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1
Kane, Brian. "Acousmate: History and de-visualised sound in the Schaefferian tradition." Organised Sound 17, no. 2 (July 19, 2012): 179–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771812000118.
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The word ‘acousmatic’ has a strange and complicated history. Recent Schaefferian accounts have replicated François Bayle's sketch of the ‘histoire du mot’ from his Musique acousmatique – in particular, the assumed synonymy between ‘acousmatique’ and ‘acousmate’. However, this synonymy is mistaken. The word ‘acousmate’ was first coined in an article from 1730 to describe a strange noise heard one evening in the small French village of Ansacq. A discussion of the article follows, which shows how the word is unrelated to the Pythagorean acousmatics, and how its author understood his ‘acousmate’ in the context of contemporary natural science. Additionally, a sketch of the term's changing signification in three discourses – scientific, psychological and literary – is presented. The goal of this article is to articulate a set of problems concerning the historiography of acousmatic listening in the Schaefferian tradition. These problems include: 1) the need to authorise a practice of musique acousmatique, which has limited historical investigation to moments where the word ‘acousmate’ or ‘acousmatique’ appear in the archive; 2) a mistaken assumption that ‘acousmate’ and ‘acousmatique’ are synonymous, which has forced together historical moments that are not in fact affiliated; 3) an adherence to this affiliation, which has foreclosed the opportunity to consider acousmatic listening as a set of culturally and historically specific practices concerning the relationship of seeing and hearing.
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Pinheiro, Sara. "Acousmatic Foley: Staging sound-fiction." Organised Sound 21, no. 3 (November 11, 2016): 242–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771816000212.
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This article proposes a narrative theory thought in terms that are specific to sound practice. It addresses two different fields – Acousmatic Music and Foley Art – as a possibility of understanding sound narration and conceptualising it around the idea of fiction. To this end, it begins from the concepts of sound-motif, sound-prop and sound-actors, in order to propose a dramaturgic practice specific to sound terms.The theory of sound dramaturgy acquires a practical outline by making use of multichannel constellations as a composition strategy, with specific loudspeaker arrangements. The theory advocates loudspeakers as the mediators of the experience and the stage as part of the audience’s assembly. This translates into a practice of staging sound fiction, which focuses on formulating a conjecture based on formal and factual structures, allowing for a direct relationship between the listener and the listening, between the sounds and their fictional location.
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Pinheiro, Sara. "Acousmatic Foley: Son-en-Scène." International Journal of Film and Media Arts 7, no. 2 (December 13, 2022): 125–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.24140/ijfma.v7.n2.07.
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“Acousmatic Foley” is practice-based research on sound dramaturgy stemming from musique concrète and Foley Art. This article sets out a theory based on the concept of “son-en-scène”, which forms the sonic content of the mise-en-scène, as perceived (esthesic sound). The theory departs from the well-known features of a soundscape (R. M. Schafer, 1999) and the listening modes in film as asserted by Chion (1994), in order to arrive at three main concepts: sound-prop, sound-actor and sound-motif. Throughout their conceptualization, the study theorizes a sonic dramaturgy that focuses on the sounds themselves and their practical influence on film's story-telling elements. For that, it conveys an assessment of sound in film-history based on the “montage of attractions” and foley art, together with the principles of acousmatic listening. This research concludes that film-sound should be to sound designers what a “sonorous object” is to musique concrète, albeit conveying all sound’s fictional aspects.
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Donahue, Joseph. "Acousmatic Orphism: Susan Howe." CounterText 7, no. 3 (December 2021): 394–420. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/count.2021.0243.
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In this essay Joseph Donahue uncovers the Orphic ambitions of Susan Howe's 2010 volume of poetry, That This, especially as manifested in the poet's collaboration with the composer David Grubbs in the recording of a poem from that volume, ‘Frolic Architecture’. To account for the use of free-floating syllabic sound as an intensification of the Orphic concerns of the poem in the recording, the essay turns at first to the origin of acousmatic sound and its proposed relations to ancient mystery cults: composer and sound theorist Pierre Schaeffer claimed that to hear sound without seeing its source placed the listener in a position comparable to that of an initiate in the cult of Pythagoras. Drawing on Brian Kane's 2014 study of the origins of musique concrète (which incorporates recorded sounds) in the postwar period, Sound Unseen, this piece claims the acousmatic not only for Pythagoras but for Orpheus. It is argued that an Orphic poetics rooted in the acousmatic comes to full fruition in late Howe. Howe's own evocations of Pythagoras, and her own mythologising of the acousmatic, are examined, especially in regard to her collage method which so often and so momentously conceals or removes the visual origin of sounded syllables. The collaboration with composer David Grubbs intensifies the acousmatic poetics of Howe's text, and it is suggested, is the poem's ultimate realisation.
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Soddell, Thembi. "The Acousmatic Gap as a Flexile Path to Self-Understanding: A case for experiential listening." Organised Sound 25, no. 3 (November 30, 2020): 344–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771820000308.
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Since Schaeffer’s development of musique concrète, there has been an ongoing debate regarding the value of the acousmatic reduction for engaging with real-world sound in music, and its relevance for composers and listeners. This article presents a way of working with acousmatic sound that is more meaningful to me as a composer, which I have labelled experiential listening. In understanding acousmatic sound through the lens of experientialism (as opposed to Schaeffer’s use of phenomenology), I have devised this method to form a dialogue between sound, composer, and listener through the use of metaphor, to explore concepts beyond the experience of just sound in itself while composing. It accounts for the felt sense of intuition that can form through working with acousmatic sound, presenting a way of using this as a tool for self-understanding. It highlights Brian Kane’s ontology of acousmatic sound as the being of a gap, exploring where this gap can take the mind of the composer and listener. This is illustrated through my use of experiential listening to gain insights into lived experiences of mental illness and trauma, which reveals inner wisdom about the listening self that can be negotiated through acousmatic sound.
