Array, the journal of the International Computer Music Association

Akkermann, Miriam

4
array2023 flux
Imprint
Guest editor: Scott Deal
Main Editor Array: Miriam Akkermann
Published by the International Computer Music Association ICMA 2021
1819 Polk Street, San Francisco, California 94019, USA
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25370/array.v2023
https://journals.qucosa.de/array/ www.computermusic.org
Editorial
The influence of humans on the earth is as evident as challenging.What is re-
ferred to as the Anthropocene is shaping our current environment. This is not
only subject to research on geology, ecosystems, and biodiversity of earth,
but also reflected and discussed in and through artistic works and work pro-
cesses.
This issue brings together explicitly artistic perspectives on topics such as
global warming, the influence of climate change on our environment ranging
frommelting of glaciers to the effects on indigenous cultures, new reflections
resulting from listening to the environment, as well as reflections on how our
own behavior in the field of music tech related arts may effect the ongoing
environmental changes.
Thanks to this issue’s guest editor, Scott Deal, we are able to present a variety
of perspectives and artistic approaches, with which we hope to broaden the
discussion of topics related to Anthropocene.
Miriam Akkermann


English

Editorial

Alarcón Díaz, Ximena

Networks of (tele)presence: tun-
ing in to the environment through
the INTIMAL App©
By Ximena Alarcón Díaz
The migratory relational listening
perspective connects people and
environments, beyond identities,
moving towards transcendental
forms of embodied connection
across the distance. This perspective
might position Earth as a migrant
itself in its accelerated transition
with a climate breakdown.While we
all meet in these transitions, the
INTIMAL App© positions itself be-
tween a telematic embodied inter-
face and an instrument that contrib-
utes to the creation of networks of
(tele)presence as we“tune in”with
the environment and become part
of its resonance.
In this article, I present a series of
artistic telematic sonic perfor-
mances, facilitated through the INTI-
MAL App©, a hybrid mobile telem-
atic sonic environment' that I have
created.
Rooted on the experience of mi-
gration, the performances are
staged as mobile hybrid listening
rituals in sonic migrations: the reso-
nances left in-between geographies
and cultures when we migrate. The
rituals are mediated by the applica-
tion, specifically with sound fre-
quencies, activated by people’s
walking steps, implying the use of
an ‘embodied’ telematic technology
to connect with such resonances. I
hereby reflect on how a relatively
simple sonic interface and such fre-
quencies, when used collectively,
awake connections between hu-
mans and the more-than-human,
and ask how a ‘synthesized’ sound
helps us to tune with our surround-
ings, bringing us closer to the reality
of the environment rather than de-
taching us from it.
Breathing andwalking: sensing
place and sensing (tele)presence
The INTIMAL App© is a telematic en-
vironment that invites people to si-
multaneously and collectively en-
gage their sense of place and sense
of presence across distant locations,
experiencing relational listening.
This is a negotiation between sens-
ing place in a physical location, and,
simultaneously, sensing presence
and telepresence across distant lo-
cations. It is rooted in experiences of
human migration and the ‘estrange-
ment’ (Ahmed, 1999) which hap-
pens between native and host
42
array2023 flux
lands, and which affects the embod-
ied perception of time and space
and the surrounding acoustic envi-
ronment, as well as the perception
of one’s own voice. It derived from
the INTIMAL physical/virtual ‘em-
bodied’ system for relational listen-
ing in telematic performance, cre-
ated between 2017-2019. The sys-
tem was designed and informed
first by researching Colombian mi-
grant women's sonic experiences of
their migrations to Europe using
Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening
practice and Embodied Music Cog-
nition methods, and an oral archive
of other Colombian women in exile
in an exercise of collective memory
(Alarcón Díaz, 2019; Alarcón Díaz et
al, 2019a). INTIMAL involved three
software prototypes: MEMENTO to
interact with oral archives using
walking movement, RESPIRO for
transmission and sonification of
breathing data, and TRANSMISSION
to mix and broadcast improvisers’
voices from distant locations (Alar-
cón Díaz, 2019b).
In that project, walking was
stated as the migratory movement
that helps us to sense place and find
directions, while breathing was cho-
sen as the body micro-movement to
state each human’s body presence
and telepresence, its rhythms, emo-
tional states, and vocal expressions.
The system was tested in a telematic
sonic improvisation between the
women participating in the project,
connecting from Oslo, Barcelona
and London. Derived from this ex-
perience, I suggested that sonifica-
tion of breathing patterns can cre-
ate an emotional bridge between
body movement and sound for
telepresence (see Alarcón Díaz,
2022a), expanding the forms of em-
bodiment within telematic perfor-
mances.
