It is my contention that the worlds of instrumental and electroacoustic music are essentially grounded in one basic reality – the physical properties of sound. If there is a divide, then it is based on compositional models and conventions. This is not to diminish the stylistic or technical differences between the two but rather to make the case for a focus on the core aspects of sound, in order to discover different ways of exploring various possible relationships between music for instrumental performer(s) and digital (electroacoustic) means. My thesis stems from the argument that every sound has its own spectromorphology– its own inner life governed by envelope, spectral content, energy and internal pulsation. This leads architecturally to considering the relationship of micro- to macro- phenomena and provides the essential foundations for all the compositions in this portfolio. Taking Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of the “sound object” as its starting point, my portfolio explores various forms of interaction between instrumental and electroacoustic techniques, methodologies and aesthetics, via a range of outcomes for fixed media, acoustic instruments, and combination of instruments with electroacoustic media.

This PhD portfolio focuses on research across interactive computer music composition and live performance involving instrumental players and instrumental sounds. It examines methods of disjoining original connections between performers’ actions, the instrument as sound sources, and musical outcomes, and also methods of reconstructing new connections between them via electronic intermediation. At the same time, the portfolio of creative works presented in this study proposes multiple performing styles and explores innovative electroacoustic music as well as its context. Through this portfolio, the composer invites readers to her original sound world and individual musical concepts, which are informed by visually-related ideas such as imaginary views, colours, scenes of a story, and art paintings, alongside their associated titles.

The focus of the compositional approach presented in this folio is the sounding environment. The term sounding environment is used in this context to refer to the whole of our living experience in the world which we might register as relating to sound. It might include everything that is sounding, seemingly sounding, imagined sounding, remembered sounding, sensed as sounding, composed to sound. It includes thus the actual sound environment, all that is sensed or interpreted as sound and imaginary sounds. This dissertation accompanies the seven acousmatic and the two sound installation works included in the folio. It is divided into two parts. In the first part relevant ideas and theories both from the literature of electroacoustic music composition and soundscape composition are discussed while in the second the compositional approach to the sounding environment is presented as applied to the works.

This commentary details the methods and ideas involved in creating the seven portfolio works. The portfolio is comprised of stereo acousmatic works, one mixed work and a multi-channel work, forming the practice-based research completed during the PhD programme at the University of Manchester. The works explore a number of aesthetic concepts encompassing instrumental timbres, cultural sound objects, rhythm incorporation, habitual spaces (the kitchen), imaginary and real objects (jukebox), and visual art sculpture (origami). Uniting the portfolio works is the use of Denis Smalley’s spectromorphology (1997). In its intended function, this tool provides the listener of electroacoustic music with thorough and accessible sets of vocabulary to describe sound events, structures and spaces. The use of this descriptive tool need not stop here. Fortunately, and often unconsciously for the composer, it does not, since all composers create music that is spectromorphological with or without an awareness of its presence at work. In a reversal of conventional practice, my research approaches spectromorphology from an alternate angle, viewing the vocabulary as the informer upon sound material choice and creation. In this reversal, vocabulary no longer functions descriptively; instead the vocabulary precedes the composition, directing my compositional pathway in each piece. This new application, used as a method for selecting and creating sound in the creation of each portfolio work, is an attempt at systemisation and an effort to partly remedy the seemingly endless choice of possibilities we are faced with when beginning a new work.

The domain of this thesis is electroacoustic computer-based music and sound art. It investigates a facet of composition which is often neglected or ill-defined: the process of composing itself and its embedding in time. Previous research mostly focused on instrumental composition or, when electronic music was included, the computer was treated as a tool which would eventually be subtracted from the equation. The aim was either to explain a resultant piece of music by reconstructing the intention of the composer, or to explain human creativity by building a model of the mind. Our aim instead is to understand composition as an irreducible unfolding of material traces which takes place in its own temporality. This understanding is formalised as a software framework that traces creation time as a version graph of transactions. The instantiation and manipulation of any musical structure implemented within this framework is thereby automatically stored in a database. Not only can it be queried ex post by an external researcher—providing a new quality for the empirical analysis of the activity of composing—but it is an integral part of the composition environment. Therefore it can recursively become a source for the ongoing composition and introduce new ways of aesthetic expression. The framework aims to unify creation and performance time, fixed and generative composition, human and algorithmic “writing”, a writing that includes indeterminate elements which condense as concurrent vertices in the version graph. The second major contribution is a critical epistemological discourse on the question of ob- servability and the function of observation. Our goal is to explore a new direction of artistic research which is characterised by a mixed methodology of theoretical writing, technological development and artistic practice. The form of the thesis is an exercise in becoming process-like itself, wherein the epistemic thing is generated by translating the gaps between these three levels. This is my idea of the new aesthetics: That through the operation of a re-entry one may establish a sort of process “form”, yielding works which go beyond a categorical either “sound-in-itself” or “conceptualism”. Exemplary processes are revealed by deconstructing a series of existing pieces, as well as through the successful application of the new framework in the creation of new pieces.

