This paper discusses technical and conceptual approaches to incorporate 3D spatial movement in electroacoustic music. The Ambisonic spatial audio format attempts to recreate a full sound field (with height information) and is currently a popular choice for 3D spatialization. While tools for Ambisonics are typically designed for the 2D computer screen and keyboard/mouse, virtual reality offers new opportunities to work with spatial audio in a 3D computer generated environment. An overview of my custom virtual reality software, VRSoMa, demonstrates new possibilities for the design of 3D audio. Created in the Unity video game engine for use with the HTC Vive virtual reality system, VRSoMa utilizes the Google Resonance SDK for spatialization. The software gives users the ability to control the spatial movement of sound objects by manual positioning, a waypoint system, animation triggering, or through gravity simulations. Performances can be rendered into an Ambisonic file for use in digital audio workstations. My work Discords (2018) for 3D audio facilitates discussion of the conceptual and technical aspects of spatial audio for use in musical composition. This includes consideration of human spatial hearing, technical tools, spatial allusion/illusion, and blending virtual/real spaces. The concept of spatial gestures has been used to categorize the various uses of spatial motion within a musical composition.

This thesis is a critical analysis and creative commentary providing research and insight into my 150-minute multimedia exhibition, "Femininity: Ownership and Power," that premiered October 23, 2021. All of my research, composition, and collaboration efforts seek to recontextualize the semiotics of ‘femininity' through ownership and empowerment from varying intersections and identities. The titles of the eight works composed and premiered as part of the exhibition include: a beautiful reckoning; Dust; Moirai; Gaia; Portrait of the American Woman; Shared, In Balanced Contrast; At My Intersection; and I See You. Also included was #pinkcode, an exhibit that features a fuschia graphic user interface for an interactive modulation synthesis application built in Csound designed to bring femininity into computer music spaces. The musical compositions vary in instrumentation including flute, alto flute, voice, guitar, viola, harp, cajon, vibraphone, live electronics, and fixed media. They also vary in medium including live performance, virtual reality video, music video, audio-reactive TouchDesigner video, immersive text projections, light show, and live dance. Feminist texts by women poets and authors recited by women personally connected to me are also included in the fabric of the musical fixed media of multiple pieces in the thesis exhibition. Collaborators of artistic media including film, digital art, music, and dance include Eboni Johnson, Hannah Ottinger, Cami Holman, Miranda Zapata, and Elijah J. Thomas.

Varför ko? Den frågan må kanske verka simpel men verkar vara svårare att svara på än man kan tro. Tro rimmar ju på ko. Kanske kan examensuppsatsen enbart bygga på rim? Jag vet inte vart det här ska leda någonstans men jag har tänkt att fylla en sida med tankar och ord kring var jag är nu. Inte tänka på något annat. Helst inte ta bort och ändra, även om jag gjorde det nyss. En ko. Var ska kon bo? Det var där jag började tänka för några veckor sedan, och var inställd på att bilda ett hem till min ko. Det känns fint men samtidigt ganska banalt. Som en förenkling av problemet, kanske. Lite som vita havet-diskussionen: Byt namn så är allt löst. Bygg ett hem till din ko så är problemet borta. Puts väck. Jag förstår nog innerst inne att det inte fungerar så. Men det hade ju varit så mycket enklare att bara bygga ett bo till min ko. Jag behöver nog mer källor, mer kött på benen även om jag tycker att det är ett otroligt onice uttryck. Vet inte varför. Hur som helst tror jag helt enkelt att jag behöver hitta en kontext för att känna mig helt bekväm med att undersöka denna vilja till att göra en ko. Jag återkommer ofta till att inte ha något svar. Lite för att jag uppskattar nonchalansen i att inte behöva förklara allt. Att saker kan bara vara och inte ha någon förklaring. Sen kommer jag på att jag inte känner mig helt nöjd där heller. Inser kanske att man, för att vara så pass självsäker, behöver heta Leif GW Persson eller åtminstone ha ungefär hundra års erfarenhet på nacken. Kanske behöver, eller vill, man ha ett svar i alla fall för sig själv? Min önskan är att med detta arbete ifrågasätta normer och hierarkier. Jag vill väcka debatt och tankar hos folk. Väcka tankar kring varför vi människor är som vi är och gör som vi gör. Medan min uppsats kommer fokusera mycket på hierarkier mellan djur och människor (genom ämnen som posthumanism och karnism) kommer gestaltningen främst synliggöra mitt slarviga, barnsliga uttryck och genom det ifrågasätta hierarkin som finns mellan konst och konsthantverk (genom begrepp som sloppy craft). Gemensamt för uppsatsen och gestaltningen är alltså att jag undersöker hierarkier. Posthumanism, som jag nämnde ovan, är ett ämne som passar det jag vill undersöka och som avgränsar arbetet något. I ”Köttslöjd” (2018) skriver Michell Göransson om hur ”vi snarare än att äta ko eller gris äter högrev, plankstek och (garanterat hundfri) hotdog”. Varför gör vi så? Kanske för att vi försvarar våra egentligen oförsvarbara handlingar för att känna oss mer värdiga som människor. Under mina tre år på Konstfack har jag ibland känt en längtan efter att vara mer personlig i mitt uttryck. Ibland känns det som att jag klär mitt konstnärliga uttryck i ord som högrev och plankstek för att slippa visa mig själv. Det har känts lättare att utgå från andras (djurens) problem än mina egna. Jag skulle vilja inkludera mig själv lite mer i det här examensarbetet - vem är jag i det här? Slutligen, humor. Ett ledord för den här uppsatsen och arbetet vill jag ska vara självdistans. Därför följer här en intervju med en ko, som jag tänker kan vara någon slags utgångspunkt för arbetet.

