Programme notes

SESSION 1

Tim Yates

Biography:

Tim Yates is an award-winning instrument developer, sound-artist, musician and technologist who makes instruments for performance and installation. He has shown his work at, among many other places, the Tate Modern, the V&A and London Design Week and internationally at Xi’an International Maker Faire and Siestes Électroniques. He is the Founder and Director of Hackoustic, a group dedicated to instrument building, acoustic hacking and sound-art. 

Programme notes:

Ambisonic and immersive audio allows us to play with the fundamentals of what a musical instrument is, the way we can experience sound and the relationship between audience and performers.  

Tim will present the outcomes of an R&D residency with the Amoenus sound system at Iklectik London supported by the Arts Council England. During this residency, Tim has developed several instruments that explore the idea of being inside the instrument you’re playing – room sized, immersive instruments and installations that audience members can walk around in, play and experience collectively. 

Georgina Brett

Biography

Georgina Brett is a composer and event organiser. After studying an MA in Electroacoustic composition under Jonty Harrison, she went on to produce CDs of binaural recordings from eco-festivals. 

In 2003, she began making vocal live-looping collages/improvisations/compositions and has composed many albums exploring a range of ideas and musical challenges for mono-choir. She began Tuesdays Post: Live Progressive Ambient in 2012 to promote artists creating music on the cusp of electro-acoustic and ambient styles. Having gained a fascination for surround sound spatial music at undergraduate level she has curated a number of multi-speaker concerts in London over the years. 

Reinhard Kopiez

Biography:

Reinhard Kopiez received a degree in classical guitar from the School of Music in Cologne (1982), and a master’s and PhD (1990) in musicology from the Technical University in Berlin. Since 1998 he has been a professor of music psychology at Hanover University of Music and Drama, Germany, and head of the Hanover Music Lab. His most recent journal publications concern psychological research on the relationship between music performance and handedness; historiometric analyses of Clara Schumann’s repertoire; groove and sound in popular music; the evaluation of audio-visual music performance; and the experience of immersive music listening (3D audio). His research is mainly based on quantitative methods from experimental psychology. 

Programme notes:

In his presentation he is going to speak about the current research project “Richard Wagner 3.0: Immersive sound environments and their potential for creating a musical experience and cultural participation” (see https://richard-wagner3-0.de/en/index_en.html) his interdisciplinary research team comprising music psychologists and experts from the field of communication technology are investigating the relationship between various degrees of sound field immersion (created by audio formats such as stereo, 5.1 surround sound, and 5.1.4 3D audio) and the intensity of music experience. Participants listen to music from different genres in various audio formats in a controlled lab situation. Self-reports on the subjective music experience and physiological markers (e.g., SCR, pupillometry) are recorded. 

Kilian Sander

SESSION 2

Natalia Quintanilla 

Biography:

Born in Mexico City, Natalia Quintanilla is an electro-acoustic music artist, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist currently based in Detroit, Michigan. Natalia’s music has been performed throughout prestigious places in Mexico and the United States. In 2021 she released her independent music based on digital audio processing, acoustic instruments, electronic beats, and synthesizers. As a performer, Natalia has been a member of Latin-American and jazz ensembles as an accordionist, vocalist, and pianist. 

Her work is inspired by the relationship between humans and their bond with the intangible — dreams, the ever-changing connection with nature, and things that can’t be explained. 

Programme notes:

Abejas (2022) 

While hiking in Los Dinamos, a National park located in Mexico City, I realized that a bee kept following me. In the beginning, I found myself annoyed by her, but then I realized it was my instinct that made me annoyed. If I paid attention, I would 

realize that she was harmless, fragile, and beautiful. 

I wanted to create a piece that captures the fascinating journey of the selection process of a queen bee. 

I created my material by exploring all the different sounds from an accordion in addition to the creation of sounds using the analog synthesizer’s sequencer. 

Sam Bland

Biography

Sam Bland is a composer and workshop leader, interested in the potential of sound art to investigate social history. He is a recent post-graduate from the University of Birmingham, where he completed an MA in Electroacoustic Composition. His work often combines interviews, field and archive recordings and 

electronics, to produce politically engaged soundscapes. 

Sam’s work has been showcased at the Daegu International Computer Music Festival and BEAST FEAST, as well as gaining commissions from Croydon Council, Croydon Art Store and We Are All Bats. More recently Sam has received Arts Council funding to work on a new creative research project. 

Programme notes:

66 Montclaire, 2 pieces from the trio of works: 

Arkle 64, Ambisonics 3rd Order, 7’32”. 

ThreeGenerations, Eight-Channel, 11’43”. 

The material and conceptual underpinning of the project is based around a collection of cassette tapes Sam discovered. Recorded by my grandfather before Sam was born, the tapes contain a mixture of recorded family discussions, horse races from the radio and music compilations, all recorded in the same house in South Wales, 66 Montclaire Avenue. 

The work is split into three pieces (Arkle 64, The Fish and Meat Market & Three Generations), each exploring a separate theme that came out of Sam’s excavation of the tape material. His intention as a composer, was both to explore the nuanced environment held within the tapes, as well as the people themselves and the wider social and political issues presented. This, he hopes, will allow for a meaningful relationship between sound and context to be created, one that conjures nostalgia and evokes memories. 

Ernst van der Loo

Biography:

Ernst van der Loo is a Dutch composer/ performer based in Norway. 

He studied sound engineering and electroacoustic composition & performance. His main field is acousmatic spatial audio composition mostly in the fixed media format. He has created several GPS sounds walks and did sound design for theater. His work has been played at international festivals in the spatial audio field. He is also a member of Electric Audio Unit, organising spatial audio concerts in Norway. 

Programme notes:

Commissioned by Electric Audio Unit for the 2-day Electric Edge Festival at and in corporation with Henie Onstad Kunstsenter at Høvikodden, Norway. The piece is dedicated to – and is celebrating – the 100th birthday of Iannis Xenakis. Countering the common reflex to mimic Xenakis’ mathematical composition techniques, “Kýkloi Alpha & Beta” (cycles alpha and beta) is more concerned with the physicality and violence of Xenakis’ sound world. The sound materials for this composition are mainly generated by means of analogue and digital modular synthesis. The composition made the shortlist for the ISAC Sonosphera 2023 competion. And the piece has been played at the 9th of June concert in Pesaro Italy. 

