The folio of compositions and critical commentary documents a major practice-led research project that was carried out from 2003-09 on the topic of ‘electroacoustic music with moving images’. The written report analyses and expands on the creative works by supplying detailed information concerning the ‘process’ of composing for the genre, and the ‘language’ of audiovisual media pairing. Sixteen extracts of creative work featuring specific qualities of language are also provided as a means of focussing discussion points. The folio of compositions is comprised of four creative works: Shifting Ground (2005), Mouth Piece (2008), Abide With Me (2009), and Eyepiece (2009), which present a one-hour audiovisual programme. The series was premiered in a special concert Seeing With Ears: Video Works By John Coulter as part of the proceedings of the New Zealand Electroacoustic Music Symposium (NZEMS) 2-4 September 2009, School of Music, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Part 1 of the thesis seeks to illuminate a general process of creative practice that is relevant to all forms of studio-based composition. Three frameworks are examined: those that contain singular creative tasks, those that contain multiple tasks, and those that contain multiple creative projects. A 3-tiered model of reflective practice is then offered, and procedures common to all electroacoustic composers are discussed. The action research paradigm is then presented, followed by domain-specific guidelines for undertaking research. Key differences between ‘composing’ and ‘researching’ are examined, and principles of conducting practice and research simultaneously are submitted. For those working in studio-based settings, the study provides a model, and a vocabulary for discussing his/her creative process, as well as procedural guidelines for contributing to expert domain knowledge through practice-led research. Part 2 of the thesis directly addresses a common paradox faced by composers working with sounds and moving images. On one hand, audiovisual materials appear to offer the possibility of complementing one another - of forming a highly effective means of communicating artistic ideas, and on the other, they appear to carry the risk of detracting from one another – of deforming the musical language that he/she has worked so hard to create. The study seeks to transcend this paradox through the identification of audiovisual materials that function in different ways. Examples of creative work are offered to illustrate more general points of language, a model for classifying media pairs is put forward, and practical methods of audiovisual composition are proposed. The narrow findings of the study offer a vocabulary for discussing the functionality of audiovisual materials, detailed methods of media pairing and techniques of parametric alignment, while the wider findings extend to associated domains such as live electronic music, and hyper-instrument design. In summary, the study recognises both creative works and written works as knowledge-bearing documents. Succinctly stated, the essential research findings are presented and supported by both phenomenological and nominal means - through aspects of creative works that make themselves apparent during the listening process, and through retrospective logical enquiry.

A dissertação é dividida em duas partes. A primeira consiste em um estudo sobre a noção de escuta acusmáticano cinema, levando em conta suas origens eletroacústicas e algumas de suas aplicações na ecologia acústica e na teoria cinematográfica. O enfoque privilegia as definições formuladas pelos teóricos, Pierre Schaeffer nos anos 50, Murray Schafer nos anos 70 e Michel Chion entre os anos 80 a 2000. A segunda parte da dissertação, mais fincada na análise fílmica, aborda alguns elementos da poética de Lucrecia Martel, dentre eles apontamos o uso do som para representação do tempo e de figurações do corpo. Designamos um conjunto de estados sensoriais e do pensamento como a fadiga, o cansaço, o esgotamento, o esquecimento e a inércia que ocupam um ponto importante em relação às análises dos filmes de Lucrecia Martel, apontadas por alguns críticos do cinema argentino. / The thesis is divided in two parts. The first one investigates the concept of acousmatic listening as applied to film practice, taking into account its eletroacoustic origins and some of its extensions to film theory and acoustic ecology. The approach privileges the definitions presented by theorists Pierre Schaeffer in the 1950s, Murray Schafer in the 70s and Michel Chion from the 80\'s to 2000. The second part, concentrated on film analysis, discusses some elements of Lucrecia Martel poetics, among which the use of sound is pointed out for representations of time and body figurations. A set of sensorial and thought states is designated, including fatigue, tiredness, exhaustion, forgetfulness and inertia, that play an important role regarding the analysis of Lucrecia Martel\'s films, as pointed out by some critics of the new Argentinean cinema.