Driven by the crippling command of Eros, my work provides a veiled exposure to my secret life in love, desire, fear, and obsession. My sculptures are the physical evidence of an emotional realm coming forth in a coded language that is, even to me, only remotely accessible. The Demon that Lives in My Bedroom, the saga of the Cat People, the stories of Trasnichi and the Love Crusade; all came to me in a beam of thought. Once the beam takes hold, it becomes my obsession, and the era of that work begins. I can trace my development through these eras of obsessions.

This document outlines a journey of self-exploration, discovery, construction and destruction. It is a story of learning, a testament to impermanence, and a proposal for possibility. The words and work contained in this document are exclusive to the thoughts and actions of one man that hopes to share with others.

This thesis explores ideas of everydayness, the mundane, and the repetitive emptiness of consumer culture. It looks at the malaise that plagues everyday life and examines several attempts throughout history to break from its grips which revolve around a search for a more ideal state. This research includes utopias of modernism, the transcendental, the communal living of Shakers and Early Christians, ascetic monks and The Desert Fathers. These ideas have shaped my studio practice as I construct installations based on worlds which allude to the eternal, the otherworldly, and the fragility of our physical world when compared to more eternal spiritual archetypes.

This study is concerned with the role of sound in the presentation and representation of bodies in performance art that incorporates digital technologies. It consists of a written thesis accompanied by a portfolio with documentation of original artwork. Since the 1960s, performance artists have explored the use of sensor technologies to register signals generated by the body and synthesize or control sound. However, both practical and theoretical approaches to biosignal sonification in this field have almost entirely focused on musical (formalist) perspectives, technological innovation, or heightening the performer's and spectator's awareness of their body's physiology. Little attention has been paid to the usually conspicuous interaction between body and technological equipment and the role of the generated sound in the context of cultural critical debates regarding the performing body. The present study responds to this observation in two ways: Firstly, the written part of the study examines existing biosignal performance practices. It seeks to demonstrate that artists' decisions on the design of sensor technology and sound synthesis or manipulation methods are often complicit in the representation of normative body types and behaviour. Drawing from a concept of the sonified body as a transgressive or ‘freak' body, three critical perspectives on biosignal sonification in digital performance are proposed: A reading of body sonification methods from a gender-critical perspective, an inquiry in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts of the grotesque and the classical body, and a conceptualization of the sonified body as a posthuman prosthetisized body. This part of the study serves as a framework for its second objective: the development of practical performance strategies to address and challenge cultural conventions concerning ‘the' body's form and role in society. This aspect of the thesis is developed in conjunction with, and further explored in, the artwork documented in the portfolio. The practical part of the study consists of three digital performance works. ELECTRODE (2011) involves an anal electrode that registers the activity of my sphincter muscle and uses this data to synthesize sound. For this work, I modified a commercially available muscle tension sensor device designed for people with faecal incontinence problems. Feedback (2010) encompasses components of a commercially available fetal Doppler sensor intended to listen to the heartbeat of unborn babies. SUIT (2009-2010) encompasses several performances that feature a PVC overall equipped with a loudspeaker, sensor interface and Doppler and humidity sensors.

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition Momentary Lapses, held at Tipton Gallery, February 25-March 8, 2019. The mixed media works and video examine the intersections between digital, somatic and societal decay through the mediation of the digital image by physical anthropogenic efforts. Themes in the work include glitch art and theory, entropy, memory, decay, and loss. Contemporary American society’s desensitization associated with the oversaturation of digital imagery is discussed, as well as Guy Debord’s theory of the Spectacle, and the artistic practices of Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg.

This dissertation investigates the process of collaboration and the application of both notational and technological schemes to integrate elements of contemporary composition and tap dance as a consolidated art form. Overall, this document gives an overview of choreographer/composer collaborations in Western classical music; movement notation; and ultimately analyzes my original music—a live set for tap dancer, live musicians and electronics—entitled Digital Tap Dance. Altogether, this project represents the culmination of music and dance as a compelling intermedia collaboration. By (1) researching different practices of composer-choreographer collaborations, (2) notating rudiments for tap dance, (3) creating software for tap dancers, and (4) composing original music for tap dancers, this dissertation will create options for composers and choreographers alike in composition and improvisation.

Virtual Stage is a project to use Virtual Reality (VR) technology as an audiovisual performance interface. The depth of control, modularity of design, and user immersion aim to solve some of the representational problems in interactive audiovisual art and the control problems in digital musical instruments. Creating feedback between interaction and perception, the VR environment references the viewer's behavioral intuition developed in the real world, facilitating clarity in the understanding of artistic representation. The critical essay discusses of interactive behavior, game mechanics, interface implementations, and technical developments to express the structures and performance possibilities. This discussion uses Virtual Stage as an example with specific aesthetic and technical solutions, but addresses archetypal concerns in interactive audiovisual art. The creative documentation lists the interactive functions present in Virtual Stage as well as code reproductions of selected technical solutions. The included code excerpts document novel approaches to virtual reality implementation and acoustic physical modeling of musical instruments.