Kasey Pocius

Biography:

Originally from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Kasey Pocius is a gender-fluid intermedia artist located in Montreal who grew up experimenting with multimedia software while also pursuing classical training in both viola and piano. Outside of fixed electronic works, they have also pursued mixed-media performances with live electronics, both as a soloist and in comprovisatory collaborative environments. They are particularly interested in multichannel spatialization, and how this can be used in group improvisatory experiences. They hold a BFA from Concordia in Electroacoustic Studies and are currently pursuing an MA in Music Technology at McGill under the direction of Dr. Marcelo M. Wanderley. 

Programme notes:

Weaving together field recordings taken during heat waves in Montreal & Cheltenham and synthesizer improvisations recorded while processing the breakdown of a romantic relationship, waiting on the storm to break the heat explores the dread and calm before the catastrophic, and the relief found thereafter. Through intermodulation of the synthesized elements and transformations of both materials, the summer storm depends the heat and for a moment provides relief allowing the listener to find a new balance in the aftermath.

Adam Stanovic

Biography:

Adam Stanović started composing electronic music over twenty-five years ago. His works are mostly realised on a fixed medium, sometimes accompanied by instruments, electronics, film, and animation. Collectively, they have been performed in over 500 international concerts, and received prizes, residencies and mentions at competitions around the world, including: Bourges (France); Métamorphoses (Belgium); Destellos (Argentina); Contemporanea (Italy); SYNC (Russia); Música Viva (Portugal); Musica Nova (Czech Republic); Ars Electronica Forum Wallis (Switzerland); Klingler ElectroAcoustic Residency (KEAR, USA); MusicAcoustica (China); Prix Russolo (France); and Red Jasper Award (USA). In 2016, Adam Stanović co-founded the British ElectroAcoustic Network (BEAN), alongside James Andean, with the intention of representing British electroacoustic music overseas. Adam is regularly invited to talk about, and perform, electronic music – in April 2023, for example, he will present at Stanford, Harvard, UCSB, and NEC. Adam is currently the Programme Director for Sound and Music at LCC, UAL. For further information, see: www.adamstanovic.com   

Link to online profile: https://electrocd.com/en/artiste/stanovic_ad/adam-stanovic   

Programme notes:

n the weeks prior to her death, my mother longed to see the sea one last time. By that stage, however, it was already too late – she was bedbound, riddled with cancer, and unable to move. In the hope that it would bring her some comfort, I played her some of the recordings that I had made (years ago) of waves crashing on the beach, seagulls squawking, boats in the harbour, and the distant sounds of coastal life. She lay for hours… listening… drifting in and out of sleep… In lucid moments, she told me that she found the recordings peaceful. But she was not at peace. I’m sure of that. The recordings that comprise this piece are the same ones that I played during those weeks. I cannot know how my mother really felt, but I couldn’t listen without hearing the terror, agony, and fear in that hospital room. In this piece, I try to paint that contrasting sense of serenity and suffering. Unlike my other works, which generally aim to invoke colour and vibrancy, this is cast in black and white – a clashing of extremes, that couldn’t be further apart, but reconciled in a moment that speaks, ultimately, of nothing but life and death.  

SESSION 3

Emma-Kate Matthews 

Biography:

Emma-Kate is an architect, composer, musician and researcher at UCL. Her work explores creative reciprocities between sonic and spatial disciplines through the composition and performance of site-specific and spatialised projects. In addition to composing on the London Symphony Orchestra’s Panufnik scheme, her work has been performed internationally at acoustically distinctive sites such as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, London’s Southbank Centre, the Barbican Centre, and Brighton Festival. 

Her approach to composition combines electronic and acoustic methodologies and instrumentation, by using a range of bespoke digital tools and physical instruments that she codes and designs herself, respectively. Her electronic music presents a rich tapestry of field recordings alongside synthesised and recorded acoustic instrumentation, often using binaural and ambisonic recording tools to enable immersive 3D playback. 

Programme notes:

‘Conversations at the Edge of the World’ is a 5-minute AV experience that uses field recordings of sea ice from a remote Antarctic research station. The original recording was made by the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). 

The piece aims to raise awareness of the effects of climate change on our sonic environment by working with sounds that may disappear within our lifetimes. A slow 50Hz heartbeat provides a temporal framework from which shorter cyclic episodes and sporadic sonic events are aligned. A higher-pitched conversation between ice and ocean is isolated, re-pitched and spatialised for ambisonic playback, creating a harmonically-rich texture immersing the listener. 

Elliot Yair Hernández López

Biography:

Elliot Yair Hernández López, born on June 3rd, 1999 in Mexico. 

He studied Art and Digital Communication at UAM Lerma and he is currently pursuing the Master Degree in Music Technology at UNAM. 

He has presented his audiovisual works and electroacoustic pieces in different countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, USA, Canada, UK, Japan, Portugal and Austria. 

As a digital artist, he seeks to experiment with different objects and disciplines to create immersive, reflective and abstract pieces with the aim of creating sensations and emotions for the public through audiovisual elements. 

Programme notes:

THEURGY 8’21’’ 

Theurgy is a spiritual practice that involves the use of rituals, invocations, and other techniques to cultivate a direct experience of the divine. It is often associated with ancient 

Greek and Egyptian religions and has also been practiced in various forms in other cultures throughout history. 

Theurgy is often seen as a way to access higher states of consciousness and achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. It is an individualized practice, and practitioners may use different techniques and approaches to achieve their desired spiritual Goals. 

Aaron Liu-Rosenbaum

Biography:

Aaron Lui-Rosenbaum (Ph.D.) is Professor of Music Technology and Director of the Certificate Program in Digital Audio Production at Laval University’s Faculty of Music. He is a composer and researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT, McGill University) and at the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technology (OBVIA, Laval University). His general interests involve the application of sound technologies in artistic creation, pedagogy and research, with a particular interest in acoustic ecology and technologies that facilitate later-life music-making. 

Programme notes:

« Eppur si muove! » (« And yet it does move! ») 

The inspiration for this piece was simply to turn sounds of protest into something musical. Compositionally, I wanted the layers of sound to evolve and transition gradually, introspectively. The title is a quote attributed to Galileo, who supposedly muttered them to himself during the Inquisition upon being forced to “abjure, curse and detest” his own “opinion” that the earth moved around the sun (rather than standing motionless at the center of the universe). The piece was mixed using the IEM ambisonic plugin suite and comprises almost entirely field recordings with the exception of a minimal synthesized percussion track and harp that I also recorded to contrast timbrally with the field recordings. 