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.

Many commentators experience difficulties describing and analyzing Morton Feldman's String Quartet no. 2 (1983), implying that the quartet eludes stable ascriptions of meaning. Feldman's own philosophy frames these difficulties as symptoms of an antagonism between direct experience and post-hoc understanding of music, a dichotomy tacitly supported in much related discourse. I critique this proposed rift between understanding and experience by analyzing how String Quartet no. 2 prompts listeners to repeatedly reconsider their own experiences. Obfuscated instrumentation, transformations of repeated phrases, and disorienting formal returns challenge one's perception, pattern recognition, and musical memory, leading audiences to return to linguistic interpretation in an effort to comprehend what they hear. Drawing on writing by Lawrence Kramer, I show that the compulsion to voice these uncertainties is not a result of a separation of understanding and experience, but of the blurring of these categories. Vacillation between close listening and interpretation also typifies experiences of the music of Helge Sten, produced under the pseudonym Deathprod. For the album Imaginary Songs from Tristan da Cunha (1996), Sten transfers recorded violin improvisations to wax phonograph cylinders, clouding attributions of the music's manner of production. Incorporating Brian Kane's theory of acousmatic sound, I demonstrate that the resultant spacing of sound and source provokes listeners to oscillate between attending to the music's material properties and struggling to identify its meaning and cause. Work by Jonathan Sterne indicates that historical techniques of hearing associated with the antiquated medium of the phonograph cylinder prolong and complicate this mode of listening. As with Feldman's quartet, auditors of Imaginary Songs endlessly fluctuate between attempting to understand and striving to listen closely to the music. / Graduate

No description available.

This dissertation is a thorough examination of the problems modern composers of electronic music face when writing or discussing acousmatic music as derived from Pierre Schaeffer. By taking a close examination of Schaeffer's own writings on the subjects of reduced listening and acousmatic sounds, I illustrate the difficulties and inconsistencies in Schaeffer's philosophy and the problems that his reliance on Husserl's phenomenology creates. Further examination of criticisms of Husserl from Derrida and Heidegger highlight the ways that Schaeffer's phenomenology needs to be updated for the modern acousmatic composer. Articles by modern acousmatic composers such as Adrian Moore, Denis Smalley, Simon Emmerson, and others illustrate how artists have dealt with the problems in Schaeffer's ideas and the inconsistent ways they have applied his principles of sound and the sound object. I argue that a new method of musical meaning as a method of composition and analysis is necessary to resolve these conflicts and inconsistencies. This method is found in the writings of J.L. Austin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein through Andrew Chung, who places significant emphasis on the actions and effects that music takes. By reframing the acousmatic problem through meaning-as-use, I attempt to modernize Schaeffer's conceptions of sound and emphasize the significance of the ways that sound is used by composers as the crux of a modern acousmatic praxis.

This practice-based research is concerned with a collection of fixed media compositions written between 2005 and 2012 with accompanying contextual writing. The primary focus of this research was to produce sound works, but the concept of place has played a significant role throughout both the compositional process and in the reflection of each composition. This research explores how place is ‘heard and felt’ (Feld, 2005) in a composition and how recollected memory impacts on the compositional process. Artistic decisions made with regard to creating the compositions reflect my personal place and associations with these sound materials at a given time whether they are field recordings or synthesised materials. The way in which sound material is subsequently processed and structured reflects this. Place and the compositional practice inform each other in a two-way process. This results in what Katharine Norman (2010) has referred to in her writing on sound art as an ‘autoethnographic’ journey; a representation of the creator’s personal experience. I have begun to reflect on these compositions as art works that represent a particular time or place. The artwork represents the trace of the place from which it was composed (Corringham, 2010). I believe that I cannot totally transport a person to my place; rather, I intend this creative representation to enable the listener to create and inspire their own narrative.