I used Jensenius’ taxonomy of
body movement (Figure 1), to posi-
tion sound expressions in relation to
body movements (Alarcón Díaz and
Jensenius, 2019). For further devel-
opments, my intention has been to
interrelate these forms of body
movement and vocal expression as
breathing becomes a bridge for
emotional telepresence.
Tuning in: between an interface
and an instrument
Detached from screen and video in-
terfaces, and from the staged sound
performances with microphones
and a controlled sound space with
audiences, the INTIMAL App© was
43
array2023 flux
created in 2021 in the midst of the
pandemic. The App became a syn-
thesis of the prototypes of the
INTIMAL system, combining walking
and breathing as interdependent
movements that bring together
people’s rhythms as they simultane-
ously explore their surroundings
and connect across distant loca-
tions.
The INTIMAL App© tracks peo-
ple’s walking rhythms and converts
these into sound resembling a
breathing wave.When used collec-
tively, people can hear through
headphones each other's walking
patterns and playback stories that
have been left by other walkers/
improvisers, responding to listening
‘prompts’or text scores. As a prepa-
ration for the journey, the App asks
participants to ‘Tune In’using sine
wave frequencies ranging between
174Hz, 396Hz and 528Hz, and state
their bearings by finding their
North.
Thanks to the project Unlock1,
the App was developed and tested
first in its individual and collective
mode with women in Bath (UK), lis-
tening to excerpts of migratory jour-
neys of Colombian women from the
INTIMAL project in order to trigger
their own migratory journeys (Alar-
cón Díaz, 2022b). Since 2021, the IN-
TIMAL App© has been tested in
44
array2023 flux
Figure 1: Analysis of INTIMAL performance, and breathing as emotional bridge
using Jensenius’Taxonomy of Body Motion (Alarcón Díaz & Jensenius, 2019)
eight other different spaces and
contexts,2 and I have composed mo-
bile listening rituals for each occa-
sion. These rituals set the paths and
the intention for people to “tune in”
with themselves, the earth, the envi-
ronment and others across distant
locations.
The sounds of the frequencies
have become a fascination and a
mystery. For instance, in the project
Unlock, the frequencies helped
women to listen to words of pre-re-
corded stories, connecting them
with inner sounds, as well as with
birds: “When the tone stopped, I felt
more connected to the sounds
around me (such as birdsong)”. The
collective drone created across dis-
tant locations created a sense of to-
getherness: “It [The environment]
felt fuller in a way, hearing their fre-
quencies was like being in the com-
pany of others”. (Alarcón Díaz,
2022b)
In the Earth Festival 2022, I invited
eight improvisers connected from
São Paulo, NewYork, Vienna, Lon-
don, Madrid, Sweden, and Boston,
to listen to their surroundings fol-
lowing the score Dreaming while
awake: a network of Presence.3 The
network they created brought con-
nections as they tuned in with the
built and natural environment, in es-
trangement, recognition, acknowl-
edgement, and reflection of what is
changing in their environments, of
what leaves traces, and the unno-
ticed; they connected emotionally
as in search of a deep source of
presence. One of the improvisers,
the musician Cassia Bomfin con-
nected from a car park and ex-
pressed poetically, within the piece,
how her imagination through this
connection despertou um algo
(“something woke up”). Others’ im-
provisers’ voices described sensory
experiences with the sun, the voices
of children and the relationship with
the trees and humans. The experi-
ence felt like an awakening of de-
tails of life that are not usually no-
ticed as with rich value.
Synthesis
As stated before, I used the mobile
phone and its technological possi-
bilities to make a synthesis of an
artistic concept. With this, I arrived
at the use of “waves”without har-
monic spectrum. Individual and
collective listening through the
INTIMAL App© seemed to follow a
subtraction experience within the
45
array2023 flux
environment. From a practical tech-
nological perspective, the sine wave
was chosen as the simplest form of
sonifying walking steps in relation
to a breathing rhythm. A minimal
sound is produced in each phone,
with the transmitted data across
distant locations. But why use a syn-
thesized sound to connect people
with the outer environment? Could
it perhaps become a contradiction,
if I am using a sine wave to imitate a
breathing wave, activated with my
very human steps, unlike the previ-
ous more sophisticated sonifications
imitating for instance wind?
From a cultural and historical per-
spective, Tara Rodgers explores in
her writing “Synthesis” the origin of
synthesized sounds, reminding us
that synthetic sounds are parallel to
the creation of synthetic materials
in organic chemistry: “ ‘manmade‘
imitations of natural substances”
(Rodgers, 2015, p. 213). At that time,
this created a fascination and also a
critical perspective on the novelty of
such sounds. Rodgers also reminds
us, how the analysis and synthesis of
musical sound were understood by
Harry Olson and colleagues at RCA
Laboratories , in the 1950s, as "anal-
ogous to the process of decoding
and coding a signal in a communi-
cation channel" (Rodgers, 2015, p.