SESSION 4

Simon Conor

Biography:

Simon Connor is a composer and sound artist based in Manchester, UK. He is a lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Salford and currently undertaking his practice-based 

PhD at the University of Huddersfield. His creative practice explores the boundaries between sound design and composition, merging field recordings, found sound and traditional instrumentation. His PhD research is an inquiry into new compositional approaches to creating audio-visual landscapes, particularly incorporating the creativ affordances of spatial audio and dynamic binaural technology. 

Programme notes:

Oden: Summer is an extract from Oden: an immersive and multimodal presentation of landscape, in high-definition video and spatial audio. The work is both a study and reimagination of Odin’s Gully, a unique location in the UK’s Peak District, and its changes through the different seasons. 

The piece features an integrated spatial soundtrack, blending environmental sound from site with musical instrumentation. This is combined with the visual aesthetics of slow cinema, akin to a moving photograph with spatial sound. 

Sound and music by Simon Connor, film by Andrew Brooks. 

Fiona Curran

Biography:

Fiona Curran is a film maker, sound artist and poet.  Her visual work explores poetic portraiture, notions of sonic translation and emotional essence. Her films have been shown nationally and internationally.  Her film work has tackled attack dogs, coffin factories, grief and female rituals, as well as high- and low-end fashion. 

Her next book of poetry, Clothes Horse, is a collection of works speaking directly of garments, fashion, and memory. 

Programme notes:

In the film, The New Puritans, we explore the old values of clothing and decadence, through the prism of a “face off” between these two worlds.  A massive “catwalk” set in the local landscape of the Honeybourne Line in Cheltenham, the film was captured as a one-day event and was mixed, and the soundscape reimagined, in immersive audio. It offers a dystopian reading of who might win such a confrontation, as the two tribes, The New Puritans and the Old Decadents flex their fashion muscles and go head-to-head.  

SESSION 5

Aquiles Pantaleao

Biography:

nitially coming from a classical guitar background consisting mostly of baroque music, Aquiles Pantaleão, still in his early days, made a quantum leap into the Twentieth Century. Firstly, as a group performer of diverse 20th Century repertoire but soon developing a keen interest in Acousmatic music. As a music composer and sound artist, his interests are primarily concerned with spectral morphology, texture, gesturality, environmental recording, acoustic ecology and spatial movement. His compositional work has been widely diffused, being awarded a number of mentions and prizes, including a Prix Ars Electronica compositional prize for digital arts. His creations can be found published by Fundação RioArte (BR), INA/GRM (FR), ORTF (AT), Paradigm Records (UK), and MinC (Ministry of Culture – BR). Aside from his own concert music he has also engaged in many collaborations for film, theatre and gallery/exhibition work. Aquiles was awarded his PhD in Acousmatic music composition from City University, London, and has since lectured for the London College of Communication-UAL.  

Programme notes:

his work approaches and moves between three types of space. The internal space of the sound material, as in the spectral structure that make up its character; the compositional space, as in transformations and reorganisation of the spectrum guided by musical principles; and, lastly, the listening space, as in multiple channels for sound diffusion and the audience experience in a given acoustic setting.  

Departing from a single sound source – a short duration recording of a series of metallic attack/resonance strikes whose spectral signature is composed of a stack of well-defined resonant bands – its constituent parts are split into individual bands that will go on to acquire an autonomy of their own.   

When all bands are played back in phase the original morphology is reconstituted, though with the added ability of moving and positioning each band across different points in space. Through the simple expedient of moving these bands out of phase, each frequency component is now clearly identifiable on their own, as an autonomous, self-contained entity. For instance, by sequentially shifting each adjacent band by the same given amount, the original ‘bell’ morphology now sounds arpeggiated.   

In their newfound individuality, each of the bands is now free to reorganise at will, playing in their own time, oblivious to phase relationships between its neighbours. To further affirm their independence, each band goes through its own signal processing chain, reforming their character, gaining new bodies, thus assuming new identities, sometimes far detached from their original selves.  

The overall form of the work consists of a collection of self-contained movements that create distinct environments, each of which exploring new identities. Nonetheless, there is a guiding principle underlying all movements. Each of them is either synchronous (S) – with all frequency bands in phase – or asynchronous (A) – with bands out of phase. No matter the amount of signal processing involved or direction taken by any movement, the qualities of (S) and (A) are immediately perceived as the sustaining frame.   

Krzysztof Gawlas

Biography:

Krzysztof Gawlas is a composer, improviser, sound engineer, and sound designer specializing in electroacoustic music and computer applications in composition. His extensive repertoire comprises electronic music and chamber works, integrating interactive electronic elements. Gawlas has showcased his compositions at prestigious festivals worldwide and released them on 8 original CDs. His live performances feature a prepared electric guitar, modular synthesizer, and a custom sound processing program. He collaborates with other composers, contributing as an electronic layer creator and technical assistant. Gawlas also explores multimedia projects and composes music for theatrical performances, further enriching his artistic endeavours. 

Programme notes:

he electro-acoustic piece ‘Quintet’ was created in collaboration with four instrumentalists. The fifth instrument here is a modular synthesizer. In works for instrumental ensemble and electronics, the electronic layer is often created through the processing of the acoustic instruments’ sounds. Here we have the reversed situation – the original layer is the synthesizer, and the instrumental layer, is created from individual samples, recorded by instrumentalists, and attached using the concatenative method, takes the role of the processor. This allowed to achieve a high degree of coherence between the two layers, further emphasized by placing all sources in a common ambisonic space.

Georgina Brett 

Biography

Georgina Brett is a composer and event organiser. After studying an MA in Electroacoustic composition under Jonty Harrison, she went on to produce CDs of binaural recordings from eco-festivals. 

In 2003, she began making vocal live-looping collages/improvisations/compositions and has composed many albums exploring a range of ideas and musical challenges for mono-choir. She began Tuesdays Post: Live Progressive Ambient in 2012 to promote artists creating music on the cusp of electro-acoustic and ambient styles. Having gained a fascination for surround sound spatial music at undergraduate level she has curated a number of multi-speaker concerts in London over the years. 

Programme notes:

“FocuSing” by Georgina Brett 

“FocuSing” is a piece about vocal, contextual communication. All the sounds originate from Georgina’s own voice. The harmonic element uses only vowel sounds and is inspired by chord sequences in Debussy “Clair De Lune”. The pitches/harmony grow in confidence and develop throughout the piece, representing stability and constancy. 