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Krylova, Alexandra V. "Acousmatic Sound in Multimedia Installations." Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal'noj Nauki, no. 3 (2021): 63–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.33779/2587-6341.2021.3.063-075.
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DHOMONT, FRANCIS. "Is there a Québec sound?" Organised Sound 1, no. 1 (April 1996): 23–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771896000143.
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This article approaches the definition of the important term 'acousmatic' by reference to its origins in the sound studios of the French National Radio. The links from France to Québec are outlined and the Québecois acousmatic school, largely based in Montreal, is introduced. Aspects of a typical piece are discussed, and the author is able to answer the title question positively.
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Amelides, Panos. "Acousmatic Storytelling." Organised Sound 21, no. 3 (November 11, 2016): 213–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771816000182.
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The purpose of this article is to explore the idea of relating storytelling with acousmatic music in the creation of a hybrid vehicle for transmitting stories. The concept of acousmatic storytelling is introduced, illustrated by the example of one of my own works which was created with the elements and techniques of storytelling as its conceptual basis. The article continues to investigate concepts of acousmatic storytelling in works from the repertoire of electroacoustic music, with composers such as Ferrari, Westerkamp, Derbyshire, Cousins and Young providing especially pertinent examples. Acousmatic storytelling integrates interviews, archival recordings, soundscape recordings, sonic icons and music quotations; the microphone becomes a time machine, ‘thought capturer’ and a conduit for conveying cultural information, elements which, combined with the sonic world composed in the studio, create a hybrid form. The concepts introduced in this article are useful for all those working with recorded sound, offering an approach to sonic creativity based on storytelling techniques and the way we experience past events through memory and sound recording. Acousmatic storytelling transmits a unique version of a story to the mind of the listener, who participates in the creation of the story and acts as co-creator of that story as experienced. In applying the methodology of interviews as well as researching past events and ‘writing’ about them, acousmatic storytelling composers can also be seen as historians and journalists.
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Avidad, Andrea. "Deadly Barks: Acousmaticity and Post-Animality in Lucrecia Martel's La ciénaga." Film-Philosophy 24, no. 2 (June 2020): 222–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/film.2020.0140.
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Acousmatic sound is often defined as a sound whose source is unseen, that is, in terms of a separation between the senses of hearing and seeing. Discussions about the acousmatic have generally focused on the ontological relation between the sonic effect and the visually unavailable source that produces it. This article examines the function of acousmatic sound in Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel's La ciénaga ( The Swamp, 2001), arguing that the film's distinctive employment of acousmatic sound and acousmatic listening constitutes a strategy of disruption, challenging the traditional concept of the “animal” – an ideological and oppressive notion produced by dominant Western philosophical discourse. My reading gives close attention to what seems to be the barking of an unseen dog and its effects on human listeners, contending that, as the semiotic stability of the figure of the dog gradually erodes within Martel's cinematic territory, listening to the canine voice becomes an unsettling sensory-cognitive experience; the sound of the barks presents an irresolvable epistemic problem. I draw on Jacques Derrida's late writings on nonhuman animals, borrowing the term animot, to argue that Martel's film brings into audibility an animality irreducible plural: an alterity exceeding logocentric economies of knowledge. The film's experimental aesthetics and construction of narrative, I suggest, are concerned with perceiving and making perception itself perceptible, while exposing the limits of human perception – impassable limits marked by an animality which gradually withstands conceptual domestication. Through its use of acousmatic listening, La ciénaga expands our perception of ecological ontology.
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Milutis, Joe. "The Biography of the Sample: Notes on the Hidden Contexts of Acousmatic Art." Leonardo Music Journal 18 (December 2008): 71–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/lmj.2008.18.71.
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Acousmatic sound art production has as its goal a transformation of recognizable recorded sound samples into new relations, effectively hiding the origin of the raw material so as to focus on an experience of pure sound. The author defines the “live” as the “life” from which these samples are pulled, and considers the ways in which the biography of the sample troubles acousmatic art.
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Campion, Guillaume, and Guillaume Côté. "Acousmatic Music as a Medium for Information: A case study of Archipel." Organised Sound 23, no. 1 (December 22, 2017): 112–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s135577181700036x.
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This article discusses the inclusion of concrete informative elements within acousmatic music, in an attempt to mix acousmatic music and sound documentary into a form of socially engaged sound art. Inspired by existing sound practices that make strong use of the sonic reality, such as soundscape composition or radiophonic art, the authors explain how they aim to address socially relevant topics within pieces where music and information are considered of equal importance. To that end, they give a detailed description of their approach through the analysis of the composition process behind Archipel (Côté and Campion 2016), a 29-minute piece focused on the access to the waterfront in the city of Montréal, Québec. Through an alloy of interviews, sound recordings gathered on the shores of Montréal and typically acousmatic sound-processing and synthesis, the piece attempts to portray the challenges and opportunities encompassed by this topic. Having found the need to go beyond the acousmatic concert format for this kind of work, the authors also briefly discuss how they are currently expanding the project to include an interactive website and a mobile application that will complement the initial concert piece.
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Noudelmann, François. "What is an Acousmatic Reading?" Paragraph 41, no. 1 (March 2018): 110–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/para.2018.0254.
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Thinking involves many elements of sound that philosophical tradition has repressed. Breathing, rhythms and collateral noises participate in the making of idealities, even the most abstract. In order to hear them, the voice needs to be considered as one sound among others and as multiple, even when it comes from the same speaker, following different protocols of enunciation. Listening to the recordings of seminars and studying the role played by modern sound technologies make it possible to hear subterranean meanings and tensions at the heart of mental elaboration. Thinkers and writers could be defined by the way they handle the acoustic environments favourable to the way they speak and write, whether by selection, mixing or silence. An ‘acousmatic’ reading aims to listen to this sonic investment in texts and to hear the complex vibrations of their thought.
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Mcauliffe, Sam. "Studying Sonorous Objects to Develop Frameworks for Improvisation." Organised Sound 22, no. 3 (November 24, 2017): 369–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s135577181700053x.