210), opening ideas "for a cyber-
netic era, where multiplicity of
forms could be expressed as pat-
terns of data" (idem, p.211). I sug-
gest that in the INTIMAL App©, the
sine wave might trigger our mem-
ory of a telephone tone and the ex-
pectancy of someone else might
pick up the call. The wave brings a
beginning and an end, creating a
flow activated by people’s walking
rhythm. Stillness becomes individ-
ual silence but, if desired, the listen-
ing of others’ signals is still active.
Beyond the oppositions and em-
brace of these sounds, Rodgers
suggests that “synthesis, then, is
not merely a means of creating
novel sounds. It also directs us to
a charged moment: that fleeting
"interruption of time" (4) that fol-
lows a retrospective analysis and
precedes a new synthesis. Through
this opening, we may listen for the
cultural histories and sonic episte-
mologies that reside within techno-
logical forms, and for logics of part-
whole relations and complex sys-
tems that frame the contours of
everyday soundscapes” (Rodgers,
2015, p. 217).
46
array2023 flux
INTIMAL App©
I situate the INTIMAL App© in a mid-
dle ground between an interface
and an instrument.
When described as a technological
interface, it involves the embodied
and movement transmission in-be-
tween people who are connecting
across distances. This transmission,
in turn, when sonified, creates a
sonic interface with the sum of fre-
quencies, rhythms, and interfer-
ences occurring simultaneously be-
tween the walkers. The walkers can
record sounds which can be heard
by others if they choose to activate
these by their steps. Metaphorically
the body becomes the interface that
interacts with each environment,
wandering in its own way, and re-
ceiving a tuning response according
to their walking rhythm. Sonically,
the experience becomes an impro-
visatory-sounding experience which
requires full-body listening, generat-
ing musical and extra-musical expe-
riences between people.
The App becomes an instrument
when the walker focuses on the
control of features such as choice of
frequencies, tuning with the rota-
tion of the body to the right or to
the left tuning up or down the fre-
quencies. When being outdoors, the
tuning becomes also a reference to
listening to the surrounding envi-
ronment.
The use of different equipment that
states their technological interfaces,
mobile phones, embedded micro-
phones, headphones, and reliable
internet connection, become part of
the ritual within an environment.
The role of the interface is to high-
light a sonic event consisting of dif-
ferent vibrations that are involved in
the connection, from the perspec-
tive of each distant listener in a diffi-
cult-to-control space.When people
detach from control and focus on
the tuning, the walking ritual extra-
ordinary degrees of the perception
emerge.
Togetherness and becoming part
of the resonance
In 2023, the INTIMAL App© was
used in a co-located telematic expe-
rience of Tuning In with Silences at
Scenario 22 in the STRP Festival of
Art and Technology in Eindhoven.
Forty participants became part of
the experience situated in an empty
non-place at the back of the city’s
train station. The invitation was to
47
array2023 flux
“Tune In”with silence, and when
they wanted, they could “voice their
silences”. They could choose spaces
within the application to tune in, us-
ing metaphors in the walk: “step-
ping on ancient roots”, “gazing stars”,
and“dreaming”.
A feedback from one of the partici-
pants at STRP Festival 2023 was as
follows:
Getting “in tune”with others, while
exploring a relatively inhospitable
and public space, resulted in some-
thing quite unexpected.
Walk, listen, imagine. Everything was
slowly changing as one intertwined
with the other. The experience was
decidedly focused (on the device, on
the walk, on the listening) but at the
same time sensory expansive: the
sound of the wind, the sunlight, the
sounds of the facilities around us; ev-
erything took on a very strong emo-
tional component, almost psyche-
delic.
All this mixed with the awareness
that we were not alone in that place,
that there were others exploring the
same space, trying to capture the
same sensation of free discovery
within the determined.What caught
my attention the most about the IN-
TIMAL app was how it managed to
create a connection between people
who had (almost) never seen each
other before, who had never spoken
to each other (since we had been
sharing a state of quite a bit of si-
lence, before we started). In that
strange space next to the train sta-
tion, we all became erratic entities in
search of others, but also in search of
ourselves. Thanks to the technologi-
cal medium (forgive the irony), we
were able to share this unique expe-
rience and connect looking for har-
mony, syntax and synchronicity.“
Zorro Fork (translation from original
text in Spanish)
Within such a connection between
humans, inner connections, and
open and green environments,
these sounds highlight a transcen-
dental experience.
