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.

By way of a multidisciplinary approach, this article advances the idea that our listening to certain practices of contemporary art music (electroacoustic, classical contemporary, and electronic music) relies on precise connections to the early stage of perception. These styles of music are characterised by essential sound configurations that evolve in time, thus eliciting a sensorial impact which transcends features regarding sound sources and affective responses. Listeners grasp what Scruton calls ‘pure events’ in a ‘world of sound’, being able to distinguish, separate and sort acoustic stimuli. The article establishes a key parallel among seminal works of Bregman, McAdams, Kubovy, Bayle and other authors, highlighting a fundamental agreement of perceptual studies in psychology, neurophysiology and musicology for the understanding of the early stage of sound perception. Music practices typical of this perspective develop certain sound configurations, such as figure/ground arrangements, recurrent elements and morphological distinction, that closely mirror our innate mechanisms of prediction in perception. A parallel is made between studies in the philosophy of perception and the neurophysiology which allows us to postulate the idea that these styles of music are essentially based on pure temporal proto-objects.

With phonosophy, we are investigating a platform to disembark from the vehicle of the long-travelled logos. The once organic and flowing aspects of Logos (Heraclitus) have all but succumbed to the current scientific, materialistic, mechanistic, quantitative and spatially centric epistemology of the last century – one or all of which perspectives define most of the serious theoretical and critical approaches to organised sound, sound art, music concrète, acousmatic and electroacoustic music in our time. Phonosophy will address that which goes beyond or parallel to the logos, or the logocentric. Adrienne Janus’s discussion of Jean-Luc Nancy’s Listening and the sonic turn looks for conditions of an epistemology based on ‘listening as a mode of attending’ to the resonances of sense, ‘where sense touches upon and resonates with all registers of sensual perception as well as intellectual perception … insofar as they resonate’. Suzanne Guerlac points to Bergson’s theory of real duration (durée réelle) that is the vital energy of animate experience and consciousness as opposed to the entropic energy (thermodynamic) of physics. Together these two overlapping discussions consist of the method (listening/sensing) and field (resonance/duration) of the phonosophic investigation.

Much electroacoustic music composition and sound art, and the commentary that surrounds them, is locked into a materialist sound-object mindset in which the hierarchical organisation of sonic events, especially those developed through abstraction, are considered antithetical to sounds ‘being themselves’. This article argues that musical sounds are not just material objects, and that musical notations, on paper or in computer code, are not just symbolic abstractions, but instructions for embodied actions. When notation is employed computationally to control resonance and gestural actuators at multiple acoustic, psychoacoustic and conceptual levels of music form, vibrant sonic morphologies may emerge from the quantum-like boundaries between them. In order to achieve that result, it is necessary to replace our primary focus of compositional attention from the Digital Audio Workstation sound transformation tools currently in vogue, with those that support algorithmic thinking at all levels of compositional design.

What takes place in the minds of composers when they struggle to incorporate a given temporal concept into a musical work? Spectral composers have produced detailed theoretical proposals about time in music, but how exactly those ideas influenced their musical practices remains an extremely challenging question. Graphical representations in their sketches provide invaluable clues. Through the analyses of Gérard Grisey’s and Kaija Saariaho’s manuscripts, we show how the theoretical frameworks for the basic cognitive operations of blending and anchoring, which underlie the construction of complex meanings, can shed light on the intricate musical uses of timelines by spectral composers. We combine the universal claims of this cognitive analysis with the diachronic perspective of a musicological study, teasing out the mental paths that these composers may have followed to create novel aesthetic proposals from their experience with graphic representations of sound, mainly spectrograms, and from techniques of electroacoustic studios. Thus we pave the way towards a common language for understanding time representation across electroacoustics and music in general, based on this mixed methodology. Through such shared tenets, the cognitive study of music can reciprocally contribute to burgeoning fields such as time representation, meaning construction and creativity.