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French musique concrète artist Pierre Schaeffer pioneered new ways of listening to and studying sound. His study and manipulation of recorded sounds to create music changed the way contemporary musicians, from a multitude of disciplines, approach making music. Additionally, Schaeffer’s treatise on acousmatic listening to sonorous objects has deeply influenced contemporary sound studies. In this article, I elucidate how musique concrète has informed my practice-led research project,Looking Awry– from which I will discuss two case studies. I outline how acousmatic listening to field recordings from everyday environments informed the development of performance strategies that guide improvised musical performance; a malleable practice that can be applied to a variety of performance settings.
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Ratti, Federico Schumacher, and Claudio Fuentes Bravo. "Space–Emotion in Acousmatic Music." Organised Sound 22, no. 3 (November 24, 2017): 394–405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771817000449.
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This article presents a multimodal exploratory study aimed at searching for evidence that can guide us in the adoption and/or improvement of appropriate theoretical–methodological approaches for studying the role of the spatiality/spatialisation of sound and the cognitive/affective empathic processes involved in the acousmatic experience. For this purpose, controlled listening sessions were conducted in which fragments of different loudspeaker music were presented. The subjects reported their emotional experience and the degree of familiarity they assigned to each sound fragment. Specific questions for the acousmatic fragments inquire into the potential relationships between the sound stimulus and the emotion declared by the subjects. From these experiences, qualitative reports were obtained through a semi-structured interview, and electrodermal activity (EDA) logs were recorded in parallel for an intended group. Based on these results, it is argued that spatiality might be linked to a complex cognitive–affective response from the listeners and emerges as a distinctive element of the meaning that the listeners ascribe to their acousmatic musical experience.
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Kane, Brian. "Acousmatic Fabrications: Les Paul and the ‘Les Paulverizer’." Journal of Visual Culture 10, no. 2 (August 2011): 212–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470412911402892.
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Acousmatic sound – a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it – creates situations where visual contributions to auditory experience are diminished. The author theorizes that acousmatic separation unsettles the relationship of the source, cause and effect of sound. To draw out the consequences of this theory, Les Paul and Mary Ford’s multi-tracked recordings and live performances are examined, and three central claims are posited. First, Paul’s turn to multi-tracked recording was motivated by mimetic rivalry when his ‘sound’ was imitated on the radio. Second, Paul misdirected listeners of his radio program by creating scenarios that depended on false attributions of source and cause. Third, the problems that faced Paul in live performance of his multi-tracked hits resulted in Paul’s creation of the ‘Les Paulverizer’. This device afforded the maintenance of acousmatic spacing during live performance but also forced him into the unusual position of ventriloquizing his own voice.
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Batchelor, Peter. "Grasping the Intimate Immensity: Acousmatic compositional techniques in sound art as ‘something to hold on to’." Organised Sound 24, no. 3 (November 29, 2019): 307–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771819000372.
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This article explores the accessibility of acousmatic compositional approaches to sound and installation art. Principally of concern is the consideration of intimacy to create a means of ‘connecting’ with an audience. Installations might be said to explore ideas of intimacy in two ways which increase accessibility for the installation visitor: through cultivating installation–visitor relationships, and through encouraging visitor–visitor relationships. A variety of ways in which various acousmatic compositional techniques relating to intimacy might be brought to bear on and operate as a way of drawing a listener into a work are explored, in particular as they relate to the consideration of space and spatial relationships. These include recording techniques, types of sound materials chosen, and the creation of particular spatial environments and listening conditions. Along with a number of instances of sound art provided by way of examples, my ongoing GRIDs series of sound sculptures will provide a case study of works related to an acousmatic aesthetic where these concerns find an outlet.
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Anderson, Elizabeth. "An Interview with Annette Vande Gorne, Part 2." Computer Music Journal 36, no. 2 (June 2012): 10–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00116.
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Annette Vande Gorne, renowned composer of electroacoustic music, discusses her multi-faceted career in a two-part interview. In this second part of the interview, Vande Gorne reveals her compositional strategy for her current project (her acousmatic opera Yawar Fiesta) as well as for other electroacoustic genres–notably, acousmatic works, mixed works, and sound installations. Vande Gorne also discusses the fundamental importance of the art of interpreting sound in space, and explains the instrument of interpretation (the acousmonium) and her use of it. Additionally, Vande Gorne reflects on her teaching, most recently at the Conservatoire Royal de Mons, Belgium, where she conceived a section of electroacoustic studies. During her tenure as professor of acousmatic composition, she has conveyed her personal artistic aesthetic alongside the French electroacoustic aesthetic to several generations of composers in Europe and beyond. Other topics in this part of the interview include Musiques & Recherches (Vande Gorne's center for electroacoustic music) and her well-known acousmatic festival L’Espace du Son.
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Rugger, David. "Brian Kane,Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice." Journal of Musicological Research 35, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 64–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411896.2016.1122442.
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Nożyński, Szymon. "Akuzmatyczność filmowych efektów dźwiękowych. Medialna mistyfikacja foley w kontekście sound designu." Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, no. 4 (50) (December 30, 2021): 715–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.4467/20843860pk.21.049.14966.
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Acousmaticity of Film Sound Effects: Media Mystification of Foley in the Context of Sound Design The text is about the foley profession, an important specialty performed as part of film sound design, at the post-production stage. What’s important here is both, the foley artist’s body, which becomes an instrument, and the ontology of created sounds, which are inserted into the finished film and synchronized with the picture. The author wonders if there is still a place for foley artists in the digital reality and common computerization of work. But the most important issue concerns the nature of sounds themselves, in the context of their production, acousmatics and the ubiquitous sound design. What is the sound implemented into the picture, does the picture give credence to the sound, even though the sound is “substituted” because it is produced in the studio? The situation is debatable, in the context of acousmatic listening (i.e. without the context of the source), because the picture provides a substitute context for the sound, and the viewer (listener) accepts this audio-visual relationship without reservation (as long as the sound is prepared well). Especially since by going to the cinema, the viewer agrees to a form of manipulation in the name of entertainment. Usually he or she is not aware of the mystification in the field of sound, which - within the oculocentric perception ‒ for him or her is only a complement to the picture, although, in fact, it plays a fundamental role in understanding what is happening on the screen. Other topics discussed in the text concern the communicativeness of sound and the historical background of the foley profession. Also important are the interrelations between foley and sound design and other areas of sound activity, as part of the preparation of all the audio layers of a film.