Early experiments with sound fre-
quencies by the composer Pauline
Oliveros were inspired by their mys-
tery and the ability of these sounds
to connect with inner sounds she
was hearing. Elaine Radigue’s work
with electronic sounds invites us to
listen to the slow changes in-be-
tween them and listen to what
these awaken on us (Eckart, 2020).
In her piece Environmental Dialogue
(1997), Pauline Oliveros invites us to
listen either indoors or outdoors,
first observing our own breathing.
Becoming aware of the field of
sounds in the environment, each
48
array2023 flux
49
array2023 flux
Tuning in with Silence. STRP Festival 2023, Eindhoven.
Still image from video by Pablo Sanz.
person is invited to ‘reinforce‘ the
pitch or timbre of sounds that call
our attention within the environ-
ment. She insists on the meaning of
‘reinforcing,‘ which “means to merge
rather than imitate”. If we ‘reinforce’
we“might produce a resonance in
the environment (…) [m]erging
with sound or silence will produce a
resonant state of awareness”
(Oliveros 2013).
In my own experience with this
simple and challenging exercise,
when successful, we experience a
subtraction of what we are listening
within the environment, in order to
become a part of it and stimulate a
resonance in the environment.
The INTIMAL App©, positions us
within the environment, inviting us
to explore awareness through walk-
ing and producing a sine wave tone
with our pace. I suggest that this
movement awakes a sense of
agency, which might help us to be-
come part of the individual and col-
lective possibilities that emerge in
shared social, cultural and geo-
graphical environments, in connec-
tion to ourselves, other humans, and
the more-than-human. A listening
opportunity to become part of the
Earth’s resonance in its transition.
Notes
[1] The project Unlock was funded
by The Studio Recovery Fund 2021,
Bath Spa University, and was devel-
oped in collaboration with Dr Liliana
Rodriguez, Service Designer, and
Kieran Harte, Computer Program-
mer.
[2] The INTIMAL App© has been ex-
perienced as an interface/instru-
ment with others in the Intimal Col-
lective, STRP Festival 2023 Scenario
22 (Eindhoven), Soundings: Assem-
blies of Listenings and Voices across
the Souths (Berlin, August 2022),
Museo de Arte Moderno de Medel-
lín (July, 2022), Migration Matters
Festival with the Intimal Collective
(Sheffield, June 2022), GEXLAT with
Intimal Collective (April 2022), Earth
Day Telematic Festival (April 2022),
Sensing: The Knowledge of Sensitive
Media Research Group – The Bran-
denburg Centre for Media Studies
(ZeM) (June, 2021), and originally
developed and tested in Bath with
the project UNLOCK, awarded by
The Studio Recovery Fund, Bath Spa
University 2021.
[3] Link to the piece: https://sound-
cloud.com/networkedmigrations/
dreaming-while-awake-a-network-
of-presence-by-ximena-alarcon (last
access Nov 11, 2023).
50
array2023 flux
References
Ahmed, S. (1999). “Home and Away.
Narratives of migration and
estrangement.” International Journal
of Cultural Studies 2: 329.
Alarcón Díaz, X. (2022a). “Breathing
(as Listening): An Emotional Bridge
for Telepresence” In: L. O Keeffe and
I. Nogueira (eds.). The Body in Sound,
Music and Performance. Routledge.
Taylor and Francis.
Alarcón Díaz, X. (2022b). "Sonic
Proximities: Locating Oneself and
the OthersWithin a ‘Migratory
Journey‘." Journal of NetworkMusic
and Arts 4 (1). https://
commons.library.stonybrook.edu/
jonma/vol4/iss1/2 (last access Nov
11, 2023).
Alarcón Díaz, X. (2019). "Conceptual
design for INTIMAL: a physical/
virtual embodied system for
Relational Listening". Somaesthetics
and Technology. Journal of
Somaesthetics 4 (2).
Alarcón Díaz, X. et al. (2019a). “From
collecting an archive to artistic
practice in the INTIMAL project:
lessons learned from listening to a
Colombian migrant women’s oral
history archive.”Acervo. Revista do
Arquivo Nacional 32(3): 48- 63.
Alarcón Díaz, X. et al. (2019b).
"Sensing Place and Presence in an
INTIMAL Long-Distance
Improvisation." Journal of Network
Music and Arts 1 (1). https://
commons.library.stonybrook.edu/
jonma/vol1/iss1/3 (last access Nov
11, 2023).
Alarcón Díaz, X. and Refsum
Jensenius A. (2019). “Ellos no están
entendiendo nada” [“They are not
understanding anything”]:
embodied remembering as complex
narrative in a Telematic Sonic
Improvisation.”Proceedings of
RE:SOUND 2019. DOI: dx.doi.org/
10.14236/ewic/RESOUND19.32.
Eckart, J. and Radigue, E. (2020).
