‘Signed Listening’ is a project that was initiated by Ircam in the spring of 2003. Its goal is to develop computer tools that permit an expanded listening – whether it be for musical analysis, for composition or simply for its own sake with no specific goal in mind (via stereo or computer). This article will briefly present some hypotheses and objectives of the project, and how it touches issues relating, in particular, to electroacoustic music, as well as presenting examples taken from the early stages of our research.

During the mid twentieth century, space was developed as a composable dimension. Composers used the three spatial dimensions in their own fashion, but space was understood primarily as an abstract concept. It was not until the development of sound installation art that space was discovered in a concrete manner, explored, performed in and could even acquire its own specificity, called site-sound (Ortsklang).

The article shows consequences and strategies of site-sound installations in three sections – from spatial sound to site-sound, public space as performance venue, and public strategies (acoustic interventions, interactive installations and participatory projects) – with three examples of site-sound installations (Site-Sound Marl Mitte, meta.stases and towersounds.2: watch tower).

Acoustic art in public spaces basically involves installing a space in another existing space, both physically and sensorially, and metaphysically and mentally – an interior space in an exterior space, so to speak. The original quality of sound art lies in the oscillation of interior and exterior space. Thus public spaces intensified by sound art cause transitional spaces to come into being, in a political and a psychoanalytic sense.

Mapping concerns the connection between gestures, or structures and audible results in a musical performance or composition. While this is of intense interest to performers of new instruments and instrument designers, it has also been an area of interest for some composers. Algorithmic composition is sometimes the process of imagining a gesture or structure - perhaps physical or visual - and then applying a mapping process to turn that ‘gesture’ of the conceptual domain into sound which may display the original conception in some way. This article looks at mapping from the point of view of algorithmic composition, particularly where persistence is an issue, such that the gesture (conceptual domain) is embodied and perceptible in the musical result.

The musicologist is confronted with many situations during the analysis of electroacoustic music, whether on support media, mixed, or real-time. Musical genres and styles vary greatly, and the collection of electronic musical instruments has also proven to be very heterogeneous. The intrinsic characteristics of the electroacoustic parts and their scoring create serious limitations. Furthermore, many sources remain inaccessible or are already lost. Thus the preoccupation with documentary sources related to the acts of creation, interpretation, and technological context becomes more and more pressing. It is now essential to formulate a synthetic vision of this music, which has existed for half a century, and to pursue the search for invariants. This work must be based on a rigorous methodology that has yet to be developed. More generally speaking, the goal is to establish the terms and conditions of a systematic musicology of electroacoustics.

Absolute (or perfect) pitch exists in fewer than 1/10,000 of the adult population and many claim that it cannot be taught. On the other hand, research suggests that the mechanisms for absolute pitch exist in us all but access is inhibited during early maturation. We here argue that this inhibition can be switched off by artificially turning off part of the brain, allowing everyone access to absolute pitch. This possibility has profound implications for understanding the strategies adopted by the complex networks of the mind. We describe agent-based modelling techniques to understand the computational rationale for these inhibitory processes and to develop new artificial music recognition and synthesis techniques.

As the techniques used in creating audio art and electronic music become more diversified and increasingly use some sort of computer-oriented notation, the question of analysis of this wide repertoire is revisited. While there are still many obstacles in its study, this topic attracts more attention today than in the recent past. In this article, I emphasise the need to consider that, when analysing audio art and electronic music, technology, technique and musical style are to be taken in account. To this end, I introduce concepts put forth by the Russian Constructivists as a basis for reflection.

Parameter mapping sonification is the most widely used technique for representing multi-dimensional data in sound. However, it is known to be unreliable when used for detecting information in some types of data. This is generally thought to be the result of the co-dependency of the psychoacoustic dimensions used in the mapping.

Positing its perceptual basis in a theory of embodied cognition, the most common approach to overcoming this limitation involves techniques that afford the interactive exploration of the data using gross body gestures. In some circumstances, such exploration is not possible and, even when it is, it may be neither necessary nor sufficient.

This article explores some other possible reasons for the unreliability of parameter mapping sonification and, drawing from the experience of expressive musical performance, suggests that the problem lies not in the parametric approach per se, nor in the lack of interactivity, but in the extent to which the parameters employed contribute to coherent gestalts. A method for how this might be achieved that relies on the use of micro-gestural information is proposed. While this is speculative, the use of such gestural inflections is well known in music performance, is supported by findings in neuroscience and lends itself to empirical testing.

