This thesis draws on elements of epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), the philosophy of mind, and ethics in coming to form what might be used as a musico- epistemic tool in the composition of electroacoustic music. To do this it is necessary to consider what constitutes knowledge and how we can come to have knowledge. Using belief as an essential requisite the thesis considers what is required for mere belief to be elevated to the status of knowledge - what justification one requires to make a veracious knowledge claim. The discussion then considers how one can come to know the content of another person's (a listener's) mind. That is, how one (the composer) can come to know what listeners' beliefs are or knowledge is about certain things. The theory that is accepted (explaining how we can have knowledge of other minds) is grounded in folk psychology and is called simulation theory. In relation to this the thesis then considers how composers might make choices about their musical materials (aesthetic judgement) in an ethical manner, thereby affording us an ethics-injected version of simulation theory. The arguments which are put forward in this thesis are presented, in conjunction with the music folio, as documentary evidence of the bi-directional influence of my philosophical thinking on my composition and vice versa. Formulation of the written element of this thesis has been accomplished by research and reflection conducted before, during, and after composition. Rather than being a pre- or post-compositional thought description, or a collection of organised jottings made during composition considered separately, the intention is to document a more all-encompassing (not time-specific) thought process.

Yasunao Tone, Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda are three practitioners representative of electronic music and sound-art practices that emerged in the 1990s where sound materials not normally considered musical, such as digital clicks, glitches and bursts of white noise, are prevalent. It is notable that the origins of this body of work lay outside of the established music institutions of academia and the mainstream popular music industry. Practitioners such as these are often associated with particular record labels including Mille Plateaux or Raster-Noton and attempts to coalesce these practices into a single, unified genre have been made by Cascone (2000), Sangild (2004) and Kelly (2009). These assessments however, tend to critique work mainly in technological terms. In contrast, this thesis draws out deeper philosophical concerns relevant to these practices through a critical analysis of materials produced by and about these practitioners, including commercial releases, works, writings and interviews. What emerges from this is that Heidegger's notion of truth as `revealing' and Derrida's critique of phonocentrism can provide a clearer philosophical framework for a consideration of this work. This framework, by extension could be used to critique other sound art or music practices. Moreover, ideas found in Attali's (1985) telling of economic history through music are applied to these practices in order to argue that the use of "noise" materials reflects a wider cultural shift away from the notion of "value" as something quantified, abstract and intrinsic, predominant since the Age of Enlightenment, towards one concerned with the qualitative, contextual and extrinsic. This is related to Kim-Cohen's (2009) advocacy of a conceptual sound art to argue that noise practices represent forms of practice that challenge both notions of "absolute" music - music primarily understood 'as a numerical sign system' (Kim-Cohen 2009: 40) - and prevailing political-economic structures.

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The compositional practices in turntable writing as a solo and ensemble instrument in the works of this portfolio are research based, exploring a variety of methods to notate work in response to experiments. The challenges and opportunities that have arisen throughout this development of composition have directed the research along different routes, promoting the turntable as a musical instrument in different instrumental ensembles. Devising a repertoire that did not previously exist has in part developed the turntable as an instrument where there are gaps in its history and also helped firmly established its place within contemporary music instrumental ensembles. Within this commentary, the defined techniques employed in the turntable works are not simply derived either from hip hop turntablism or New Art turntablism, but instead establish a synthetic practice. Skills from both traditions are mixed together with fluidity in order to establish a new repertoire for turntable through taught skills by developing a new ensemble of turntablists, NOISESTRA. This approach, combined with experiments in graphic notation, brings together performers in a new way, where established and highly skilled musicians work with young performers in a community music setting, willing to experiment and fail in search of successfully creating new sounds with turntables. The research includes a working methodology of compositional process that relates to popular teaching theories of Roger Hart, David Holb, John Stevens and Neil Fleming. Observations from conventionally notated and graphic scores, analysed writings of Katz, Smith alongside Brewster and Broughton broaden the search for the appropriate means for which to notate for turntables both with and without instrumental ensembles. Concluding that there is no one correct way to notate for turntable, I demonstrate several notational methods including an adaptation of the 5-line system in some compositions, and experiment with 2D, and 3D video graphic scores in others, proving that there are advantages and disadvantages in each individual context. I evaluate my compositional practice and assess the success of strategies in writing for turntable ensemble by comparing my initial theoretical ideas with the practical experiments and results. It is recommended that performers and readers of this work read the glossary and notes in A Guide to Turntablism and Turntable Notations for Performers1 found in the appendices before reading this commentary.

A folio is presented consisting of seven computer-generated compositions. Many of the works create and explore relationships between sound and video, reflecting a concern with the multi-modal nature of perception. In most of these compositions, material is structured by simple algorithmic processes. Tese processes are used to explore relationships between perception and cognition: how the changing form of a work over time reveals the nature of a process to us, and how our understanding of that process affects our expectation and anticipation of future form. One work in the folio takes the approach of transforming existing sound and image. Tis process is used in an attempt to disrupt 'musical meaning' and other symbolic content encoded in the source material. These compositions were completed between 2009 and 2012 and are presented chronologically, demonstrating the progression of my ideas throughout this period. An accompanying text discusses ideas relevant to the folio in general and gives a critical commentary on each work. Compositions included: Four, Colour Projections, Control Processes, Summer Mix, Colour Projections / set 2, Bastard Structures 2, Tiling Sessions.