Intermediary Spaces. Brussels:
Umland Editions, p. 42.
Oliveros, P. (2013). Anthology of Text
Scores. Deep Listening Publications,
p. 117-118.
Rodgers, T. (2015). “Synthesis.” In: D.
Novak and M. Sakakeeny (eds.),
Keywords in Sound, Durham: Duke
University Press.
51
array2023 flux


Networks of (tele)presence: tuning in to the environment through the INTIMAL App©

Rehding, Alexander

Glacial Music: Katie Paterson’s
Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Sol-
heimajökull (2007)
By Alexander Rehding
Glaciers are noisy things. They glug
and pop, screech and sing, hiss and
buzz, they crackle, clink, and fizzle.
Environmental art has long discov-
ered the hypnotic magic of the
gigantic slow-moving icy mountain
rivers, and sound art among them.
Artists such as JanaWinderen, Philip
Samarzis, Thomas Köner, Eliza
Bozek, ChrisWatson, or Susan
Schuppli only scratch the surface of
those who have engaged creative-
ly with the icy, windy, and watery
sounds captured at glaciers be-
tween Novaya Zemlya and New
Zealand.1 Fromminimally edited,
lengthy sound collages to ambient
synth against a backdrop of sooth-
ing nature sounds, recordings of
arresting glacier music have earned
their place as a staple of sound art.
Their importance has only
gained in recent years in light of
global warming, as environmental
organizations warn that half of the
215,000 glaciers outside of Antartica
and Greenland will have disap-
peared by the end of the century,
that is, during the lifetime of many
of our children. News flashes of
glaciers vanishing at alarming rates
in the Himalaya, in Africa, the Arctic,
the US and Europe reach us with
such frequency that many of us
have become dulled to their impact,
though they have lost none of their
seriousness. No less important is-
sues than the future of drinking wa-
ter and sea level rise are directly af-
fected by the health of our glaciers.
In the not-too-distant future, their
lively zapping and gurgling will be a
thing of the past.
Are glacier sounds an aesthetic or
an environmental phenomenon? A
bit of both: as with a lot of art based
on environmental recordings, the
line between documentation and
composition is moveable. A lot of
sound art explicitly assumes its role
as a historical record, in a future
archive, preparing for the time when
the last glacier has melted and
when these noises no longer exist.
This is in fact exactly in line with R.
Murray Schafer’s foundational ideas
about what he dubbed the “sound-
scape” in the late 1960s, a term that
grew out of the environmental
movement but has long tran-
scended it, and describes an aes-
theticized experience of site-specific
10
array2023 flux
surround-sound. He spent much of
his efforts in the 1970s mapping
soundscapes – most famously the
Vancouver bay – to counter their
disappearance (Schafer 1994).
Admittedly, Schafer’s concerns re-
main firmly embedded in the world
of sound: he considers sound pollu-
tion the worst problem of our times,
which, with the benefit of fifty years
of hindsight, seems outright quaint.
He does make it clear, however, that
he regards a changing soundscape
as symptomatic of larger changes in
society and in the world we inhabit.
In Schafer’s universe, protecting en-
dangered sounds is not qualitatively
different from protecting endan-
gered species: one is directly con-
nected to the other in his sonic
ecology.2
In some cases, particularly in art
with an explicitly ecological mes-
sage, the impetus is to foster a sense
of future nostalgia, to create a rea-
son for why we should protect this
sonic environment – why we should
care. Like Roland Barthes in his
famous reflections on photography,
for whom every snapshot whispers:
“you will have been,” the sound-
scape exists forever in the future
perfect; it captures a scenario that
existed at the moment of its record-
ing, but will only be preserved into
the future thanks to recording tech-
nology (Barthes 1982, p. 115).
This kind of nostalgia, by the way,
needn’t lead to passivity. It is
entirely possible to endow these
feelings of impending loss with a
renewed sense of activism, a call to
action.3
In other cases, the motivation
may be more purely sonic: the iri-
descent, changeable noises may
have an intrinsic beauty. Timothy
Morton, the punk philosopher of
the environment, has made a case
specifically for the aesthetic aspects
of ecology. He argues that it’s not
sufficient for environmental art to
present data, no matter how shock-
ing, but it must also work as art – it
must offer an aesthetic experience
(Morton 2022, p. 57–58). Specifically,
the kind of environmental art Mor-
ton dreams of should be about
data-ness, the “qualities we experi-
ence when we apprehend some-
thing.” In analogy with the come-
dian Stephen Colbert’s concept of
“truthiness,” i.e. the subjective feel-
ing that something should be true
(irrespective of whether it is so),
data-ness conveys a feeling of soli-
darity with that which has been
11
array2023 flux
given (literally, the “data”).