This article explores the concept of sonic image in acousmatic music. Such a concept is understood as mental representations motivated by sonic stimuli that reach the listener in an acousmatic listening situation and that can be determined by a focus on either the intrinsic or extrinsic aspects of the sounds – or even a combination of both. The intrinsic aspects are related to the inner characteristics of the sounds and are, therefore, accessed through reduced listening. They are not dependent on the identification of the sources that caused the sounds or possible meanings and connotations conveyed by them. The extrinsic aspects, on the other hand, are the connotations, meanings and references that lay outside the sounds themselves and that can be related to human experience in a broader sense, including domains other than the sonic. Since sonic images are not exclusively dependent on intrinsic factors, they can be the result of various kinds of listening attitudes not restricted to reduced listening. The article highlights the links between ideas presented by different authors who approach the issue of sonic image or who present considerations on other issues that may inform an understanding of sonic image in the acousmatic context. Since sonic image is dependent both on the intrinsic and the extrinsic aspects of sound, it is argued that it is a concept that can integrate (and possibly unify) different approaches related to acousmatic listening. The considerations on sonic image presented here touch issues regarding different listening attitudes, the relationships between sound and source, and links between sound and gesture, amongst other aspects. The approach taken here is focused as much as possible on the perspective of the listener rather than on the composer, although some considerations related to compositional thinking are occasionally exposed.

This article looks at the compositional processes of hip-hop teams based in the UK, focusing on those that have emerged from the practice of creating team ‘routines’. Turntable teams, such as the Scratch Perverts, the Mixologists and the DMU Crew, do not create their original compositions from within the Western art tradition of an independent artist creating work in isolation, which is then communicated to performers through staff notation. Instead, turntable teams compose and perform as a collective to create original compositions from existing records, and in doing so have developed innovative compositional strategies.

To be able to analyse and discuss the creative processes of hip-hop turntable teams it has been necessary to construct my own model framework to enable me to identify similar patterns in the creative processes of the teams discussed. In the article, I discuss and analyse one routine from each of the three teams using this framework, focusing on the emergent process of ‘collective creation’. The article concludes by establishing a number of characteristics of the compositional processes used by UK turntable teams. Until now, scholarship has neglected the music of hip-hop. Previous work on hip-hop music has been concerned with either sociological or cultural and historical aspects. This article offers a new approach to hip-hop scholarship because it focuses on the actual music of turntable teams and the emergent processes that have developed to create it.

This paper presents an overview of a generic task model of music composition, developed as part of a research project investigating methods of improving user-interface designs for music software (in particular focusing on sound synthesis tools). The task model has been produced by applying recently developed task analysis techniques to the complex and creative task of music composition. The model itself describes the purely practical aspects of music composition, avoiding any attempt to include the aesthetic motivations and concerns of composers. We go on to illustrate the application of the task model to software design by describing various parts of Modalyser, a graphical user-interface program designed by the author for creating musical sounds with IRCAM's Modalys physical modelling synthesis software. The task model is not yet complete at all levels and requires further refinement, but is deemed to be sufficiently comprehensive to merit presentation here. Although developed for assisting in software design, the task model may be of wider interest to those concerned with the education of music composition and research into music composition generally. This paper has been developed from a short presentation given at the First Sonic Arts Network Conference in January 1998.

The article is a study on the literature of sound art from two languange areas, German and English. The text reveals two different discourses. The German texts on Klangkunst (sound art in German) focus upon the sound material’s relation to a spatial location where sound sculptures and installations are given central focus. These are genres that transcend the old divisions between spatial arts (Raumkunst) and the time-based arts (Zeitkunst). A strong emphasis on the dual aspect of seeing and hearing could be described as a central point of departure. Klangkunst concerns an investigation of both time and space, through ear and eye. In the English literature on sound art, there are often references to sound’s inner aesthetical qualities. The perspectives on sound’s relation to room is evident also here, but the perspectives are however broader, in the sense that the aspects of space and locality are diversified and pluralistic. One will find an even larger scope of literature and references if the area of sound art also includes cultural-studies perspectives on sound, sonic experiences and acoustic phenomena, the influx of new technologies on the everyday soundscape, and sound design. These are areas often referred to when speaking about the ‘sonic turn’. The way the term sound art is handled in English texts is often very vague. The German study of Klangkunst developed within the academic field of musicology. There has been a fruitful collaboration between musicologists, publishing houses, music journals, galleries, academic institutions and higher art education, which together has helped to establish Klangkunst as an artistic expression and theoretical discourse. This strong intellectual infrastructure has been important in the ‘construction’ of the concept Klangkunst. The two separate theoretical discourses not only deal with the concept of sound art differently. Although many of the artists are dealt with in both the English and the German literature, there are very seldom references to the German literature in the English texts. This tendency is not reciprocal.