The rhythms, apart from one, are all voiced using the plosive consonants, p,t,k and b,d,g and derive from the rhythm of speech of 8 Taglines, (It’s the Real Thing – Coke, Think Different – Apple, Connecting People – Nokia, Just Do It – Nike, Don’t Leave Home Without it – American Express, Have It Your Way – Burger King, Because You’re Worth It – L’Oreal and The Best a Man Can Get). Taglines can be unique in their ability to make us think something arbitrary, even though these sentences are commonly spoken. The sentences are slaves to repetition and are warped by the commercial world of brands. As a compositional device, Geogina has subjected these 8 rhythms to processes used in Clapping Music by Steve Reich in order to make logical rotations of the primary beat. Each of the rhythms have unusual timings and tempos and don’t often co-operate with each other during the piece. 

The male verbal voice is that of Greg Sams reciting from his book “Sun of gOd” and acts as the antithesis of the tagline. 

The ambisonic palette allows the long note chords to swell, rotate and retreat like waves, and gives the rhythms permission to scurry around after each other.  The spatial element affording them space for their individuality, growing and disappearing. 

Jonathan Pitkin

Biography:

onathan Pitkin is a British composer whose music increasingly involves the use of new technology, whether in the production of sound or in the reconfiguration and expansion of familiar instruments, made to behave in unexpected ways which suggest that they may have minds of their own. He works around the edges of popular and classical, performance and installation, and liveness and automation. 
 
His output includes works for Disklavier, Magnetic Resonator Piano, circular piano, and quarter-tone alto flute, as well as installations, emulations, pedagogical software and composers’ tools. 
 
Jonathan teaches Composition and Academic Studies at the Royal College of Music, London.

Programme notes:

Boots… is a flexible surround-sound electronic composition, produced using custom-coded software that makes each ‘performance’ a little different. It can be configured for any roughly circular speaker formation. Essentially the piece is an exercise in making a lot out of a little: the bass drum and hi-hat that form the backbone of much electronic dance music are taken as basic materials which are extensively varied and transformed, reforming at times into irregular clouds of pulses, continuous streams of sound, and even sustained pitches and chords. The title refers to a well-known shorthand for a basic EDM beatbox beat. 

SESSION 6

Miles Warren

Biography:

Exploring the creation of installations, procedural audio, and interaction design and implementation. Most pieces leaving the workshop are created through the coding of creative software, often paired with unique hardware, housed in a form to be experienced as a site-specific procedural/interactive multi-modal work, being broadly referred to as “Systems Music”. 

Co-founder of pyka – USW & UoG Alumnus – Fellow of the HEA 

Based in Newport, South Wales. 

Programme notes:

tanding Sound is a procedural audio installation work. This exploration uses multi-speaker systems to create a physical sonic-topology.  

Each performance of this piece is unique; the code includes layers of randomisation, and the space and the people within it drastically change the topology. 

This sonic-topology induces constructive and destructive wave patterns, explorable by moving around the space it inhabits. 

Luke Reed

Biography:

Luke is a senior lecturer from UWE Bristol and freelance sound recordist and editor for film and TV and technical sound designer for games. He leads the sound design and post-production curricula across the Creative Technologies BSc/MSc programmes (music tech., games tech., & digital media).  

Luke’s recent research and practice spans immersive audio for VR/XR and installations – from R&D of new technologies and workflows to original immersive content for cutting edge platforms (Magic Leap, Full Dome, VR/XR). In 2018 he was awarded the SWCTN Immersion Fellowship.  

Luke is co-director of the boutique audio post-production house YXO Studios which continues to deliver premium audio to many of the world’s biggest broadcasters, developers, and brands. YXO’s clients include Audible, BBC, Disney, The Guardian, Microsoft, Sony, Netflix, Prime, ZDF and numerous independent producers on a wide range of high-end and award-winning TV programmes, films, games, radio, podcasts, online and interactive media. 

Programme notes:

This immersive experience for MetaQuest presents a combination of still point cloud renders of public and hidden spaces captured with LiDAR cameras that are brought to life by 2nd Order Ambisonic (Core Octomic) and spot field recordings (conventional & hydrophone). The project reimagines the practice of site analysis in early-stage architectural design.  

The work focuses on Brixham in Devon, home to England’s largest commercial fishing fleet. The project treats the town’s main carpark as it’s subject, detailing the activity within and around the many narrow alley ways and architectural features. The site is a topic of fierce debate within the community as to whether it should be reclaimed as community space or continue to act as parking for tourist and commercial income that has overtaken since the fishing industry’s decline.  

The project was a collaboration between Brixham based architectural firm Charlick + Nicholson, sound recordist & creative technologist Luke Reed (UWE CTLab), and computational architect Merate Barakat (UWE CABER). The aim of the project was to capture a site of interest using novel immersive technologies and present the snapshots in a format that was audio forward and spatially suggestive.  

SESSION 7

Chris Cundy

Biography:

Chris Cundy plays bass clarinet and rarified woodwinds. Exploring a synergy between the visual arts and improvisation his music deals with a tactile approach to sound and instrumentation. He 

is especially interested in how spontaneity and formal music processes cohabit, work alongside each other, and create change. 

In recent years his music has focussed on archival research, and the interpretation of museum collections through online mediums and radio. In 2023 he was longlisted for best 

content creator at the Digital Culture Awards. 

Chris Cundy is a Help Musicians supported artist. 

Programme notes:

The Fault of Sulis Minerva (a work in progress) 

Chris Cundy, bass clarinet 

Angharad Davies, violin 

Bruno Guastalla, cello & electronics 

Şafak Ekmen, sound spatialisation 

This piece utilises subterranean recordings Chris recently took of the geo-thermal springs at The Roman Baths in Bath and incorporates a live score. Chris is interested in how surface textures respond to varying frequencies heard both below and above the water. The musicians take an essentially improvised approach through a series of predetermined time frames and dynamic ranges. 

It’s estimated to take twelve-thousand years for meteoric rainfall to work its way into fault lines deep in the earth’s Jurassic layers before resurfacing at temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius at The Roman Baths. 

Jon Gordon & Ben Hamid  

Biography:

Programme notes:

Centre for Sound Image – University of Greenwich

Biography:

Andrew Knight-Hill 

Andrew Knight-Hill is a composer of electroacoustic music, specialising in studio composed works both acousmatic (purely sound based) and audio-visual. His works have been performed extensively across the UK, in Europe and the US. Including performances at Fyklingen, Stockholm; GRM, Paris; ZKM, Karlsruhe; New York Public Library, New York; London Contemporary Music Festival, London; San Francisco Tape Music Festival, San Francisco; Cinesonika, Vancouver; Festival Punto de Encuentro, Valencia; and many more. 