Either way, whichever way we
are leaning – toward the documen-
tary end or the aesthetic in the
spectrum of environmental sound
art– the interest is in making people
listen up.
Among these glacier-based sound
works, the artwork Langjökull,
Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull (2007)
by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson
stands out. Paterson identifies as a
visual artist, but this is not the full
story. She is a conceptual artist who
is concerned with the position of
the human in the universe.While
past generations of artists and
aestheticians would immediately
think of the sublime here, this is not
entirely wrong: Paterson’s interest is
to bring down the unfathomable
temporal and spatial dimensions of
the universe to human proportions
that we can grasp and process,
while salvaging a sense of wonder
and awe. Her work typically cuts
across multiple sensory dimensions,
makes use of science and technol-
ogy, and has an unfailing engaging,
often quirky, quality. She has pre-
sented performance of Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata that has been
beamed up to the moon and back,
and sounds a little worse for wear
after this long journey, has turned
all the solar eclipses witnessed by
humankind into a kind of cosmic
disco ball, or has strung up fossil
records from all periods of earth-
bound life, rounded into beads, into
a necklace that embraces our planet
on a geological scale.4
Paterson’s interest in glaciers
goes back to her time in art school:
the work with which she graduated
was Vatnajökull (the sound of)
(2007–08), which features a cell
phone number that connects the
viewer to a live phone line with a
hydrophonic microphone sub-
merged in a lagoon underneath the
Icelandic glacier Vatnajökull, which
allows viewers to listen to the sound
of the melting glacier in real time. It
is, quite literally, a direct line to
global warming in action.
Its sister piece, Langjökull,
Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull, which
takes its name from three other Ice-
landic glaciers, pursues this interest
in technologically mediated ice-
melt much further. For this artwork,
Paterson recorded the sounds of the
three glaciers and pressed them
onto phonograph records, made
out of ice from the same glacier.
The three recordings are played, and
12
array2023 flux
the glacier sounds are heard one
final time, as the ice melts and the
recorded sound irrecoverably disap-
pears.5
The recording technology poignant-
ly interacts with the sound material.
To fully appreciate this, we do well
to delve a little deeper into some of
the fundamentals of media theory.
As Sybille Krämer has elucidated,
the heart of Friedrich Kittler’s influ-
ential media theory consists in a cul-
tural technique known as “Time Axis
Manipulation”TAM (Krämer 2006).
All technological media, down to
the most fundamental of them all –
writing – enable a form of TAM. Per-
haps the most important aspect of
Krämer’s interpretation is that the
act of inscription allows repeated
access in a way that unmediated
communication, which is subject
to the irreversible flow of time, does
not. In other words, media spatialize
the temporal aspect of communica-
tion, and expose it in this way to
new forms of manipulation: a writ-
ten text can be repeated and stud-
ied at length (not only in real time);
a sound recording can be slowed
down (for instance, playing a record
at 78rpm instead of 33 1/3rpm on a
turntable); or a tape can be played
in reverse (remember the fad that
1970s pop songs would somehow
spell out subliminal messages when
played backwards?) All these are
forms in which the flow of time can
manipulated.
This idea of time axis manipulation
as defined by Krämer, when brought
to bear on Paterson, offers a
poignant framework for Langjökull,
Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull. If the
reproducibility that lies at the core
of TAM is also at the heart of the
(stated or implicit) preservationist
goal of environmental glacier sound
recordings, then Paterson’s perfor-
mance piece turns this feature on its
head.
The no-longer-eternal ice of the
glacier here provides not only the
sound materials but also the record-
ing materials. The sounds are thus
doubly fragile. And in this situation,
reproducing a recorded sound on a
melting medium is not a repeatable
act, but becomes a singular event.
In being replayed, the sound, like
Eurydice in the Orpheus myth, dies
a second death, this time more
definitive, with no further hope of
being recovered. The tragedy of the
ecological catastrophe is captured
13
array2023 flux
in this overdetermined aural death;
the recording that melts, in real
time, before our ears and eyes,
hammers the final nail in the coffin
of the glacier’s expiration.
Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheima-
jökullmakes available to the senses
the processes of global warming to
which we can normally only gain
access through our faculty of reason
– if at all. The hope to which we typi-
cally cling, that we might preserve
something, anything, for the future,
melts away with the last sounds of
the Icelandic glaciers.
Notes
[1] Even the NewYork Times re-
ported on this phenomenon found
in ambient and electronic music.
www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/arts/
music/melting-ice-music.html (last
access Nov 22, 2023).