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Batchelor, Peter. "Acousmatic Approaches to the Construction of Image and Space in Sound Art." Organised Sound 20, no. 2 (July 7, 2015): 148–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771815000035.
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This article considers ideas of image and space as they apply to acousmatic music and to sound art, establishing overlaps and compatibilities which are perhaps overlooked in the current trend to consider these two genres incompatible. Two issues in particular are considered: compositional (especially mimesis and the construction of image, and what shall be termed ‘ephemeral narrative’) and presentational (in particular multichannel speaker deployment). While exploring several relevant works within this discussion, by way of a case study the article introduces the author’s GRIDs project – a series of four multichannel sound sculptures united in their arrangement in geometric arrays of many (in some cases potentially hundreds of) loudspeakers. These permit, by virtue of being so massively (and geometrically) multichannel, the generation of extremely intricate spatial sound environments – fabricated landscapes – that emerge directly from an acousmatic compositional aesthetic. Owing to their alternative means of presentation and presentation contexts, however, they offer very different experiences from those of acousmatic music encountered in the concert hall. So the latter part of this article explores the various ways in which the listener might engage with constructed image space within these sound sculptures, along with the relationship of the audio content of each with its visual and situational setup – that is, its environment.
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Iraguen Zabala, Oihane. "Entre Sonido y Sentido. Acusmática y Blackboxing." Barcelona Investigación Arte Creación 8, no. 2 (June 3, 2020): 141. http://dx.doi.org/10.17583/brac.2020.4355.
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This personal research understands the concept of acousmatic as a contemporary praxis in sound art. This ancient Pythagorean practice, -utilized to a strange sound, - shares the essence of nowadays virtuality. As devices’ screens for example share features and processes with the old Pythagorean curtain. Although acousmatic practice avoids any visual representation, and hides the internal functioning of communication, behaving like a black box. External stimuli directly affect it, triggering sound-image feelings and emotions that are (un)known to us. Rather than investigating the response triggered by these inputs, the research aims to analyse the internal resonances of these black boxes. The more complex machines become, the simpler our relations to them are. The devices and formats used in sound-intermedia practice act as “black boxes”, but this apparent “blackboxing” caused by the use of the technological in the codes of the sensible performs as a catalyst for the apprehension of sound and its esthesic exploration.
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Spitzer, Michael. "Review: Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, by Brian Kane." Journal of the American Musicological Society 69, no. 2 (2016): 579–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.2.579.
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Barrett, Natasha. "Spatio-musical composition strategies." Organised Sound 7, no. 3 (December 2002): 313–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771802003114.
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Spatial elements in acousmatic music are inherent to the art form, in composition and in the projection of the music to the listener. But is it possible for spatial elements to be as important carriers of musical structure as the other aspects of sound? For a parameter to serve the requirements of musical development, it is necessary for that parameter to cover a range of perceptually different states. For ‘space’ to be more than a setting within which the main active elements in the structure unfold, it needs to satisfy these requirements. This paper explains a number of important spatial composition strategies available to the acousmatic composer in light of current technology and sound reproduction situations. The analysis takes an aesthetical rather than a technical standpoint.
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Herrmann, Mitchell. "Unsound Phenomenologies: Harrison, Schaeffer and the sound object." Organised Sound 20, no. 3 (November 16, 2015): 300–307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771815000229.
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As Jonty Harrison himself acknowledges, a significant body of acousmatic music exists which has, directly or indirectly, challenged aspects of the Schaefferian theory from which acousmatic music first developed (Harrison 1995). Few pieces, however, have so clearly and deliberately confronted Schaeffer’s notion of the ‘sound object’ as Harrison’sUnsound Objects. Harrison does more than merely reject Schaeffer’s definition of the sound object through the use of expanded compositional strategies. Rather, he both employs Schaeffer’s methodology and subverts it, systematically demonstrating the potential and the limitations of Schaeffer’s epoché and its product, the sound object. The result is what might be aptly termed the ‘unsound object’: a sonic entity which both demonstrates and defies Schaeffer’s ideals, and exemplifies the rich ambiguities which can arise from the compositional exploitation of referentiality and association, in addition to the intrinsic, morphological characteristics emphasised within Schaeffer’s reduced listening. Throughout his engagement with Schaefferian theory, however, Harrison never abandons the fundamental musical radicalism at the heart of Schaeffer’s project: positing ‘concrete sound material’, rather than ‘abstract concept’, as the basis for the language of electroacoustic music (Chion 1983: 37).
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Battier, Marc. "What the GRM brought to music: from musique concrète to acousmatic music." Organised Sound 12, no. 3 (November 30, 2007): 189–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771807001902.
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AbstractSixty years ago, musique concrète was born of the single-handed efforts of one man, Pierre Schaeffer. How did the first experiments become a School and produce so many rich works? As this issue of Organised Sound addresses various aspects of the GRM activities throughout sixty years of musical adventure, this article discusses the musical thoughts behind the advent and the development of the music created and theoretised at the Paris School formed by the Schaefferian endeavours. Particular attention is given to the early twentieth-century conceptions of musical sounds and how poets, artists and musicians were expressing their quest for, as Apollinaire put it, ‘new sounds new sounds new sounds’. The questions of naming, gesture, sound capture, processing and diffusion are part of the concepts thoroughly revisited by the GRMC, then the GRM in 1958, up to what is known as acousmatic music. Other contributions, such as Teruggi's, give readers insight into the technical environments and innovations that took place at the GRM. This present article focuses on the remarkable unity of the GRM. This unity has existed alongside sixty years of activity and dialogue with researchers of other fields and constant attention to the latter-day scientific, technological and philosophical ideas which have had a strong influence in shaping the development of GRM over the course of its history.