This paper will present methods for the analysis of form-building patterns in general, formulating analytical principles across stylistic borders. We will demonstrate the use of two selected analytical tools on a specific work by the Swedish composer Åke Parmerud. We identify, firstly, time-fields which describe the segmentation of form sections and, secondly, dynamic forms tracing the perceived directions of energy flow. Eventually we will discuss a semiotic interpretation of the music analysed. The present paper is a continuation of two previous papers that have presented conceptual and graphic tools for an aural, spectromorphological analysis of music. The first paper, published in Organised Sound 12/2, demonstrated the spectromorphological categories for the transcription of sound objects (level one). The second paper, published in Organised Sound 14/3, demonstrated their application, and expanded the scope of analysis through a discussion of the Schaefferian terms of values/characters.

In a musical context, the word ‘sound’ implies a set of sonic characteristics. Within popular music, this notion of sound sometimes supplies the very identity of a tune, a band or a musician. Sound is often conceptualised as a virtual space and in turn compared to actual spatial environments, such as a stage or an enclosed room. One possible consequence of this tendency is that this virtual space can become utterly surreal, displaying sonic features that could never occur in actual physical environments. This article concerns the ways in which the increased possibilities for creating a spatially surreal sound, thanks to new technological tools, have been explored within the field of popular music over the past few decades. We also look at the ways in which the effect of such features may have changed over time as a consequence of what we call processes of naturalisation. As a particularly interesting example of the complexity of such processes, we explore ‘the music sound stage’. In addition, we analyse three songs by Prince, Suede and Portishead to reveal the possibly surreal aspects of these productions.

As if the (terrified) Photographer must exert himself to the utmost to keep the Photograph from becoming Death. But I, already an object, I do not fight. (Barthes 1988: 14)

Perhaps this is the ultimate way of playing with reality. (Baudrillard 1997: 38)

Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. (Benjamin 1992: 217)

This paper is born out of my experience as an electroacoustic composer/sound artist and consumer, who passionately engages in the procurance, employment and exchange of soundscape recordings: an ambivalent engagement which is aesthetically rewarding, yet on further reflection deeply unsettling. The aim of this paper is to question and explore why this ostensibly benign and increasingly common procedure (i.e. the routine of soundscape recording/sampling/abstracting, editing, retouching, transforming, mixing, recontextualising . . . ) may result in a durable confrontation with ‘terror’ accompanied by ethical compromise. To articulate a personal and intuitive response, I will refer to critical writings on photography to illuminate sound (i.e. utilising the photograph as a counterpoint to the sonic record). I will be focusing in particular on the recording and the reappropriation of human utterance in electro-acoustic music, as it is probably the most intimate, as well as familiar, sonic material to humans. You cannot escape from your own voice. ‘Soundscape’ denotes ‘any acoustic field of study’ (Schafer 1994: 7); however, in this context I wish to focus on acoustic fields which have a particular social or cultural significance.‘To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.’ (Sontag 1984: 4) Thus it is appropriated again when employed in sound art.

This article presents the different tools for assessing soundscapes within urban public spaces and develops in particular the use of the sonic mind map. We will successively define the notions of sonic perception and representation, and sonic and spatial evaluation; we will approach the concept of soundscape and finally give details about the sonic mind-map tool. Through this tool, the soundscape of urban public spaces can be understood, not through speech analysis, but through spatial representations of memorised sonic ambiances.