[2]While there is much to criticize in
Schafer – most recently by Robin-
son, D. (2019). Hungry Listening,
Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota
Press – in the hands of subsequent
ecomusicologists, the study of
soundscapes has flourished into an
important branch of the field. See
for instance, Guyette, M. Q. and Post,
J. C. (2014). “Ecomusicology, Ethno-
musicology, and Soundscape Ecolo-
gy,” in: A. Allen and K. Dawe (ed.),
Current Directions in Ecomusicology,
NewYork: Routledge, pp. 40–56.
[3] One might argue that the recent
museum protests of the summer
2022 are trying to do exactly that.
See Rehdig, A. (2023). “Mit
Tütensuppe und Kartoffelbrei,”Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik.
[4] Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight
Sonata Reflected from the Surface
of the Moon) (2007), Totality (2016),
and Fossil Necklace (2013).
[5] A video recording exists docu-
menting the unique performance.
References
Barthes, R. (1982). Camera lucida:
Reflections on Photography, New
York: Hill andWang.
Krämer, S. (2006). “The Cultural
Techniques of Time Axis
Manipulation: On Friedrich Kittler’s
Conception of Media,”Theory,
Culture & Society 23 (7–8): 93–109.
Morton, T. (2022). All Art is Ecological,
London: Penguin.
Schafer, R. M. (1994). The Sound-
scape: Our Sonic Environment and the
Tuning of theWorld, Rochester VT:
Destiny Books.
14
array2023 flux


Glacial Music: Katie Paterson’s Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull (2007)

Margarethe, Maierhofer-Lischka

array2022
Vertigo of the ears and eyes:
Embodied experiences of hybrid
spatiality in Brice Pauset’s Ver-
tigo/Infinite Screen (2021)
By Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka
Recent research on musical perfor-
mance highlights music listening as
an embodied activity strongly influ-
enced by and connected to mental
representations of music-related
movement schemata (Cox 2016).
Listening thus can be considered an
inner “dance on memorized
schemata” (Stahnke 2001, 25) that
combines inputs from hearing,
touch, vision and bodily motion
(Schroedter 2017). Especially com-
posers of contemporary music chal-
lenge their listeners by creating
complex tonal, temporal and spatial
impressions (Utz 2016, 602-609),
a phenomenon which is brought
further by the increasing use of
electronic audiovisual media. Being
immersed into an audiovisual per-
formance can be pleasurable, but it
can also make listeners feel painful
or sick. This article examines the
perceptual phenomenon of vertigo
in regard to musical intermedia per-
formance, demonstrated by a brief
analysis of Vertigo/Infinite Screen
(2021) by French composer Brice
space
Pauset, an intermedia piece in
homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic
film Vertigo (1958). Many current
intermedia compositions call into
question the distinction between
“live”and “mediatized”, physical and
virtual, resulting in a growing body
of scholarship on musical multime-
dia or intermedia performance (cf.
Auslander 2008, Chapple & Katten-
belt 2006). The following analysis
shows how Vertigo/Infinite Screen
plays with sensations of vertigo by
blurring the boundaries between
experiences of real and virtual space
through sound and moving images.
Vertigo describes disorders of the
gravitational sense located in the in-
ner ear, resulting in partial loss of
spatial orientation and movement
coordination. Those can be caused
by turning motions of the body
(motion-induced vertigo) or they
can appear as somatoformic vertigo
related to mental disorders. Somato-
formic vertigo can result from pho-
bias, depression and schizophrenia,
as well as from the consumption of
media (Brandt et al. 2013, 146ff.).
Vertigo as media sickness results
from incoherent and excessive sen-
sory stimuli that create sensory trau-
mata resulting in somatic reactions
8
array2022
of the nervous system. Recent stud-
ies show that vertigo appears in a
significant number of people in cor-
relation with experiences of virtual
(VR) environments. It can be also
caused by wearing noise-cancelling
headphones (Dan-Goor & Samra
2012, Chattha et al. 2020). Virtual
reality can be defined generally as
a medially created environment that
employs several modalities (vision,
hearing, touch) to imitate or imple-
ment sensory features, behaviors
and qualities of known physical en-
vironments, thus allowing for under-
standing and purposeful interaction
(Doerner et al. 2014, 3ff.). Following
Eric Clarke (2013), a musical piece
can also be considered a virtual
space, making listening an effort
of balancing between the real and
the virtual. Sociologist Shuhei
Hoso-kawa had already described
negative effects when listeners’
attention navigates between virtual
and physical sonic environments,
which he dubbed as the “walkman
effect” (Hosokawa 1984). While
Hosokawa had referred to urban
contexts, Nicholas Cook later on
suggested three categories to de-
scribe intermedial relations in per-
formance: conformance, comple-
mentation and contest (Cook 2001).
space
Media-induced vertigo can be un-
derstood as a result of states of con-
test between hearing and vision as
well as between virtual and real-
world experience.