Within the domain of novel performative electronic interactions there is an aspiration to develop musical interactions that allow or exhibit high levels of performative skill, virtuosity and expressive qualities. Research and development in the domain has primarily focused on these features as functions of the performer-system relationship, with little regard for the fact that the experience of them is an ecologically situated subjective assessment made by a spectator. Furthermore it has often been assumed that a spectator is inherently qualified to understand novel performative interactions in a similar manner to acoustic instruments, regardless of the radical divergence of many novel electronic interactions. In this thesis I examine and unpack underlying factors influencing the spectator experience of novel performative electronic interactions. This was achieved through three exploratory studies of spectatorship in which primarily qualitative, phenomenological data was collected relating to participants’ cognition, judgment and experience of contrasting musical performances. This yielded diverse and rich datasets allowing for the examination of central hypotheses and research questions but also allowing for the exploration of unexpected emergent phenomena, which ultimately guided the direction of this work. Analysis highlighted the rich, holistic nature of the spectatorship and demonstrated unique features in the spectator experience of novel performative interactions. This showed that the cognition and judgement of some electronic interactions may be analogous to acoustic instruments but others offer vastly divergent spectator experiences, influenced by a range of novel factors including the cognition of a wide range of perceptual-motor, cognitive and preparatory skills. Phenomena surrounding mental models, embodiment and communities of practice were observed to be central in the experience of skill in novel performative interaction and indicative of distinct challenges in the development of novel performative interactions.

This enquiry represents an exploration of environmental sound and artistic practice from the perspectives of in situ listening and transphonia. The initial term, in situ listening, has been coined by the author in order to constellate a group of intellectual trajectories and artists’ practices that engage with recorded sound and share a common theme: that the listening context, the relationship between mediated sound and site, is an integral part of the engagement process. Heikki Uimonen (2005, p.63) defines transphonia as the, “mechanical, electroacoustical or digital recording, reproduction and relocating of sounds.” The term applies to sound that is relocated from one location to another, or sound that is recorded at a site and then mixed with the sound of the prevailing environment. The experience of the latter, which is a key concern for this thesis, may be encountered during the field recording process when one ‘listens back’ to recordings while on site or during the presentation of site-specific sound art work. Twelve sound installations, each based on field recordings, were produced in order to progress the investigation. Installations were created using a personally devised approach that was rigorous, informed, and iterative. Each installation explored a different environment. These installations, and their related environmental studies, form the core content of this enquiry. In the first part of this thesis the installations are used to explore observations of transphonic audio content in relation to a number of subjective, surprising and intangible phenomena: disorientation, uncanny sensations or even the awareness of coincidence. These observations are supported and contextualised in relation to a wide range of historic and contemporary sources. Works in the second part of the thesis are used to motivate a meditation on the relationship between soundscape, site and time, which was proposed by the initial phase of the research.

Electronica developed in the last decade of the twentieth century as an area of limited musical practice that breached the creative and institutional divides between academic and popular electronic music. In forging innovative modes of composition and technological practice, electronica artists created a musical terrain requiring new modes of analysis to develop an understanding of the poetics of electronica. This study responds to a shortfall in previous work in the field by developing an integrative and multi-perspective analysis of the creative practices and contexts of electronica. This is achieved through historical, contextual, theoretical and practical research that synthesises material drawn from the fields of cultural studies, sociology, musicology and popular music studies. In considering how electronica comes into existence, the study identifies the individual and social factors that combine in the compositional practices of electronica. It explores the historical development of electronica, and examines genre, style and how electronica has challenged the fixity of popular and institutional musical categorisation. The social authorship of music, where electronica musicians are identified as seantifically and dialogically channelling earlier musical voices, is balanced with an outline of psychotopographic internal music dialogue. The producer-creator is identified as drawing both from individual and social repositories in forming musical works. Moving beyond technological determinist and constructivist models, the study emphasises the affordances of music technologies, and the compositional practices that electronica musicians have developed as a response to and in collaboration with these technologies. A development of themes concerning atemporality and spectrality in the fields of glitch and hauntology provides a backdrop to my creative practice as obe:lus that informs and was informed by the findings of my historical, contextual and theoretical research. Both glitch and hauntology are viewed as problematising notions of future and past by critiquing and foregrounding the media through and from which they are created.

This PhD thesis comprises a portfolio of electroacoustic music and a written commentary. The portfolio consists of ten acousmatic compositions, two of which are collaborative works, and one video recording of a live electroacoustic improvisation. The commentary discusses the creative processes behind the works and their most pertinent aesthetic concerns. The usage of varying bottom-up and top-down methodologies in the different pieces is investigated, with a workflow termed ‘improvisatory composition’ being the most prevalent. Pursuing a mind-set of unselfconsciousness and mindfulness is fundamental to all of them, and this is illuminated with the concept of no-mind and Zen koans. Aesthetically, evocation of enigmatic, elusive, indefinite and nonconceptualisable moods and emotions is central to the works. This is termed ‘incorporeal evocation’; it is paired with the concept of ‘corporeal evocation’, which relates to the notion of ‘permeability’. The repercussions of different degrees of selfconsciousness in self-expression is also examined, as well as the concept of ‘betweenness’ and the idea of ‘enigmaticism’ in music. Finally, Iain McGilchrist’s recent theory on the hemispheric differences of the human brain is introduced to give another layer of meaning to these viewpoints, and the importance of the nonconceptual nature of music is argued for.

This thesis consists of a portfolio of compositions in acoustic and electronic media with an accompanying commentary. The central theme of these works is the development of new strategies for the integration of diverse sound sources, styles and performance aesthetics. Key topics include the fusing of dramatic structures from classical and popular music, the blending of acoustic and electronic instruments, performance strategies for electroacoustic music with live musicians, how concert music can engage with the idea of “the mix” from commercial music, the creation of sound worlds that interpolate between conventional ‘musical’ ingredients and environmental sound.