean-Jacques Nattiez on musical semiology, this article first delves into how musical signs are interpreted and propagated within participatory settings. Subsequently, using Jürgen Habermas’s influential theory on the public sphere as well as the critical revisions to said theory proposed by Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner, participatory musics are conceptualised as constituting the formal space of a public in which the aesthetic direction of a participatory music work is negotiated among participants. Based on an analysis of Luke Dahl, Jorge Herrera and Carr Wilkerson’s multi-user instrument and participatory work TweetDreams, this article discusses the ways in which participant inputs and choices impact the poietic process of the work due to the clear rules that are set up within its interactive and algorithmic protocols for sonification. It concludes by pointing towards other recent research on participatory works, where the framing of participatory musics as a political–aesthetic space leads to broader questions about audience power and how the latter is negotiated and shared, then poses questions for future research on the audience’s choice in refusal and dissensus.