Hacking the Medium: Shaping the creative constraints of network architectures in multiplicitous media artworks

In this article we discuss our practice-based research into effective architectures and creative workflows for creatively coding massive multidevice light and sound installation artworks. We discuss the challenges of working with networked multidevice systems and illustrate these challenges with examples of the type of content that one may wish to display on these systems. We then consider how the structuring of a creative framework can strongly influence how an artist approaches the creation of such work, eases the process of creative search and discovery and reduces the time cost and risk of solving technical problems of architecture design. We take a design perspective on how to make effective creativity support tools and also consider a holistic perspective on creative practice that attempts to satisfy creative ideals grounded in the reality of practice.

The Loudspeaker: Transformative and Tactile Aspects of the Object

<p>Traditionally the loudspeaker has been viewed as a functional object. Whilst also serving as a design artifact and object of consumer fetishism, it is subject to the overriding purpose of the reproduction and replication of sound material. However, within sound-based arts, other understandings and uses of the loudspeaker are emerging. This object is now being recognised for its ability to transform sound, taking a proactive stance within sound-based arts. Through exploration of the psychoacoustic effects of the object, the loudspeaker’s ability to transform the musical object is being recognised. At the opposing pole, through physical interaction and exploiting physical aspects of the object, the loudspeaker becomes instrumental in creating its own musical objects. My research delves into examples of sound and sonic art where the loudspeaker is exploited for its aural, physical and visual characteristics; where specific qualities of loudspeakers, as well as various transformations of the loudspeaker’s physical construction and function, are integral to a particular work. Whilst examining sound installation, sculpture and performance, I will also be unpacking the loudspeaker as an object that permeates everyday life, not least within a consumerist context, and how we have come to understand and listen to loudspeakers, looking at the effects this may have on our perception of sound and listening more generally.</p>

The Loudspeaker: Transformative and Tactile Aspects of the Object

<p>Traditionally the loudspeaker has been viewed as a functional object. Whilst also serving as a design artifact and object of consumer fetishism, it is subject to the overriding purpose of the reproduction and replication of sound material. However, within sound-based arts, other understandings and uses of the loudspeaker are emerging. This object is now being recognised for its ability to transform sound, taking a proactive stance within sound-based arts. Through exploration of the psychoacoustic effects of the object, the loudspeaker’s ability to transform the musical object is being recognised. At the opposing pole, through physical interaction and exploiting physical aspects of the object, the loudspeaker becomes instrumental in creating its own musical objects. My research delves into examples of sound and sonic art where the loudspeaker is exploited for its aural, physical and visual characteristics; where specific qualities of loudspeakers, as well as various transformations of the loudspeaker’s physical construction and function, are integral to a particular work. Whilst examining sound installation, sculpture and performance, I will also be unpacking the loudspeaker as an object that permeates everyday life, not least within a consumerist context, and how we have come to understand and listen to loudspeakers, looking at the effects this may have on our perception of sound and listening more generally.</p>

The Soundlapse Project: Exploring Spatiotemporal Features of Wetland Soundscapes

The article discusses an interdisciplinary project aimed at highlighting the acoustical heritage of wetlands, by means of field recordings and a novel time-lapse montage method. We discuss a site-specific sound installation that was designed using original wetlands field recordings, live processing, and spatial audio multi-channel reproduction. The discussion focuses on spatial and temporal features of different types of recorded wetlands soundscapes. Future developments of this project will consider the implementation of a standalone spatiotemporal application, to be used in the context of virtual reality applications, game audio, and interactive dance performance.

Sonic Sentimentality and the Unification of the Listening Space: Exploring the intersections of oral history and sonic art

This article aims to explore how the theoretical and pedagogical intersections of sonic art and creative oral history may work together to enhance the public response of socially engaged, interdisciplinary artwork. The main topics of discussion will include Panos Amelides’s paper ‘Acousmatic Storytelling’, the socio theoretical approach suggested by Salome Voegelin in her paper ‘Sonic Memory Material as “Pathetic Trigger”’, the behavioral study from the oral history sound installation by Dr Luis Sotelo Castro called Not Being Able to Speak is Torture, and the Deep Listening and Sonic Meditation practices and teachings of Pauline Oliveros, as well as compositions by Yves Daoust, Hildegard Westerkamp and Trevor Wishart. One consistent theme revealed through these investigations was that socially engaged, aurally focused artwork informed and woven by familiar and documented ‘life’ sounds or nostalgic sound events increases emotional triggers for the audience, creating a deeper engagement with the art piece or performance. Furthermore, an informed and host-led directive encouraging participatory and attentive listening through either meditation or discussion increases audience reception and takeaway, thus inspiring and unifying mass group empathy. This article suggests that the application of these techniques by electroacoustic composers, sonic artists, oral historians and interdisciplinary artists will create informed, passionate and empathetic listening spaces that live beyond the insular, creative experience itself.

Towards a Practice of Palimpsestic Listening

This article invites reflection on the ambiguity of sonic temporalities as the lines between physicality and immediacy become increasingly blurred. Through the notion that digital technologies are haunted by analogic process, I foreground the concept of Palimpsestic Listening to explore the musical qualities and critical resonances of sonic acts and objects in hybrid physical/digital systems that evoke layered temporalities that are ‘historically distinct nonetheless linked’. I also seek to illustrate the significance of engaging practically with this concept by discussing the methods behind my composition D/ta Ro} – A Dialectical Trash Heap, a sound installation that interrogates the relationship between sonic materiality and digital audio processing and how acts of erasure and time-stretching might influence the layering of disparate sound materials.