Investigation results based among other things on sonic mind-map analyses explain the significance of sonic spatialisation and of the sound source distance in urban soundscape assessment. Using the sonic mind map to analyse the sonic representations associated with certain urban spaces seems to be relevant for researchers in space sciences or even for urban planners.

This paper describes a trans-domain mapping (TDM) framework for translating meaningful activities from one creative domain onto another. The multi-disciplinary framework is designed to facilitate an intuitive and non-intrusive interactive multimedia performance interface that offers the users or performers real-time control of multimedia events using their physical movements. It is intended to be a highly dynamic real-time performance tool, sensing and tracking activities and changes, in order to provide interactive multimedia performances.

From a straightforward definition of the TDM framework, this paper reports several implementations and multi-disciplinary collaborative projects using the proposed framework, including a motion and colour-sensitive system, a sensor-based system for triggering musical events, and a distributed multimedia server for audio mapping of a real-time face tracker, and discusses different aspects of mapping strategies in their context.

Plausible future directions, developments and exploration with the proposed framework, including stage augmenta tion, virtual and augmented reality, which involve sensing and mapping of physical and non-physical changes onto multimedia control events, are discussed.

We present an experimental study on articulation in bowed strings that provides important elements for a discussion about sound synthesis control. The study focuses on bow acceleration profiles and transient noises, measured for different players for the bowing techniques detaché and martelé. We found that maximum of these profiles are not synchronous, and temporal shifts are dependent on the bowing techniques. These results allow us to bring out important mechanisms in sound and gesture articulation. In particular, the results reveal a potential shortcoming of mapping strategies using simple frame-by-frame data-stream procedures. We propose instead to consider input control data as time functions, and consider gesture co-articulation processes.

This articles sketches the history, vision and implementation of the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site 2 (www.ears2.dmu.ac.uk), also known as the EARS pedagogical site. EARS 2 was originally intended to act as a miniature version of the original EARS site (www.ears.dmu.ac.uk), created specifically for young people, thus a site introducing vocabulary and relevant publications. However, after careful consideration, it proved much more valuable to create an entire pedagogical environment introducing primarily, although not exclusively, children aged 11 to 14 to electroacoustic music in terms of its concepts, repertoire and creative practice. The Compose with Sounds software (www.cws.dmu.ac.uk) package has been specifically developed for this initiative and is introduced in this article along with the EARS 2 project. The contextual discussion focuses on the issue of making innovative music accessible to inexperienced audiences, and includes a discussion of the project goal of enhancing learning through technology behind this new initiative.

The commercially available field recordings of Francisco López and Toshiya Tsunoda are difficult to classify. These field recordings are not site specific in the conventional sense because they are not tied to a particular architectural or listening space. Nor can field recordings be categorised as just another subgenre of experimental electronic music. Whereas in musique concrète and acousmatic music, sounds are organised according to musical or thematic parameters, López’s and Tsunoda’s field recording sounds are subjected to minimal editing and processing, and are organised according to the innate traits of the sounds themselves.

It would be insufficient, however, to offer the usual conciliatory conclusion that López’s and Tsunoda’s recordings straddle the sound art/music divide by possessing qualities of both. This article argues that these field recordings can best be understood in relation to the visual arts concept of objecthood, Michael Fried’s term for deciphering minimalist sculpture of the late 1960s. Objecthood explains how these field recordings use appropriated sounds that are nonetheless treated as non-referential, autonomous materials. This strategy posits its own type of site specificity that purports to be acultural and ahistorical, yet is nevertheless steeped in culture and history.

Chaosynth is a cellular automata-based granular synthesis system whose capabilities for producing unusual complex dynamic sounds are limitless. However, due to its newness and flexibility, potential users have found it very hard to explore its possibilities as there is no clear referential framework to hold on to when designing sounds. Standard software synthesis systems take this framework for granted by adopting a taxonomy for synthesis instruments that has been inherited from the acoustic musical instruments tradition, i.e. woodwind, brass, string, percussion, etc. Sadly, the most interesting synthesised sounds that these systems can produce are simply referred to as effects. This scheme clearly does not meet the demands of more innovative software synthesizers. In order to alleviate this problem, we propose an alternative taxonomy for Chaosynth timbres. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the basic functioning of Chaosynth. It then presents our proposed taxonomy and ends with concluding comments. A number of examples are provided on this volume's Organised Sound CD.