This research explores the compositional relationships between acousmatic music and electronica in order to offer a way of unifying the two musical forms. The original contribution to knowledge comes from the creation of a portfolio of compositions that extend the two idioms towards one another, resulting in a series of works that are presented as a journey between and a fusion of electronica and acousmatic music. The dissertation offers a collection of associated theories that underpin the creation of the portfolio. In turn this dissertation addresses three areas that relate to compositional materials, the use of space, with consideration for both compositional and performance space, and a selection of associated cultural considerations that relate to the musics in question. The literature that relates to these three aspects is introduced and discussed with relation to the portfolio. The method behind the composition of the portfolio was not intended to present a collection of fusion works from the outset, but rather to begin composing a selection of purely acousmatic works in order to gain practical compositional understanding of the music. The process was then to grow the portfolio towards the electronica realm, and in parallel map this journey in the dissertation.

The PhD investigates the creation of closeness and immediacy through composition, exploring the processes of capturing, processing and composing sound materials, their spatialisation both during production and performance, and the sound materials' contexts. It is suggested that closeness can be understood spatially, temporally and in addition as being familiar with sounds and musical languages; whereas immediacy adds the meaning of being involved at some level in the shaping or decoding of the meaning of sounds of a composition. In that sense closeness and immediacy together form entry-points for the listener to make him/her become engaged in the compositional narrative. Seven original acousmatic and mixed media works are presented in the portfolio. These are stone and metal, empty rooms, weave/unravel, skalna, pulses, beeps and triptych. The pieces rely on found sounds and their referential qualities, with both informing the compositional methodologies. They also borrow elements from soundscape composition, electronic music and film music. Over the development of the portfolio the inclusion of elements of other genres of music became a valuable source of inspiration and shaped the compositional methodology which lead to the development of a unique, personal style of composition. Three of the PhD’s compositions – pulses, beeps and triptych – investigate the musical opportunities of an acousmatic take on stems to improve the flexibility and perceived depth of spatialisation. The spatial layers of the compositions are split into parts of a soundfile. These parts can be mapped according to specific rules to the number of loudspeakers available. The portfolio pieces demonstrate that composing in spatial stems enhances spatial depth as close and distant sounds can be reproduced independently of each other on dedicated loudspeakers at the same time. The sounds of the distant loudspeakers merge with the acoustic properties of the performance space and therefore assist in making the composed spaces credible. In addition to the compositions, one original software tools are presented in the portfolio (PLib), as well as a substantial contribution to an existing tool (MANTIS Diffusion System). They aim to facilitate the production and performance of electroacoustic music. Their application and potential is briefly discussed in the commentary.

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