The design of sonic environments is in need of more active strategies, taking into account not only the physical but also the social and sensorial aspects of a place. This implies abandoning traditional, mono-disciplinary responses in favour of interdisciplinary methods and approaches. In this study we explored the possibility of inserting context-sensitive sound textures to improve the experience of an activity-based office workplace. For this purpose, we developed the concept of the ‘sound bubble’ – a micro-space in which the user is embedded by a semi-transparent added sound environment that will operate as a subtle sound mask, attracting the attention without needing to hide the disturbing environment. This should help users (the workers) to stay in an ‘everyday listening’ mode. This means, not focusing on the environment in particular but on their tasks, while preserving the link with the surrounding space and activities.

Between March and May 2020, an estimated 37 million people across the United Kingdom took part in the ‘Clap for Carers’ initiative against the backdrop of the global coronavirus pandemic. Participants stood on their doorsteps or balconies, or at their windows to clap, cheer and make other sounds, officially in praise of public health workers. The initiative was unique in British history, comparable in mass engagement only to certain instances of the ‘minute’s silence’, yet diametrically opposed in the sonic agency it appeared to permit. Drawing on interviews with participants, as well as published documentation and media reports, I ask how this sonic agency was made use of and managed, and to what ends. Charged with the emotional and political weight of the pandemic, Clap for Carers was an increasingly ambivalent phenomenon. While it might not present itself as an artistic practice, participants’ evident attention to sonic materiality justifies approaching it as such. Moreover, exploratory uses of sound and a proliferation of interpretive positions suggested it held some space for the autonomous experiences art entails. While the initiative’s narrowly defined consensus mirrored the pitfalls of some participatory art, these autonomous experiences gestured towards what Voegelin (2019) describes as an ‘echography of the inaudible’, through which a plurality of voices, actualities and political possibilities are heard. In this sense, such experiences of Clap for Carers point to sound’s distinctive capacity for (per)forming agonistic kinds of participatory practice.

Many aural analytical methods have been produced for electroacoustic music that focus on the identification of salient morphological features of the sounds. Doing so, they usually overlook the importance of time – a central aspect of music – sometimes by considering it as a simple compositional parameter. However, this article proposes a novel theoretical framework for electroacoustic music understanding by putting time and its cognitive representations during perception at the forefront. Two concepts are introduced to propose this alternative approach to electroacoustic music description: temporal directionality, which focuses on the sounds themselves, and temporal distancing, which focuses on the relations between sounds. Throughout this article, several musical examples are given to briefly exemplify how such concepts can be used in an explanatory context. Finally, polychrony is introduced, which aims to describe how electroacoustic composers play with the various cases of temporal directionality and distancing, and, in the process, actually weave time itself.

This article considers the concept of a ‘language of things’, which Pierre Schaeffer developed in his early work, the Essai sur la radio et le cinema (1941–42). On the basis of a careful consideration of this text, it will appear that the ‘language of things’ engages a specific posture that shows, in the process of concrete music’s emergence, two distinct but interrelated aspects: one concerning things themselves and the other concerning language. It is this knot, this interwovenness, that we will try to understand in this article. The article will show that the promotion of noise is directly linked to the deconstruction of language and that these two processes, which can be precisely identified in Schaeffer’s early works, refer to a fundamental switch, signalling the birth of musique concrète.

The aim of this article is to review the last twenty years of ‘machine listening’1 to sound and music, and to suggest a balanced approach to the human–machine relationship for the future. How might machine listening, and MIR2-based ideas of data storage, retrieval and presentation enhance both our embodied experience of the music and its more reflective study (analysis)? While the issues raised may be pertinent to almost any music, the focus will remain on electroacoustic music in its many forms, whether for interactive composition, performance or analytical endeavour. I suggest a model of listening with – that is, alongside – machines in such a way that our skills may be enhanced. What can we share with machines to mutual advantage?