The basis of this research project stems from reflections upon the process of composition for electroacoustic audio-visual music. These are fixed media works in which sound and image materials are accessed, generated, explored and configured in creation of a musically informed audio-visual expression. Within the process of composition, the composer must decide how to effectively draw relationships between these time based media and their various abstract and mimetic materials. This process usually has no codified laws or structures and results in relationships that are singular to the individual artworks. The composer uses their own experience and intuition in assessing how best to associate sounds and images and they will use their own interpretation of the materials to evaluate the how successful they are in realising their intentions. But what is there to say that the interpretation made by the composer bares any resemblance to interpretations made by audiences? The current research sought to assess any trends or commonalities in how people interpret such works. Utilising a combination of empirical research, composition and scholarly study, the project investigated various theoretical approaches to interpretation and the occurrence of correlation between compositional intention and audience interpretation. Models from different theoretical disciplines were combined in order to build up a picture of the processes involved in making interpretations, and to aid in the rationalisation of empirical data. The application of three methodological approaches allowed for the topic to be considered from a diversity of perspectives, and for triangulation to take place in confirmation of the research outcomes. The way in which individuals build up interpretations from non-codified abstract and mimetic materials also provided a suitable case study for the critique and assessment of various theoretical approaches to interpretation. The project challenges structuralist approaches to interpretation, drawing together theoretical materials and empirical research findings in support of a post-structrualist model of interpretation that demonstrates the absolutely vital role played by context - the framing of the artwork in the consciousness of the individual audience member.

Cette thèse est l’étude d’une expérience en situation de composition électroacoustique collective sous l’angle du développement d’une communauté de pratique. Elle a été réalisée en France, sur l’année scolaire 2013/2014, dans deux classes de l’école élémentaire publique Pasquier de la ville d’Antony située en région parisienne. Nous parlons donc d’un enseignement collectif de la musique à de jeunes enfants sur le temps scolaire réalisé dans un co-enseignement professeur des écoles et professeur de musique. La « théorie des communautés de pratique » d’Étienne Wenger sera utilisée comme une grille de lecture et un prisme à travers lesquels nous analyserons les interactions des participants au sein d’une expérience de pédagogie musicale de groupe menée en milieu scolaire. Nous étudierons les situations d’apprentissage via les interactions inter et intra-communautaires qui sont pour partie médiatisées par des artefacts informatiques (fichiers audio des pièces musicales, photographies numériques, publications et mises à disposition sur internet, communication par mails, etc.). À ce titre, nous nous sommes intéressés à l’usage et au rôle joué par les technologies de l’informatique et de la communication (TIC) dans les échanges de la communauté ainsi qu’aux théories relatives aux sciences documentaires.Enfin, dans la troisième partie de ce mémoire nous proposons la construction d’un modèle d’action pédagogique privilégiant les interactions que nous considérons comme transposables à l’enseignement universitaire de la composition musicale en environnement Max et Pure Data au département Musique de l’Université Paris 8. / This dissertation is the study of an experiment in a situation of collective electroacoustic composition from the point of view of the development of a community of practice. It was carried out in France, during the school year 2013/2014, in two classes of public elementary school Pasquier of the city of Antony located in Paris suburbs. We are therefore talking about a collective teaching of music to young children on school time realized in a co-teaching school between a teacher and a music teacher.Étienne Wenger's "theory of community of practice" will be used as a grid of reading and a prism through which we analyze the interactions of participants in an experiment of group music pedagogy conducted in school. We will study learning situations in this situation via inter-community and intra-community interactions, which are partly mediated by computer artifacts (audio files of musical selections, digital photos, publications and Internet availability, e-mail communication, etc.). As such, we have been interested in the use and the role played by information and communication technologies (ICT) in the exchanges of the community and in the theories of documentary sciences.Finally, we propose the construction of a pedagogical action model focusing on the interactions that we consider to be transposable to the university teaching of music composition in the Max and Pure Data environment in the Music Department of Paris 8 University.

Electroacoustic music is often regarded as not being sufficiently accessible to the general public because of its sound-based abstract quality and the complexity of its language. Live electronic music introduces the figure of the performer as a gestural bodily agent that re-enables our multimodal perception of sound and seems to alleviate the accessibility dilemma. However, live electronic music generally lacks the level of detail found in studio-based fixed media works, and it can hardly be transferred outside the concert hall situation (e.g. as a video recording) without losing most of its fresh, dynamic and unpredictable nature. Recent developments in 3D simulation environments and game audio technologies suggest that alternative approaches to music composition and distribution are possible, presenting an opportunity to address some of these issues. In particular, this Portfolio of Compositions proposes the use of real and virtual space as a new medium for the creation and organisation of sound events via computer-simulated audio-sources. In such a context, the role of the performer is sometimes assumed by the listener itself, through the operation of an interactive-adaptive system, or it is otherwise replaced by a set of automated but flexible procedures. Although all of these works are sonic centric in nature, they often present a visual component that reinforces the multimodal perception of meaningful musical structures, either as real space locations for sonic navigation (locative audio), or live visualisations of physically-informed gestural agents in 3D virtual environments. Consequently, this thesis draws on general game-audio concepts and terminology, such as procedural sound, non-linearity, and generative music; but it also embraces game development tools (game engines) as a new methodological and technological approach to electroacoustic music composition. In such context, space and the real-time generation, control, and manipulation of assets combine to play an important role in broadening the routes of musical expression and the accessibility of the musical language. The portfolio consists of six original compositions. Three of these works–Swirls, Alice - Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, and Alcazabilla–are interactive in nature and they required the creation of custom software solutions (e.g. SonicMaps) in order to deal with open-form musical structures. The last three pieces–Singularity, Apollonian Gasket, and Boids–are based on fractal or emergent behaviour models and algorithms, and they propose a non-interactive linear organisation of sound materials via real-time manipulation of non-conventional 3D virtual instruments. These original instrumental models exhibit strong spatial and kinematic qualities with an abstract and minimal visual representation, resulting in an extremely efficient way to build spatialisation patterns, texture, and musical gesture, while preserving the sonic-centric essence of the pieces.

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