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Naylor, Steven. "Appropriation, Culture and Meaning in Electroacoustic Music: A composer's perspective." Organised Sound 19, no. 2 (June 30, 2014): 110–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771814000041.
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This paper explores issues related to cultural appropriation in acousmatic electroacoustic music. Through its use of sound recording technology, acousmatic electroacoustic music facilitates a broad range of potential mechanisms for cultural appropriation, from the abstract (idea) to the concrete (sound object). But appropriating culturally identifiable material is not without its hazards, and the composer may face accusations of superficial exoticism, cultural offence, or the violation of personal or legal rights. To complicate matters for the composer, each listener will bring his or her own knowledge to their understanding of the meaning of the material. A similar reception effect occurs with any artistic medium, of course. But in electroacoustic music, the clarity and immediacy of high-fidelity recording and playback can strongly enhance the identifiability of the material, and, by extension, the audience's potential attachment to it. As illustrations, I refer briefly to several works, including three of my own acousmatic pieces, that have made use of appropriation. Through those examples, we consider both the broader issues noted above and some specific concerns about language and voice. The goal is to provide an overview of some of the opportunities and possible pitfalls of cultural appropriation in electroacoustic music, as well as a brief map of one composer's journey through that thorny landscape.
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Atkinson, Simon. "Interpretation and musical signification in acousmatic listening." Organised Sound 12, no. 2 (July 4, 2007): 113–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771807001756.
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AbstractThe challenges of understanding musical meaning are considered in light of ways in which electroacoustic practice and acousmatic listening might embody yet further nuances in how music can function as a signifying system. ‘Classical’ semiotics is discussed, as well as more recent developments with post-structuralist approaches and musical semantics in other areas of music scholarship. The idea, inherited from the tradition of ‘absolute music’, that musical meaning lies exclusively in the inner operations of the musical materials and their structural organisation, is questioned. Concepts from ecologically inspired music psychology are drawn upon to highlight the importance of interpretation, as well as perception, in acousmatic listening. It is argued that if new theoretical terminologies are needed, an invaluable project would be to develop a taxonomy (and thus theoretical framework) of how sound can ‘stand for something’, i.e. function as a sign in semiotic terms. It is also argued that such terminology should not reinforce distinctions between intra- and extra-musical that feature in many theoretical constructs used in relation to this music. Consideration of the Peircean semiotic model in electroacoustic music (as well as the more widely used Saussurean one), tropology in the study of literature, and a much more widely comparative and culturally explicit approach to analysis are suggested as practical starting points. A more critical approach to the integral role of sound recording and reproduction in relation to concepts of representation is needed.
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Sigman, Alexander, and Nicolas Misdariis. "alarm/will/sound: Sound design, modelling, perception and composition cross-currents." Organised Sound 24, no. 1 (April 2019): 54–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771819000062.
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An ongoing international arts-research-industry collaborative project focusing on the design and implementation of innovative car alarm systems, alarm/will/sound has a firm theoretical basis in theories of sound perception and classification of Pierre Schaeffer and the acousmatic tradition. In turn, the timbre perception, modelling and design components of this project have had a significant influence on a range of fixed media, electroacoustic and media installation works realised in parallel to the experimental research. An examination of the multiple points of contact and cross-influence between auditory warning research and artistic practice forms the backbone of this article, with an eye towards continued development in both the research and the artistic domains of the project.
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Chung, Hye Jean. "Cinema as Archeology: The Acousmêtre and the Multiple Layering of Temporality and Spatiality." Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture 1 (June 1, 2011): 105–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/contemp.2011.22.
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Michel Chion’s concept of the “acousmêtre” is useful when exploring the spectator’s cinematic experience in regard to the juxtaposition of sound and image, as the acousmatic presence troubles the false sense of unity that is created by the synchronization of sound and image by its invocation of off-screen space through sound. The acousmêtre neither prioritizes sound nor image but calls attention to the disjunction between them. Also, the acousmêtre leaves the source of the sound open to imagination and interpretation. Thus the presence of the acousmêtre destabilizes the seemingly unified, contained realm of the film by expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries of the diegesis. In this essay I explore how the power of this ghostly voice of the acousmêtre is manifested in cinema, and the significance of its power to the spectators in their relationship to the film, by asking questions regarding the function and effect of the disembodied voice and spectral presence of the acousmêtre, the scope of the acousmêtre’s power, and what can be created from the disequilibrium that is provoked by this power. I explore possible answers by analyzing the use of the acousmatic voice in Y Tu Mama Tambien (dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2001) and Calendar (dir. Atom Egoyan, 1993).
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Rossiter, Martine Louise. "Music – Bodies – Machines." Airea: Arts and Interdisciplinary Research, no. 2 (October 7, 2020): 5–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/airea.5041.
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This article provides an overview of the Music – Bodies – Machines: Fritz Kahn and Acousmatic Music project and accompanying suite of music – Der Industriepalast. The project is inspired by the work of infographics pioneer Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) who developed works such as Der Mensch als Industriepalast. There is a body of work examining Kahn’s work (Sappol, 2017; Von Debschitz, 2017; Doudova, Jacobs, et al.) that has revealed Kahn’s intent of making the human anatomy accessible to the non-specialised reader through visual metaphors; unlike the descriptive anatomical illustrations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which show how the human body looks, Kahn’s works visually explain how internal structures work using concepts, metaphors, and allusions.
This article explores some of the ways in which Kahn’s striking visual images have inspired the composition of five novel acousmatic works of music. The article starts with a survey of existing works making use of similar, extra-musical influences to examine how extra-musical influences such as infographics and painting may influence the formal design of acousmatic music. It goes on to consider how, exactly, the infographics of Fritz Kahn have been used within the project. In some cases, this guides the choice of particular materials (such as the sound of a beating heart to represent an image of a heart monitor), but in other cases, there is influence on phrasing, placement, and even the formal design of entire pieces.