in this article we discuss the notion of ‘interaction’, ‘participation’ and ‘the public’ in artistic work, specifically within the context of the exhibition the invisible landscapes (curated by miya yoshida, malmö konstmuseum, 2003) and ethersound (created by henrik frisk), a sound installation displayed in that exhibition. in this work the audience is invited to participate in the creation of new sound events by sending text messages from their mobile phones. thus, our discussion is focused on the space and the mode of participation opened up by new communication technology. based on our experiences of that project, we introduce and explain what we believe are relations of creative production and a different kind of creativity that may emerge from active interaction. we also attempt to describe what we believe an implementation of active public participation can lead to.

we are combining two modes of thinking in this article; one is inspired by a discourse of cultural theories and the other by reflection on our experience of the event. the latter is, by definition, rather subject centred and expansive based on individual observation. we examine and analyse the phenomenon of ‘participation’ whilst playing ethersound as a process of creative production, and seek to reflect upon the power of the co-operative practice and its relation to participation and creativity.

This article concerns the temporal experience of acousmatic music, how the music can impact a listener’s sense of time passing and the implications of memory and expectations of auditory events and their perceived connections to one another. It will outline how memory and schemas lead to predictions in the immediate future and larger expectations of a work’s form. An overview of the temporal listening framework for acousmatic music will be provided to show the interrelationship between memory and expectations and how they influence one’s listening focus in the present. Trevor Wishart’s Imago will be used to illustrate how one might compose an acousmatic work to promote active listening using compositional techniques that engage personal schemas and those built through the course of experiencing the piece.

This paper provides an account of my current PhD research. It is conducted as an art project that involves both practice and theory. By taking Taiwanese sojourners in London as a case study, the research intends to present the emotional and cultural impacts they experience when they are immersed in the actual London soundscape. Following the proposed notion of ‘sonic constellations’, a few examples of audio works are demonstrated to analyse the relationships between sounds and the Taiwanese sojourners. Integrating art practice, soundscape studies, cultural studies and ethnography, the research is developed in an interdisciplinary way. The connected challenges taking place in various stages of the research, such as the pilot interview, will be addressed in this paper.

Despite the gradual proliferation of scholarly work around sound, and in particular its role in experimental music, there is little explicitly sonic philosophy that attempts to provide a ground for such research. Decades after the work of Pierre Schaeffer to theorise the objet sonore – sound object – and John Cage’s (1973: 10) call to ‘let sounds be themselves’, there remain few ontological and epistemological frameworks to support investigations into aesthetic, ethical and political questions related to experimental music practice and the place of sound in it. This makes writing about sound difficult and contributes to a lack of clarity or specificity in the use of terms such as ‘sound’, ‘noise’ and ‘silence’. In this article I seek to address this, connecting the work of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, experimental music composer and thinker Cage and philosopher Michel Serres with my own experience to develop an account of sound in experimental music that approaches it as multiplicity. This allows sound to be heard as physical, perceptual and conceptual and brings into question the reproducibility of sound, emphasising the place of sound as part of its environment.

It is recommended that we collaborate with science and industry in the search for technological innovation in media-related fields, in order to help design a future environment that will benefit a healthy musical culture. Since those of us who are already immersed in the technology are accustomed to its less attractive attributes as well as its potentials, we can consult with colleagues about essential characteristics of the old-fashioned world which we and they do not want to lose. With our collective imaginations, it should be possible to preserve many of these aspects by transforming them, with sensitivity, to fit new contexts. A few diverse examples are given of features that might be considered both attractive and endangered. Suggestions ranging from the practical to the whimsical illustrate some possibilities for injecting the essence of these experiences into a more technological world, thereby enriching it.

This paper presents a detailed study of two works that arrive at sounds composed through the experience of sounds heard. Frances White's composition Centre Bridge, composed in 1999 for two shakuhachi and tape, is based largely on the sounds of a sonorous metal grate bridge that crosses the Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. ASound Map of the Danube, composed by Annea Lockwood in 2005, reflects four years of sound recording along the length of that river's European to Balkan trajectory. Employing a range of diverse technical tools and aesthetic ideas, both works convey, powerfully and dynamically, a sense of deeply invested listening. I approach the discussion of specific compositional processes and musical outcomes in these two works through an investigation of Lockwood's and White's firsthand experiences as both listeners and composers. Centring on the exchange between sensing body and thinking mind, my research here engages with the arc of the creative process as an experience permeated by spaces of perception, reflection, imagination and action.