Angela McArthur  

Angela McArthur has worked extensively as an artist and lecturer. She was recently in residence with the ARTEC AiR program at NTNU, Norway, creating spatial audio-visual works to reflect their discourses around ocean environments. In 2019, she was in residence at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM) in Graz, making spatial sound installations representing ‘othered’ voices. Her research interests centre around spatial aesthetics, practices and discourse, as well as underrepresented and non-human onto-epistemologies. She champions diversity and theorises through her practice. Angela has worked with audio-visual media in studio, live and location environments from Sydney to New York, and founded Soundstack, an annual series of workshops, masterclasses and concerts about spatial sound aesthetics. She initiated the first UK tour of IKO works, including her own, in 2019. Recent shows/presented works include Ars Electronica (2020, 2019 in collaboration with the BBC), Signale Festival, Austria (2019), Re:sound Aalborg (2019), Tate Modern Exchange (2018), BINCI Barcelona (2018), EVA London (2018), Liquidscapes UK (2018), Doing Women’s Film & Television History IV, UK (2018), Sheffield Docfest (2017), Klingt Gut (2017), Chatham Historic Dockyard, Kent (2017).  

Brona Martin 

Dr. Brona Martin is an Electroacoustic composer and sound artist from Banagher, Co. Offaly, Ireland. Her compositions explore narrative in Electroacoustic music, acoustic ecology and spatialisation techniques through the creation of metaphorical and real-world representations of soundscapes where the aim is to reveal particular sonic characters that are not normally the focus of listening.  Through listening, recording, analysing and processing, the layers of a soundscape are studied in great detail. Her research also explores ways in which creative music technology can be more inclusive and diverse through the facilitation of community engagement projects and also thinking about ways in which her research can be presented to wider audiences. 

Brona is currently exploring ways in which different media are being used to bring soundscape studies into the wider community through VR projects, smart phone applications and streaming technologies. Her works have been performed internationally at EMS, ACMC, ICMC, NYCEMF, ISSTA, ZKM, BEAST, Balance/Unbalance, SSSP, iFIMPaC, Sonorities and MANTIS. She has been guest composer at EMS, Stockholm and Associate Artist in Residence at Atlantic Centre for the Arts, Florida. 

Brona is currently a Teaching Fellow in Music at the University of Birmingham and a Visiting Lecture at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.  She is also a Research Fellow at the SOUND/IMAGE Research group at the University of Greenwich. Have a listen to some of her work here. 

Emma Margetson 

Dr Emma Margetson is an acousmatic composer and sound artist. She is a Lecturer in SoundDesign and Research Fellow in Audiovisual Space: Recontextualising Sound-Image Media atthe University of Greenwich. Her research interests include, sound diffusion andspatialisation practices; site specific works, sound walks and installation; audiencedevelopment and engagement; and community music practice. She has received a varietyof awards and special mentions for her work including, first prize in the prestigious L’Espacedu Son International Spatialisation Competition by INFLUX (Musiques & Recherches), klingtgut! Young Artist Award in 2018 and Ars Electronica Forum Wallis 2019.www.emmamargetson.co.uk 

Giulia Vismara  

Giulia Vismara, born in Venice, is a composer of electroacoustic music and a researcher. She obtained her PhD in Architecture and Design at Iuav, University of Venice, with a thesis on the relationship between space, sound and the body. She studied Music and New Technologies at the Cherubini Conservatory, Florence, and the Department of Sonology in The Hague. She holds a degree in Musicology with a thesis in Aesthetics on Max Neuhaus. She attended workshops and masterclasses with Natasha Barrett, Beatriz Ferreyra, Trevor Wishart, among others. Currently she is teaching History of Electroacoustic Music at the Steffani Conservatory in Castelfranco, Italy. Beginning in September 2022, she will be a postdoctoral researcher at Antwerp’s Royal Conservatory and Academy of Fine Arts. She is a co-founder and member of the SSH! (Sound Studies Hub!) Study Centre at Iuav, University of Venice, as well as a member of RISME digitali, a SIdM research group committed to the study of the use of electronic and digital technologies musical and sound creation. Space is the key to her work, the matrix that shapes the music she composes. Her works range from electroacoustic music to sound installation, music for theater, performance and video art and were presented at: Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, ZKM (DE), Tempo Reale (IT), La Chambre Blanche (CA), Institute für Akustik und Musik, IEM (AU), Fabbrica Europa (IT), Beast Fest (UK), Triennale Milano (IT), Matera Intermedia Festival (IT), CTM Festival (DE), Eavesdrop Festival (DE), QO2 (BE), ACA (USA), Athens Epidaurus Festival (GR), Listen Festival (BE). www.giuliavismara.com 

Programme notes:

SOUND/IMAGE 23-24 Tour: Intersections – IKO Loudspeaker 

Cadavre Exquis IKO by Andrew Knight-Hill, Natasha Barrett, Nadine Schütz  

A collaborative work developed as part of the international “Reconfiguring the Landscape” project’s IRCAM residency. Composers Natasha Barrett, Nadine Schütz and Andrew Knight-Hill, collected new (ambi)sonic materials over a 2-day residency at the Grandes-Serres in Pantin and created a suite of pieces for different speaker constellations. This work explores the potential of the IKO to work with fourth order ambisonic recordings via beamforming in combination with standard mono input materials.  

Shifted Trajectories by Emma Margetson 

A work inspired by the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, featuring metallic sounds of coins, foil and bells shifting, contorting and transforming to new spaces. This work was made possible thanks to the Develop your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England.  

Site-d by Angela McArthur  

Site-d is a piece which was created for St Alfege’s church, and occupies a liminal space between familiar and unfamiliar sounding worlds. Something waterborne and something in the air. Something organic and something synthetic. It occupies the unique architecture of this medieval Hawksmoor space, bringing its outside materials inside, to settle and unsettle the listener.  

Parque Urbano El Bosque to Curiñanco Beach by Brona Martin  

This piece explores field recordings from the SoundLapse Project which seeks to highlight the acoustical heritage of the wetlands from the South of Chile. I chose to explore the wetland soundscapes of two different locations around the city of Valdivia, Chile: Parque Urbano El Bosque and Curiñanco Beach. The piece reflects an imagined journey through these environments as I have never visited them in person.  