La version intégrale de ce mémoire est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l’Université de Montréal (www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU). / Cette thèse aborde l’intégration de la spatialisation en composition acousmatique et de son interprétation en concert. Ces recherches furent réalisées au cours d’une maîtrise en composition à la Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal. Un survol historique des compositions ayant l’espace comme paramètre principal de composition permettra de me situer dans cette pratique artistique. J’aborderai aussi les différentes propositions de spatialisation ainsi que les principaux lieux dédiés à cette activité, de ses débuts jusqu’à nos jours. Il sera également question de l’importance de l’écriture spatiale dans mon travail de création. Ensuite, je mettrai en contexte mon cheminement musical et mon intérêt constant pour la spatialisation en musique. Je démontrerai que grâce à l’accès à des technologies puissantes, simples et efficaces, nous sommes en mesure d’intégrer la spatialisation des sons en musique électroacoustique aussi bien en amont qu’en aval de la création. Plusieurs techniques et outils permettent l’écriture des sons dans l’espace. J’examinerai donc comment mon approche compositionnelle et ma méthodologie de travail les intègrent lors du processus de création. Je poursuivrai avec l’analyse des œuvres que j’ai composées durant ma maîtrise. J’exposerai les faits saillants de mes recherches. Finalement, je livrerai les réflexions qu’a suscitées mon projet de recherche. / This thesis is about the integration of spatialization in acousmatic music as well as its performance in concert. These researches were conducted during a Music Master in Composition at the Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal. A historical overview of compositions with spatial considerations as main musical parameter will allow to situate my work within this artistic practice. Different implementations and propositions of spatialization that have been used (as well as the principal locations dedicated to this form of activity) from the beginning to this day will be discussed. I will then put the emphasis on spatial writing in my creative works. Furthermore, I will contextualize my musical background and of my constant interest in musical spatialization. I will demonstrate that, with better access to powerful, yet simple and efficient technologies, spatialization in electroacoustic music can be integrated before and after the creative process. A wide array of techniques and tools can provide methods for spatial writing, thus I will examine how the compositional approach of my work’s methodologies incorporates these during the creative process. I will conclude with the analysis of the work composed during my MM, which will also reiterate the highlights of this research. Finally, I will give my very own reflections and observations on this project.

There is an arguable lack of activity and interest in the analysis of electroacoustic music when compared to its composition and performance. The absence of a strong and active analytical community is very concerning, as it should be a fundamental part of any larger musical community that wishes for works to be performed and discussed in later years. The problems that face electroacoustic music analysis are that there is no consensus or single analytical tool/methodology that dictates how such an activity should be undertaken. Rather than attempting to appropriate existing tools meant for traditional musics or create a new universal one this thesis will argue that a new culture should be adopted that promotes different opinions on the subject of electroacoustic music analysis, as opposed to defining a consensus as to how it should be conducted. To achieve this the thesis will: evaluate and critique what constitutes and defines electroacoustic music analysis; provide a general and flexible procedure to conduct an analysis of an electroacoustic work; develop a set of criteria and terms to cross-examine the current analytical tools for electroacoustic music in order to define the gaps in the field and to identify pertinent elements within electroacoustic works; analyse a number of electroacoustic works to test and implement the ideas raised within this thesis; and finally the concept of an analytical community (in which such a culture could exist) is outlined and implemented with the creation of the OREMA (Online Repository for Electroacoustic Music Analysis) project. This universal approach will cover both epistemological and ontological levels of electroacoustic music analysis. All of the concepts raised above are interlinked and follow the main hypothesis of this thesis: • There is no one single analysis that can fully investigate a work; • Analyses are a perspective on a work, ultimately formed through the subjective perception of the analyst; • These perspectives should be shared with other practitioners to help develop a better understanding of the art form. This PhD study was part of the New Multimedia Tools for Electroacoustic Music Analysis project (2010-2013) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). Other outcomes of that project included the various analysis symposiums held at De Montfort University in Leicester and the electroacoustic analysis software EAnalysis created by Pierre Couprie.

No description available.