Taken as a whole, the article seeks to explore the following questions; 1) What impact does the context of a particular image have on a composers’ response? 2) How do composers respond to visual stimuli in acousmatic music? What is their compositional process? 3) How do such parallels between the specific sonic and visual examples offer new interdisciplinary insight to artistic practices and research? 4) How do sound recording techniques inform acousmatic music and generate new creative processes that operate within the sphere of human-machine relations?
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Seo, Jeong-Eun. "Sound Unseen or Sound Seen : Dis-acousmatic Meanings of Helmut Lachenmann’s musique concrète instrumentale." Journal of the Science and Practice of Music 40 (October 31, 2018): 105–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.36944/jspm.2018.10.40.105.
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Barrett, Richard. "Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice by Brian Kane. OUP, 2014. £42.00." Tempo 69, no. 273 (July 2015): 53–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298215000236.
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Degrassi, Franco. "Some Reflections of Borrowing in Acousmatic Music." Organised Sound 24, no. 02 (August 2019): 195–204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771819000232.
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This article begins with an outline of the Manovich general definition of borrowing followed by an introduction to the theme of borrowing in music, particularly within the context of acousmatic music. Two scenarios proposed by Navas in his taxonomy of borrowing are used to further the discussion in relation to material sampling and cultural citation. With reference to material sampling, some examples of remix, appropriation and quoting/sampling taking place within acousmatic music are highlighted. With regards to cultural citation, two levels of reference will be considered: cultural citation from sound arts, that is, intertextuality, and cultural citation from other media, that is, intermediality. The article closes with some reflections a posteriori about my own composition, Variation of Evan Parker’s Saxophone Solos, and how this relates to wider notions of musical borrowing.
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Normandeau, Robert. "Timbre Spatialisation: The medium is the space." Organised Sound 14, no. 3 (December 2009): 277–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771809990094.
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In this text, the author argues that space should be considered as important a musical parameter in acousmatic music composition as more conventional musical parameters in instrumental music. There are aspects of sound spatialisation that can be considered exclusive to the acousmatic language: for example, immersive spatialisation places listeners in an environment where they are surrounded by speakers. The author traces a history of immersive spatialisation techniques, and describes the tools available today and the research needed to develop this parameter in the future. The author presents his own cycle of works within which he has developed a new way to compose for a spatial parameter. He calls this technique timbre spatialisation.
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Hirst, David. "From Sound Shapes to Space-Form: investigating the relationships between Smalley's writings and works." Organised Sound 16, no. 1 (February 25, 2011): 42–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771810000427.
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By drawing concept diagrams of Smalley's seminal writings, I have attempted to show how Smalley's ideas on acousmatic music have evolved from manipulating sound objects to creating ‘space-forms’. The work Wind Chimes is analysed with respect to spectromorphology and sound shapes, and it is compared to the work Base Metals, which is analysed with respect to spectral space. A connection is then made between the evolution in writing and the evolution in composition.
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Parmar, Robin. "The Garden of Adumbrations: Reimagining environmental composition." Organised Sound 17, no. 3 (January 11, 2012): 202–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771811000392.
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R. Murray Schafer's soundscape, predicated on a schizophonic engagement with sound, and Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrète, based on an acousmatic relationship, have for some time been the dominant approaches for those who wish to compose with sounds sourced from the environment. Following Brian Kane and Timothy Morton, this paper critiques the ideologies behind these systems, instead suggesting an approach that uses Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome as a generative metaphor. The Garden of Adumbrations, a multi-channel electroacoustic piece, is used to illustrate several compositional possibilities: the tracing of place through subjectivity, the machinic phylum as emergent intelligence, the interplay between Katharine Norman's self-intended and composer-intended listening, and the encouragement of accidents of listening. Also discussed are Antonin Artaud's Body without Organs, conceptions of Nature and the garden, and Luc Ferrari's Presque rien ou le lever du jour au bord de la mer. The goal is to develop an integrated and sustainable model of sonic practice that addresses the acousmatic while supporting an embedded and non-hierarchical relationship with our ecological milieu.
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Rossetti, Danilo, and Jônatas Manzolli. "Analysis of Granular Acousmatic Music: Representation of sound flux and emergence." Organised Sound 24, no. 02 (August 2019): 205–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771819000244.
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Analysing electroacoustic music is a challenging task that can be approached by different strategies. In the last few decades, newly emerging computer environments have enabled analysts to examine the sound spectrum content in greater detail. This has resulted in new graphical representation of features extracted from audio recordings. In this article, we propose the use of representations from complex dynamical systems such as phase space graphics in musical analysis to reveal emergent timbre features in granular technique-based acousmatic music. It is known that granular techniques applied to musical composition generate considerable sound flux, regardless of the adopted procedures and available technological equipment. We investigate points of convergence between different aesthetics of the so-called Granular Paradigm in electroacoustic music, and consider compositions employing different methods and techniques. We analyse three works: Concret PH (1958) by Iannis Xenakis, Riverrun (1986) by Barry Truax, and Schall (1996) by Horacio Vaggione. In our analytical methodology, we apply such concepts as volume and emergence, as well as their graphical representation to the pieces. In conclusion we compare our results and discuss how they relate to the three composers’ specific procedures creating sound flux as well as to their compositional epistemologies and ontologies.
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Rennie, Tullis. "Socio-Sonic: An ethnographic methodology for electroacoustic composition." Organised Sound 19, no. 2 (June 30, 2014): 117–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771814000053.