I would like to thank Felipe Ontondo for inviting me to compose a work for this project.  

This piece is featured on the Soundlapse release by Gruenrekorder, 2021 – https://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=18999  

Temporal Harmonics by Andrew Knight-Hill 

This work explodes sounds of the ORNC clock and its bell. The ORNC clock has kept time over the campus for 300 years with the current mechanism dating from the 1780s. Colliding with the IKO the sounds of this iconic clock are deconstructed and split into their harmonic partials, before being spatialized across the 360º soundfield. The intersections and shifting movements of these component parts reconfigure themselves reflecting the transformations in time and space which this iconic clock has marked out.  

Elapsing by Emma Margetson  

Time, memories, events…   

Aisling (dream) by Brona Martin  

Aisling (dream) is an AV piece which explores the potential of working with different 3D technologies which are used to create and project 3D sound (ambisonics and the IKO loudspeaker) and 3D environments (Unity Game Engine).  

Field recordings have been deconstructed and processed, and combined with synthesised sounds which simulate natural sound events to create a hyper-real soundscape which reflects the artificial and virtual landscape within the visuals. The sounds are encoded to 3rd order ambisonics so they can be projected by the IKO 3D loudspeaker to create an immersive experience.  

The piece was inspired by the travel restrictions imposed on us during various lockdowns during the Covid pandemic, with the aim of creating a place where people could go to experience a calming environment.  

Composition and visuals by Brona Martin. This work was made possible by funding from the Developing your Creative Practice, Arts Council England  

EASILY BROKEN     

Giulia Vismara  

EASILY BROKEN is influenced by the various connotations we give to the concept of fragility. It’s a piece written in 3rd order ambisonic, employing sounds from organic materials and voices to create textures that melt, traverse through, and create space.  
 

SESSION 9

Laila Riis & Ben Baxter 

Biography:

Partial Facsimile is a Brighton-based immersive sound and visual art collective specialising in research-based projects, film soundtracks and site-specific performances. They perform 

and install all of their works in surround sound or 3D audio formats and aim for an immersive audio experience to become more common to a wider audience. 

Since 2013, they have been engaged in making works that were accessible to a wide demographic, and performed in spaces not necessarily designed for art events. Examples of this include performances in an Air-Raid Shelter in Brighton and The Grand Magazine at Newhaven Fort. They also toured the UK in 2019 with an interactive immersive multi-media concert named “Media OS 5.1” which addressed the concerns of ‘Infobesity’ – the over- 

stimulation of digital information and its effects on human behaviour. This tour was supported by Arts Council England, DiGiCo, d&b Audiotechnik and KLANG 3D in-ear Technologies. 

Each new project involves different members of the collective. Visual art may come in the form of bespoke independent films; live drawing or painting; digital and analogue projection. Musical work may be fully or semi-improvised, soundscape orientated, or 

specifically composed for each project. Lyrical content is informed by research into chosen topics that they wish to discuss in the work. 

Programme notes:

Dynamic Dose by Partial Facsimile – Immersive Sound & Visual Art Collective  

‘Dynamic Dose’ is an ambient sound and light installation presented in 3D audio by Immersive Sound & Visual Art Collective, Partial Facsimile.  

The research project was started when artistic director Laila Riis studied for an MA in Digital Music & Sound Arts at the University of Brighton, UK, and has since been redeveloped along with art-technologist Benjamin Baxter at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest, Hungary.  

By combining specific sound and light frequencies, the 3 hours and 36 minutes long composition seeks to induce well-being in people suffering from depression and anxiety, but can also be experienced purely for its artistic value. The listeners are recommended to observe a 20 minute ‘Dynamic Dose’ equivalent to that of a of a power nap. 

‘Dynamic Dose’ was last exhibited in the spring of 2023 at Fabrica – Gallery of Contemporary Art in Brighton, UK. 

SESSION 11

Biography:

French and Canadian composer, was born in Paris, 1926. 
Convinced of the originality of acousmatic art, his production is, since 1960, exclusively made of tape works. 

 
During 26 years, he shared his activity between France and Quebec. Doc Honoris causa at University of Montreal where he was teaching Electroacoustic Composition from 1980 to 1996. 
1997, a guest of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Berlin. Grand Prix GigaHetz 2013, Qwartz Music Awards 2012. Prix “Ars electronica 1992”, Prize of the SACEM (France) 2007. “Magisterium” Bourges 1988. The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec has awarded him a prestigious carreer grant.   
Many works selected for the “World Music Days”, and ICMC. 
He is a Founding Member (1986) and Honorary Member (1989) of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC). President of the collective « Les Acousmonautes » in Marseille (France) and “Ehrenpatron” (honour patron) of the organization Klang Projekte Weimar (Germany). 

 
He is now living in Avignon, France, focuses on composition and theory.

Programme notes:

Somme toute 

Octophonic work 

14’30   –   2022 

To Anette Vande Gorne 

Looking/listening to a journey of more than fifty years and more than ninety opuses. Reminder, nostalgic assessment, synthesis, outcome perhaps. This free abstraction, introduced by my last choices of writing, is the testimony of a long journey over the successive discoveries that constitute my contribution to the rich acousmatic repertoire. This is why it alludes to eighteen of my milestone works, temporal testimonies that could summarize the evolution of my thought and my language. 

Barry Truax

Biography:

Barry Truax is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Communication (and formerly the School for the Contemporary Arts) at Simon Fraser University where he taught courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic music. 

He worked with the World Soundscape Project, editing its Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, and has published a book Acoustic Communication dealing with sound and technology. As a composer, Truax is best known for his work with the PODX computer music system which he has used for tape solo works, 

music theatre pieces and those with live performers or computer graphics. In 1991 his work, Riverrun, was awarded the Magisterium at the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France. Truax’s multi-channel soundscape compositions are frequently featured in concerts and festivals around the world. Since his retirement in 2015, Barry has been the Edgard Varèse Guest Professor at the Technical University in Berlin, and Guest Composer at the 2016 BEAST Festival in Birmingham, as well as similar events 

in Hamburg, Lisbon, Milan, Salzburg, L’Aquila, Venice and Korea. He has guestedited two theme issues on soundscape composition for the Cambridge journal Organised Sound, and is co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Sounding Art. He is an Honorary Member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. 