Beyond the social and even the human, sound opens onto the intertwining of movements animating the lived experience. A sonic epistemology considers not only that the acoustic ecologies are enunciative of social relations and power dynamics, but also that they tell about the way reality is lived, experienced, organised: they are expressive, in themselves. This means, for an epistemology of phonosophy, that every perception of a sound implies a conceptual movement, which carries a mental dimension that could become the material for another thinking practice, for a sophia. This article approaches music as thinking in itself: a thought of the sonic. This affirmation will be expanded through the contribution of process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze and Guattari, Manning, etc.), which allows a musical event to be considered as an ecology, produced by the encounter of a multiplicity of bodies (human, sonic, technological, etc.). The processes of capture of forces involved and the different techniques required to increase the expressive potentialities of the musical assemblage will be unfolded through the case of Résonances manifestes, a comprovised music piece based on a sound score composed of field recordings from autonomous demonstrations.

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.

This article explores the relationship and disparities between human and computational creativity by addressing the following questions: How well are computational creativity systems currently performing at creative tasks? Could computers outperform human composers? And, if not, is computational creativity a utopia? Automatic composition systems are examined with respect to Boden’s three criteria of creativity (novelty, surprise and value), as well as their assumptions about the nature of creativity. As an alternative to a competitive relationship between human and computational creativity, the article proposes the concept of a distributed human–computer co-creativity, in which computational creativity extends – rather than replaces – human creativity, by expanding the space of creative possibilities.

We introduce an analytical methodology to approach the perception of time in the electronic works Thema: Omaggio a Joyce (1958), by Luciano Berio, and Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–6), by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Such works have already been widely analysed and discussed. Moreover, similarities between them have been pointed out, such as the use of the voice as their main compositional material and the search for a continuum between the voice and electronic sounds. Despite their similarities, we argue that the perception of time in those works is significantly different. For that purpose, we bring theoretical references such as time concepts related to complex dynamic systems, and the perception of time according to the Gestalt theory. We discuss segmentation and texture evolution in time of both works employing graphical representations based on perceptual audio descriptors such as the mel scale and the volume. In addition, aiming to find recurrences, repetitions and variations of the spectral material in time, we apply phase space graphs addressing the values of the descriptors employed in the analysis. The features found will lead to conclusions on the emergence of time perception in which the continuity depends on the presence of similar events, periodicities and pregnancies, while discontinuity is given by the presence of more variation, instability and saliences. We emphasise the differences of form perception in those pieces, arguing that they are the result of the manipulation of sound materials and organisation in time by the composers.

This article aims to elaborate Horacio Vaggione’s theoretical approach towards electronic music composition and his understanding of the musical structure, and to discuss how some of his key concepts come into presence during the compositional experience of temporality. Following the introduction of object-oriented composition and musical networks, I will discuss the concept of morphology alongside an investigation of how these ideas relate to temporality. In addition to this inquiry, I will briefly explore the possibilities of an ontological discussion on Vaggione’s compositional mindset and how his temporal perspective differs from some of his colleagues.

There are a number of electroacoustic (EA) composers who draw on spiritual or religious material for their work. However, for some the word ‘spiritual’ is problematic, being too vague or broad, and the word ‘religious’ too narrow. To refine the word ‘spiritual’ therefore, in a way that might be acceptable also to those who are religious, I employ the contemporary concept of spiritual intelligence (SI) as a proposed framework for linking a discourse of spirituality with electroacoustic music. In addition to postulating SI as a way of framing the word ‘spirituality’, I identify three different ways in which EA composers draw on spiritual or religious material: some use existing sacred texts or methods; some approach sound itself to explore the nature of reality; finally, there are those who are drawn to ancient ways of understanding where spirit and material worlds are not separated; for example, in the West, the Pythagorean tradition.

Departing from the artistic research project Goodbye Intuition (GI) hosted by the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, this article discusses the aesthetics of improvising with machines. Playing with a system such as the one described in this article, with limited intelligence and no real cognitive skills, will obviously reveal the weaknesses of the system, but it will also convey part of the preconditions and aesthetic frameworks that the human improviser brings to the table. If we want the autonomous system to have the same kind of freedom we commonly value in human players’ improvisational practice, are we prepared to accept that it may develop in a direction that departs from our original aesthetical ambitions? The analyses is based on some of the documented interplay between the musicians in a group in workshops and laboratories. The question of what constitutes an ethical relationship in this kind of improvisation is briefly discussed. The aspect of embodiment emerges as a central obstacle in the development of musical improvisation with machines.