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This paper outlines a way forward for an anthropologically inclined electroacoustic music. Considering the similarities in methodological approaches between the fields of ethnography and soundscape composition, this paper proposes to further the use of contextual information when making compositional decisions with sound materials derived from field recordings: a socio-sonic methodology. To begin the discussion, theoretical readings of sound in context are presented. Parallels are highlighted between the practices of ethnographic study and soundscape composition, illustrated with the work of Steve Feld and the World Soundscape Project. A brief consideration of the soundscape–acousmatic continuum with reference to works by Luc Ferrari, Denis Smalley and Hildegard Westerkamp is followed by a combined summation of ethnographic, soundscape and acousmatic approaches to outline a socio-sonic methodology for composition. Examples of work by Peter Cusack, Justin Bennett and Bob Ostertag are discussed alongside my own workManifest– a fixed-media composition based on field recordings and interviews made at political protests in Barcelona. The potential is for a music considered equally for its sonic and socio-political properties.
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Dima, Vlad. "Sound Corporeality and Multidirectional Acousmatic Music in Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine." JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 61, no. 4 (June 2022): 36–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cj.2022.0046.
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HAIR, ROSS. "Exquisite Garble: Acousmatic Sound and Binocular Vision in Ronald Johnson’s ARK." Contemporary Literature 59, no. 2 (2018): 133–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.3368/cl.59.2.133.
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Blackburn, Manuella. "The Visual Sound-Shapes of Spectromorphology: an illustrative guide to composition." Organised Sound 16, no. 1 (February 25, 2011): 5–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771810000385.
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Since its conception, Denis Smalley's spectromorphology has equipped listeners and practitioners of electroacoustic music with appropriate and relevant vocabulary to describe the sound-shapes, sensations and evocations associated with experiences of acousmatic sound. This liberation has facilitated and permitted much-needed discussion about sound events, structures and other significant sonic detail. More than 20 years on, it is safe to assume that within the electroacoustic music community there is an agreed and collective understanding of spectromorphological vocabulary and its descriptive application. Spectromorphology's influence has been far reaching, inciting approaches to electroacoustic music analysis (Thoresen 2007), notation (Patton 2007), composition and education through its flexible functionality and accessible pool of vocabulary.
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Holbrook, Ulf A. S. "Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies." Organised Sound 24, no. 1 (April 2019): 20–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771819000037.
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One of Pierre Schaeffer’s achievements in his musical research was his proposal of the sound object as a basic unit of musical experience and his insistence on listening as a main focus of research. Out of this research grew a radical new music theory of sound-based composition. This article will draw on this extensive research to explore the spaces where this music is heard and present the claim that the space in which music is experienced is as much a part of the music as the timbral material itself. The key question here is the changes made to timbral material through acousmatic spatial listening and the subjective analysis affordance of the listeners’ placement and perspective. These consequences are studied from a phenomenological and psychoacoustic perspective and it is suggested that Schaeffer’s research on timbral and musical concepts can be extended to include spatial features.
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Hayes, Tracy. "Aural disturbance in the stories of M. R. James." Short Fiction in Theory & Practice 11, no. 1-2 (June 1, 2021): 111–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/fict_00039_1.
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The physical process of receiving and interpreting sound creates not just an auditory experience through vibrations registering within our bodies; sounds can also evoke feeling and conjure up mental images. This is especially true of acousmatic sounds, which Michel Chion describes as sounds that are heard while their source remains invisible, and such sounds are thus perfect vehicles for conveying one feeling in particular: terror. If one is not able to see what one can hear, the ensuing sense of terror is heightened. Through the use of sound, and indeed the deliberate absence of sound, M. R. James, I would like to argue, is able to concoct in his stories an atmosphere of malevolence, in which his ‘executors of unappeasable malice’ (as Michael Cox describes them) are often heard rather than seen. This emphasis on sound over image, and the manipulation of it, can be traced back to the fact that James was an oral storyteller before he was a writer of fiction, and that his tales were originally intended for a listening audience. A linguist with an ‘ear’ for language and an aptitude for mimetic brilliance, James deploys alien soundscapes and aural disturbance to create sound as a tangible element within rich sonic tapestries that feature unique aural signatures and instances of acoustic chaos. Drawing on the work of David Hendy on ‘the primalness of the auditory’, Leigh Schmidt on ‘sound corporeality’, and Jonathan Sterne on ‘acoustic culture’, this article demonstrates how James utilized auscultation (or the act of listening) to promulgate terror through auditory images as elusive shape-shifters.
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d’Alessandro, Christophe, and Markus Noisternig. "Of Pipes and Patches: Listening to augmented pipe organs." Organised Sound 24, no. 1 (April 2019): 41–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771819000050.
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Pipe organs are complex timbral synthesisers in an early acousmatic setting, which have always accompanied the evolution of music and technology. The most recent development is digital augmentation: the organ sound is captured, transformed and then played back in real time. The present augmented organ project relies on three main aesthetic principles: microphony, fusion and instrumentality. Microphony means that sounds are captured inside the organ case, close to the pipes. Real-time audio effects are then applied to the internal sounds before they are played back over loudspeakers; the transformed sounds interact with the original sounds of the pipe organ. The fusion principle exploits the blending effect of the acoustic space surrounding the instrument; the room response transforms the sounds of many single-sound sources into a consistent and organ-typical soundscape at the listener’s position. The instrumentality principle restricts electroacoustic processing to organ sounds only, excluding non-organ sound sources or samples. This article proposes a taxonomy of musical effects. It discusses aesthetic questions concerning the perceptual fusion of acoustic and electronic sources. Both extended playing techniques and digital audio can create musical gestures that conjoin the heterogeneous sonic worlds of pipe organs and electronics. This results in a paradoxical listening experience of unity in the diversity: the music is at the same time electroacoustic and instrumental.
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Blackburn, Manuella. "Instruments INDIA: A sound archive for educational and compositional use." Organised Sound 19, no. 2 (June 30, 2014): 146–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771814000089.