Website: ww.sfu.ca/~truax 

Programme notes:

What the Waters Told Me (2022) 

a soundscape composition with 8 digital soundtracks (11.5’) 

If we listen carefully to flowing water in all of its varied forms, we may begin to hear voices and ascribe human emotions to them. The voices may be argumentative, even angry, as at the start of our journey, but suddenly they become hushed as we 

enter a large cavern. A mysterious voice seems to give us commands as we await the next stage, while ethereal voices guide us along. The commands become more insistent until the waters burst forth with transcendent song in a celebration of water and life. 

Alejandro Albornoz

Biography:

Alejandro Albornoz is a Chilean contemporary electronic music composer and performer, PhD in 

Electroacoustic Composition, University of Sheffield, UK. He studied electroacoustic composition 

with Rodrigo Sigal and Federico Schumacher in Chile and Adrian Moore and Adam Stanović in the 

United Kingdom. He works on acousmatic and live electronics since 2004. Currently is lecturer and 

researcher at the Music & Sonic Arts School at the Universidad Austral in Southern Chile. The central 

topics in his research are the human voice, poetry, language, and analysis in acousmatic pieces, both 

in multichannel and stereo formats. 

Programme notes:

La Lumière (2015) 8ch 09:46 

The Light (2017) 10:00 

These are two of the five pieces which constitute the octophonic cycle La Lumière Artificielle, composed between 2015 and 2018. This cycle was inspired by an idea for a specific project by the Chilean avant-garde poet Vicente Huidobro and his aesthetic theory called Creacionismo as well. 

During an interview with Angel Cruchaga Santa María for El Mercurio newspaper, 31st August 1919, Huidobro talks about the avant-garde artistic environment in Europe within the first two decades of the 20th century. The interview reveals his panoramic vision of some poets and artists and, at the 

same time, outlines some of his own activities and projects. There is an interesting statement in this document, referring to a project idea that was never released. When the interviewer asks him “Which pieces are you preparing? the Chilean poet discusses some of his later fully implemented 

works, but this comments on the non-implemented work are particularly inspiring: “The creationist and simultaneist poem La lumière artificial, for three voices on gramophone with new procedures (…)” 

These two works in 8 channels are part of Alejandro’s PhD thesis portfolio (2018). The pentalogy can be listened as whole, in the order proposed or not, or as individual pieces. The sound source material for the entire cycle was generated from the original Huidobro interview: the phrase ‘la lumière 

artificielle’ recited by three female voices, each in one of the three languages defined: French, Spanish and English. Sound materials related to the gramophone, broadcasting as direct samples with connotative sonorities were also used alongside sound synthesis elements. La Lumière and The Light, address French and English languages respectively, focusing in sonic features and cultural aspects for each of them. 

The thesis and the portfolio can be accessed here: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/25897/ 

Domenico De Simone

Biography:

Professor of Electroacoustic Composition at the Music Conservatory of Foggia. Graduated in Composition, Electronic Music, Piano and Jazz.  

Graduated in Composition at the Accademia Nazionale of Santa Cecilia and in Electronic Music with honors at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia. He was awarded with the diploma of merit in Film Music by Ennio Morricone and in Composition by Franco Donatoni at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.  

His compositions have been performed in more than one hundred concerts in Italy and abroad (China, Latvia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Romania, Malta, USA, Ireland, UK, Spain, Austria, Brazil, France, etc.) and broadcasted by RADIOTRE. 

Programme notes:

The WIND has no borders, it cannot be stopped. 

I have entrusted the task of making the WIND “speak” to MUSIC, or rather of making it “sing” words of PEACE, but in an “unheard of” and “inaudible” language, intelligible only to the most intimate and profound part of our being, thus hoping that our SOUL, finally “free”, can let itself be moved and transported to an IDEAL WORLD, where the condition of “normality” is PEACE, where the only “imaginable” WAR is to save our LOCAL EARTH. 

PEACE doesn’t shout. 

PEACE WIND: WIND of PEACE, PEACE in the WIND. 

SESSION 12

Zétény Nagy

Biography:

Zétény Nagy is an electroacoustic composer, spatial audio engineer and multimedia artist based in Budapest, Hungary and Normal, Illinois, USA. He is currently an XR Research Assistant and pursuing a Master’s degree in Creative Technologies at Illinois State University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Electroacoustic Composition at Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary. He has received the New National 

Excellence grant for research on virtual reality composition. He was an artist in residence at Notam in Oslo, Norway, in 2021. He has worked multiple times in spatialization, mainly in the Sound Dome of the House of Music, Hungary. 

Programme notes:

Would There Be A Void? is a spatial electroacoustic piece. It leads the listener into cold, uncertain, and uncharted spaces, where there are sights better left unseen. First, constant, smooth pitches fill the space and lull the listener into a false sense of security, but these sounds quickly become unstable as the space itself grows too large to fill.  

Constantly moving, crackling, bubbling, anxiously wiggling sound objects replace the smooth and motionless pitches heard before. Directions of reflections change, reverberations lengthen, tensions rise to let the listener know: there is no rest or respite to be found here. 

Nicola Giannini

Biography:

Nicola Giannini is an electroacoustic music composer based in Montreal, Canada. His practice focuses on performed and acousmatic immersive music. His works have been presented in North and South America, Australia and Europe. He received the first prize at the 2019 JTTP Canadian Electroacoustic Community competition, the Public Prize Micheline-Coulombe-Saint-Marcoux at the AKOUSMAtique competition organized by Akousma (Canada) and an honourable mention at the XII Fundación Destellos (Argentine) competition. Nicola is a doctoral student under the supervision of Robert Normandeau at the Université de Montréal, where he is also a research assistant at the GRIS and a course lecturer. 

Programme notes:

Rebonds is a playful piece that explores the boundaries between rhythm, pitch, texture, and space. The work is inspired by the rhythmic figure of the rebound, a recurrent figure in electroacoustic music, characterized by the repetition of an element at a progressively increasing speed. The goal is to create sound choreographies, exploring sound spatialization possibilities. The work was composed at the Université de Montréal and during a residency at the Sporobole art center in Sherbrooke. 

Zouning Liao

Biography:

Born in Guangdong, China, Zouning is a composer who is pursuing a Master’s degree with double majors in electronic music composition and music theory at Indiana University. She was one of the finalists for ASCAP/ SEAMUS Student Composer Commission Competition in 2021, and she had attended festivals such as National Student Electronic Music Event, Society of Composer Inc., SEAMUS national conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and the SPLICE Institute, Electronic Music Midwest, CampGround, and Turn Up. 