This article narrates my practice-based research in embodied sonic meditation, as a Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) designer, a vocalist, a composer, a media artist and a long-term meditation practitioner. I define the concept of ‘embodied sonic meditation’ in the context of electroacoustic sound art with the augmentation by music technology and human-centred design. I historically connect embodied sonic meditation to its roots in Tibetan Buddhism and several inspiring music compositional practices in the Western world from the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that physicality and spirituality are unified in an inseparable non-duality form, through sound, body and mind. I develop a methodology for embodied sonic meditation practice, built on fifteen design principles based on previous research in DMI design principles, neuroscience research in meditation, Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory, and the criteria of efficiency, music subjectivity, affordance, culture constraints and meaning making. I then make reference to three proof-of-concept case studies that use a sensor-augmented body as an instrument to create sound and sonic awareness. I argue that embodied sonic meditation affords an opportunity for sound art to mediate cultures, improve people’s well-being, and better connect people to their inner peace and the outer world.

In this article, I explore the relationship between the temporality of the composer and that of the music composed. This investigation starts with a fundamental presumption: composers, generally speaking, think in the future – their compositions will be performed and perceived at a different and later time than that of the compositional act, and will be listened by other persons. The hypothesis I develop in this article is that the musical work determines a deferred relationship between the listener and the composer, and that the compositional act is basically a dialogical act. Paul Ricœur’s theory of mimesis is helpful in analysing this dialogical mechanism through the notion of ‘temporal configuration’. By drawing on this theoretical framework, I interviewed five composers in order to make explicit the imbrication of the composer’s and listener’s temporalities in the musical work. This exploratory inquiry allowed for a concrete analysis, articulated in the words of the composers, of how they conceive the relationship between their compositional temporality and that expressed by their work.

Machines incorporating techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning can work with human users on a moment-to-moment, real-time basis to generate creative outcomes, performances and artefacts. We define such systems collaborative, creative AI systems, and in this article, consider the theoretical and practical considerations needed for their design so as to support improvisation, performance and co-creation through real-time, sustained, moment-to-moment interaction. We begin by providing an overview of creative AI systems, examining strengths, opportunities and criticisms in order to draw out the key considerations when designing AI for human creative collaboration. We argue that the artistic goals and creative process should be first and foremost in any design. We then draw from a range of research that looks at human collaboration and teamwork, to examine features that support trust, cooperation, shared awareness and a shared information space. We highlight the importance of understanding the scope and perception of two-way communication between human and machine agents in order to support reflection on conflict, error, evaluation and flow. We conclude with a summary of the range of design challenges for building such systems in provoking, challenging and enhancing human creative activity through their creative agency.

Soundscape composition and environmental sound art already imply critiques and negotiations of nature/culture divide and human/non-human difference. This article, along with the composition it frames, thinks through a vision of environmental sound art that completes a link between sonic practice and its object. As a project, it navigates human/animal difference through a sonic knowing which is founded on life’s shared constitution in signs. Sounds beyond spoken words, like the signs that dominate non-human life, are foundationally non-symbolic, and the ability of environmental sound art to resemble and evoke networks of icons and indices is in some respects a privileged position of electroacoustic music. The article presents a non-dualistic sonic thinking within the decentred perspective of the environment, which emerges as a plural product of its engagements and participants. A vision for soundscape composition is presented, along with a frame for its interpretation as sonic thought, or phonosophy.

It is widely accepted that acoustic and digital musical instruments shape the cognitive processes of the performer on both embodied and conceptual levels, ultimately influencing the structure and aesthetics of the resulting performance. In this article we examine the ways in which computer music languages might similarly influence the aesthetic decisions of the digital music practitioner, even when those languages are designed for generality and theoretically capable of implementing any sound-producing process. We examine the basis for querying the non-neutrality of tools with a particular focus on the concept of idiomaticity: patterns of instruments or languages which are particularly easy or natural to execute in comparison to others. We then present correspondence with the developers of several major music programming languages and a survey of digital musical instrument creators examining the relationship between idiomatic patterns of the language and the characteristics of the resulting instruments and pieces. In an open-ended creative domain, asserting causal relationships is difficult and potentially inappropriate, but we find a complex interplay between language, instrument, piece and performance that suggests that the creator of the music programming language should be considered one party to a creative conversation that occurs each time a new instrument is designed.