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This article documents the evolution of the ‘Instruments INDIA’ project, which led to the creation of an online sound archive of Indian musical instruments. Recording work with approximately 27 musicians provided material for this interactive resource (which functions as an educational tool and concertgoer's guide), and also for compositional work, where culturally tied sound material formed the basis for two new works; Javaari (acousmatic) and New shruti (mixed work) for sarod and electronics. Trialling a variety of methods for gathering and then subsequently integrating sounds from Indian musical instruments into electroacoustic compositions provided a framework for the exploration of hybridity and intercultural sound interactions, while observing the translation and transference of highly emblematic sounds from one musical tradition to the next also led to unique artistic and theoretical outcomes. Curatorial decisions made with my project partners, Milapfest (the UK's leading Indian Arts Development Trust) regarding the participating musicians and their sound contributions posed further considerations for the representative quality of each instrument showcased on the archive. Gathering appropriate material for users of the archive (young learners, audience members and interested laypeople) while capturing sounds suitable for compositional purposes presented new challenges within the recording environment. Further complexities surfaced when this challenge was coupled with a lesser degree of familiarity with instrument capabilities, playing styles and cultural traditions. This unique collaboration with cultural sounds and performance practices raised questions about my compositional intentions, cross-cultural borrowing, respectful practice, and the unavoidable undertones of cultural appropriation and colonial attitude.
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Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. "Fine-Tuning the Sonic Color-line: Radio and the Acousmatic Du Bois." Modernist Cultures 10, no. 1 (March 2015): 99–118. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/mod.2015.0100.
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In this essay, I perform archival work on W. E. B. Du Bois's little known history with American radio in tandem with literary analysis to rethink how we have understood The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Dusk of Dawn (1940) as sonic texts. First, I re-examine ‘the Veil’, Du Bois's famous conception of the color-line in Souls, as an acousmatic device, an aural epistemology dependent on deliberately masking the source of one's voice to avoid the distortion caused by visual representation. Then, I contextualize Du Bois's second autobiographical work, Dusk of Dawn, within early 1940s radio culture in the U.S.A., more specifically the emergence of colorblind discourse developed alongside dominant understandings of radio as an acousmatic medium masking race. In Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois moves away from the color-line, a linear and visual metaphor, to the vacuum chamber, a more complex, diffuse, and aural figuration and, I argue, a sonic metaphor borrowed from his frustratingly racialized experiences with radio in an increasingly segregated United States. Exploring Du Bois's shifting theorizations of race and its expressions through acousmatic sound allows us to place segregation at the heart of the modernist rhetoric of technological innovation and understand how the ‘sonic color-line’ functioned as an important dynamic of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of American broadcasting.
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Pinheiro, Sara, and Jiří Rouš. "Reflections on Sound Associations and Sonic Digital Environments." Resonance 3, no. 3 (2022): 255–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/res.2022.3.3.255.
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This essay uses a “thought experiment” in order to combine theories of perception with sound practices. For that, it explores the concept of “object of thought” and the process of brain-associations in relation to acousmatic composition and reduced listening. Throughout the hypothetical premise of a falling tree, the study brings to discussion digital environments, in particular in relation to methodologies behind game engines. Eventually, it proposes to divide the question “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” according to its multiple angles—the falling tree, the tree of thought, the sound of the fall, and the tree in the digital environment—in order to arrive at the ultimate question: Is there a tree, did it fall, is there a forest, is there a sound?
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Nyström, Erik. "Strange Post-human Attractors: Algorithmic improvisation as acousmatic poiēsis." Organised Sound 26, no. 1 (April 2021): 31–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771821000030.
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Contemporary thought is moving away from the notion that the human is a clear-cut concept. In particular, non-anthropocentric views are proliferating within the interdisciplinary area of critical post-humanism, with emphasis on non-dualistic views on relations between human and technology. This article shows how such a view can inform electroacoustic and computer music practice, and sees improvisation linked with composition as a fruitful avenue in this. Following a philosophical preparation and a discussion of relevant music discourse, two computer music works created by the author are discussed to demonstrate a model of music-making that merges composition and improvisation, based on the concepts of cognitive assemblages and intra-action, following the writings of N. Katherine Hayles and Karen Barad, respectively. The works employ techniques related to artificial intelligence and cybernetics, such as machine learning algorithms, agent-based organisation and feedback systems. It is argued that acousmatic sound is an important aspect of this practice. The research is thus situated not only in the frames of improvisation practice and music technology but also within spatial acousmatic composition and performance.
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Levack Drever, John. "Soundscape composition: the convergence of ethnography and acousmatic music." Organised Sound 7, no. 1 (April 2002): 21–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771802001048.
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Despite roots in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies, the practice and study of soundscape composition is often grouped with, or has grown out of the acousmatic music tradition. This can be observed in the positioning of soundscape compositions juxtaposed with acousmatic music compositions in concert programmes, CD compilations and university syllabuses. Not only does this positioning inform how soundscape composition is listened to, but also how it is produced, sonically and philosophically. If the making and presenting of representations of environmental sound is of fundamental concern to the soundscape artist, then it must be addressed. As this methodological issue is outside of previous musical concerns, to this degree, we must look to other disciplines that are primarily engaged with the making of representation, and that have thoroughly questioned what it is to make and present representations in the world today. One such discipline is ethnography. After briefly charting the genesis of soundscape composition and its underlying principles and motivations, the rest of the paper will present and develop one perspective, that of considering soundscape composition as ethnography.
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EMMERSON, SIMON. "Aural landscape: musical space." Organised Sound 3, no. 2 (August 1998): 135–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1355771898002064.
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This paper seeks to examine how sound in general (and electroacoustic music in particular) can evoke a sense of being and place which may be strongly related to our visual experience. The auditory system has evolved to seek the reasons for the soundfield it encounters and this property cannot meaningfully be ignored by composers in this medium. The acousmatic condition stimulates and enhances this response. The science of acoustics cannot any longer alone explain sound phenomena and requires psychological and ecological dimensions. The idea of the ‘frame’ is developed from large-scale to small-scale soundfields: ‘landscape’, ‘arena’ and ‘stage’ are seen to be flexible components of this approach to composition. The paper concludes that a mature relationship of audio and visual art forms requires a greater acknowledgement of these attributes of sound.