She is currently attending IRCAM in summer 2023. 

Programme notes:

I have always wanted to dedicate a piece to the nature. I took a few recording adventures by the lakes to capture sounds of the late summer, which mostly consists of crickets and birds. I 

was amazed by the richness of the cricket orchestra in the forest, and how the orchestra transformed so vastly at different times of the day. You will hear 8 different recordings of the crickets at the same time as the opening, and they will take you on a journey to explore the spectrum between real and synthetic sounds. I invite you to visualize the immersive 

environment as you travel through different sections of the piece. 

Panayiotis Kokoras

Biography:

Kokoras is an internationally award-winning composer and computer music innovator, and currently Professor of composition and studio director at the University of North Texas. Born in Greece, he studied classical guitar and composition in Athens, Greece and York, England; he taught for many years at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. Kokoras’s sound compositions use sound as the only structural unit. His concept of “holophonic musical texture” describes his goal that each independent sound (phonos), contributes equally into the synthesis of the total (holos). In both instrumental and electroacoustic writing. 

Programme notes:

The composition “Sense” was created during the 2013-14 at the CEMI Studios, located at the University of North Texas. 

This piece is centred around the use of water as a sound object, with a particular focus on its role as both an energy source and a substance that can affect other sounding objects. To create this work, the composer employed a range of techniques, including procedural audio, music information retrieval tools, and traditional audio editing techniques. The narrative of the piece centers around a man pouring liquor into a glass. 

Mattia Parisse / Tommaso Settimi

SESSION 13

Morgan Lyes

Biography:

Morgan Lyes is a Sound Engineer and system Tech alongside being a student. Using what he learns at work, he is looking into spatial audio and the implementation within emotion and live environments. 

Programme notes:

Limbo is a look into the feeling of floating within the space between spaces, almost like purgatory. Using music and sound design, Morgan wanted to create a feeling of sounds moving around the and having no control of what is happening. Contrasting the music with sound effects creates an uncertainty within the piece.  

Josiah Adegboyega

Ben Asante

Marin Lucianovic

Biography:

Marin Lucianović is a student pursuing a degree in Audio and Music Technology in Bristol. Being part of the Croatian and Bristol music scenes on both sides of the mixing desk, his aim is to connect new advancements in audio with underrepresented artists exploring the aesthetic potential of spatial audio. His current focus revolves around immersive audio systems and spatial audio techniques for music creation and reproduction. 

Programme notes:

In his presentation, Marin Lucianović delves into the realm of immersive mixing for music. Drawing from his experience, he presents his Atmos mix of “Chui – Ex Machina” from the album “Zareb-Berlin,” which he assisted in recording during last year’s sessions. The fusion of jazz melodies on saxophone and synths, accompanied by a solid rock groove, presents an ideal canvas for an experimental Atmos mix. Rather than relying on pre-existing stems from a stereo mix, Marin built the mix from scratch, affording him greater control over spatial positioning that deviates from conventional placement, ultimately serving the narrative of the composition. 

Jade Chennells

Oliver Green

SESSION 14

Sebastian Nagretshei 

Biography:

Sebastian Nagretshei, a tech-savvy composer specializing in AI music, 3D immersive music, and auditory-visual synesthesia, is an assistant professor at National Taiwan Normal University. Nagretshei’s works have been showcased and selected/showcased globally, including ICMC 2022, IRCAM Forum 2022, SICMF 2022, Atemporánea 2022, MOXsonic Festival 2023, NoiseFloor2023, Earth Day Art Model 2023, NYCEMF 2023, and NIME 2023. Nagretshei’s multidisciplinary compositions integrate AI and VR, with “Journey into the World of Dimensions,” a solo saxophone piece, premiering in 2016 as one of Taiwan’s early contemporary music works with VR scenes, and instrumental works have captivated audiences globally.

Programme notes:

In National Geographic, the captivating photos of remote, unspoiled locations evoke a sense of peace and insignificance in humanity’s grand scheme. Inspired by these landscapes, Sebastian’s work “Aurora” aims to capture their beauty. The title honors the sky, snow-covered mountains, and forests, allowing the audience to feel the cold air and see reflections on lakes. “Aurora” is a solo saxophone piece accompanied by 3D immersive electroacoustic sounds. Utilizing an immersive stereo format, the audience will be transported to the world of “Aurora,” experiencing its untouched beauty through a fully immersive and multi-sensory journey. 

Gintas Kraptavicius

Gary-Martin Rollinson

Biography:

Gary-Martin is Wales-based Systems Creative: driven by a ‘why’ not the ‘what’, reflexively metalearning, and thinking in systems. 

His work investigates systems of consumption and creation, and seeks to understand what it means to be human in an ecological age. His creative practice explores the potentiality of objects and environments and engages with playful and collaborative approaches to audio-visual composition, participatory art, interactive experiences, and toolkit design. 

Programme notes:

Practicing Scales 

Practicing Scales is a practice-based research project that explores the theoretical frameworks of subscendence through music performance and spatial audio composition, utilising the disassembly and reassembly of musical ‘objects’ as a method for investigation. By examining the interplay between music-related ‘wholes’ and ‘parts,’ the project aims to illustrate the fluidity of boundaries and the entanglement of elements in the process of music creation. 

Tim Land

Biography:

Tim Land is course leader for Sound & Music Production at the University of Gloucestershire, and the organiser of ‘Everyday is Spatial’ Tim has released artist records on Hospital Records, Sony, Om Records, and numerous independents. He also has an extensive remix catalogue including major label artists. Tim was part of the interactive sound arts collective ‘Audiorom’ and received a BAFTA for ‘Shift Control’

Programme notes:

A sea venture in 2021 around Dinas Head in Pembrokeshire collected field recordings, viewed sea caves and cliffs, witnessed wildlife, basked in sun, bathed in sea, day dreamed, and day tripped. 

A day without recorded soundtrack (no headphones, wireless speaker, or presence of music) prompted the desire to interpret the experience as composition. Translating experiences into sound worlds is a typical process for composition, yet when afforded with spatial audio as the production process, what might be the considerations for rendering music that blends the ‘metaphorical’ and ‘representational’

This work is part of an overall practice-based research project that intends to realise educationally relatable techniques for production of spatial audio to mainstream and popular music audiences.   

This iteration in that process focuses on the use of spatial soundscape as a framework composition technique.  Working with loudspeaker spatialisation as a starting point rather than end mix, it proposes how the soundscape holds an approach for the inherent translation of spatiality for music.