This article reflects on how personal digital musical instruments evolve and presents an augmented violin developed and performed by the author in improvised performance as an example. Informed by the materialism of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, an image of ‘flows of inhomogeneous matter’ provokes reflection on a mode of production common to artisanal craftmanship and digital lutherie alike, namely the pre-reflective skilfulness negotiating the singularities of inhomogeneous matter with the demands of the production – a process which itself may be thought of as im-pro-visation (‘un-fore-seen’). According to Gilbert Simondon, all technical objects develop in this way: functional interdependency emerges when abstractly ideated elements begin to enter into unanticipated synergistic relationships, suggesting a material logic dependent on unforeseen potentialities. The historical development of the acoustic violin exemplifies such an evolution, with, like all technical objects, additional latent potential. Digital artists can work like artisanal craftsmen in tinkering with technical elements, teasing out their synergies through abductive, trial-and-error experimentation. In the context of developing digital musical instruments, model-free design of real-time digital signal processing symmetrising action and perception yields highly refined results. Like musical improvisation – constrained by time – improvised development of these instruments turns the material obstacles into their very means of realisation.

This paper adapts Martin Heidegger's philosophy of ‘dwelling’ in order to effect a liaison between acousmatic music and ecological concern. I propose this as an alternative to both the propagandist use of music as a means of protest and to using the science of ecology as a domain that might furnish new compositional means. I advance the interpretation that acousmatic music ‘occupies the air’ in ways that transform the meaning of that dimension. It allows the sky to be sky and the earth, earth. I use the precedent of bell ringing as an example of sonic activity that occupies the air in order to further dwelling.

When we ask what noise is, we would do well to remember that no single definition can function timelessly - this may well be the case with many terms, but one of the arguments of this essay is that noise is that which always fails to come into definition. Generally speaking, noise is taken to be a problem: unwanted sound, unorganised sound, excessively loud sound. Metaphorically, when we hear of noise being generated, we understand it to be something extraneous. Historically, though, noise has just as often signalled music, or pleasing sound, as its opposite. In the twentieth century, the notion of a clear line between elements suitable for compositional use (i.e. notes, created on instruments) and the world of noises was broken down. Russolo's ‘noisy machines’, Varèse and Satie's use of ostensibly non-musical machines to generate sounds, musique concrète, Cage's rethinking of sound, noise, music, silence . . .

A survey is presented of developments in recent Western Australian electronic music, focusing on the geographical influence on local composers' work. The article follows specific cases of practitioners in the fields of Sound Art (Alan Lamb and Hannah Clemen), Live Electronics (Cathie Travers and the electronic music quartet Magnetic Pig), Interactive Electronics (Jonathan Mustard and Lindsay Vickery) and Noise/Lo Fi Electronics (Cat Hope and Lux Mammoth).

The theme chosen for Vol. 2 No 1 of Organized Sound is one which the editors hope will become a thread for future issues. The reader may be curious why this subject has been chosen.

Cold, stripped-down, monochrome, pixelated, iterative, quantised, grid, pulse, glitch, noise: taken together, these words imply a growing aesthetic connection within a body of experimental and independent (or non-academic) sound-based artworks produced in the past few decades. Although realised in different mediums and belonging to different artistic categories, such works are connected through a certain aesthetic sensibility. Nevertheless, since the majority of these works have thus far received little scholarly attention, a framing discussion of the aesthetic principles and features that link them is overdue. This article examines this emergent phenomenon, accounting for the particular aesthetic features that connect such sound-based artworks, arguing for a more specific terminology to adequately account for this aesthetic across the various practices in which it is observed. Rejecting ‘minimalist’ as a descriptor, this article calls for an aesthetic frame of reference derived through Brutalism, understood as a crystallisation of key features of modernism and its various movements. The first author’s work is presented as a conscious effort to create sound art redolent of Brutalism, locating this work in the context of the revival of Brutalism in recent years, which, as will be argued, can be expanded to works from a wide range of contemporary artists and musicians.

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.