Hitchcock’s Vertigo is considered a
landmark of suspense cinema. The
film tells the story of a policeman
falling in love with a woman who
commits suicide. In an attempt to
relive his failed relationship, he
starts an affair with a young girl
which also ends tragically. Vertigo is
considered one of Hitchcock’s main
works and has received consider-
able attention in film studies for its
intricate visual language. The loss
of perspective and orientation capti-
vating the characters throughout
the film is presented as visual force
that destroys their attempts to re-
gain individual agency (Cavalletti
2022). Hitchcock used a special cam-
era technique, the Dolly-Zoom (later
also called Vertigo effect), to repre-
sent vertigo by distortion of per-
spective and visual space (Hasche &
Ingwer 2016, 148f ). The iconic film
score by Bernhard Herrmann
presents an auditory maze made of
constantly looping motives, avoid-
ing a tonal centre or formal direc-
tion (Gelly 2021).
9
array2022 space
notated as an own part in the score.
The performance happens in a black
space, rendering the orchestra
barely visible against the bright
Fig. 1: Vertigo/Infinite Screen, performance by Klangforum Wien 20211
Vertigo/Infinite Screen screen was
premiered 2021 at the Wittener Tage
für Neue Kammermusik. It features
an orchestra in six groups, electronic
sounds and a visual installation.
The composition follows closely the
form and structure of the film, incor-
porating elements of Herrmann’s
soundtrack as well as sound snip-
pets from the film’s dialogue and
foley. The visual part of Vertigo/
Infinite Screen is a video installation
presented on a giant projection wall
made up of a grid of 9x2 LED panels.
The visuals are performed live on
screen. In the beginning, swirling
chords cross all instrumental
groups. Sudden appearances of
film-stills create moments of incar-
nated perception (Kaltenecker
2008), followed by darkness and
color flashes disturbing the sense of
time, body and space. Unlike in the
film, visuals and music do not create
a common narrative but two parallel
sensory inputs (Auslander 2013).
While Pauset’s music has nuanced
dynamics, the visuals retain high
contrast, strong colours and high
speed.
10
array2022
One scene in Hitchcock’s Vertigo fea-
tures recorded music playing from a
gramophone. Hitchcock wanted the
record to sound fragile and blurred,
almost hallucinogenic. In Vertigo/
Infinite Screen, Pauset picks this up
and lets fragments of the gramo-
phone music appear in the elec-
tronics (Pauset 2021, bar 42ff., 288ff.)
These inserts are a key element for
creating sound-related impressions
of vertigo: they are clearly tonal
and melodic, marking a shift from
the harmonic and temporal disori-
entation happening in the begin-
ning section towards a moment
of recognition of known elements
(Schroedter 2017, 225). Throughout
the piece, the inserts become
longer, dislocating and warping the
orchestral sounds until the spatial-
ized electronics sometimes take
lead over the acoustic instruments.
The recognizable acoustic and vis-
ual features of the physical room are
constantly blurred and overwritten
by the fast-changing flashes of light
and dark and the changing sonic
space created by the electronics.
When entering the performance,
the listeners arrive with a perception
of the physical space that gets sub-
sequently confused by the virtual
audiovisual environment which
space
remains inconsistent and fluid, in-
troducing slips of perceptual disori-
entation, a “Tasten und Zögern”
(Waldenfels 2007, 19). Like the
“walkman effect”, a subtle estrange-
ment happens between the listen-
ers’proprioception and the impres-
sions of the virtual space. Through-
out the piece, electronic sound and
visuals are used in conformance – to
speak with Cook – to create a situa-
tion of sensory overload, competing
for attention. The fast-changing vis-
ual and auditory spatialities chal-
lenge the perceptual capacity of the
audience, stimulating embodied
experiences similar to VR-induced
motion sickness. Unlike artists who
intended their piece to pose a cri-
tique against contemporary media
accesses, the actual use of audiovi-
sual media in Vertigo/Infinite Screen
appears like a “psychic apparatus”, a
term Friedrich Kittler (1995, 352ff.)
introduced to describe electronic
media’s potential to modulate the
psychic states of an audience.
Vertigo/Infinite Screen is not only a
bare retelling of Hitchcock’s movie.
It uses the unsettling potential of
excessive visible and audible move-
ment dynamics to transfer the film’s
visual effects into the sonic and spa-
tial domain. It draws from embodied
11
array2022
listening to place motion sickness,
or vertigo, at the heart of an intense
spatial and audio-visual experience.
Notes
[1] Brice Pauset / Arotin & Serghei:
Vertigo/Infinite Screen (2020-21),
intermedial composition based on
Alfred Hitchock‘s “Vertigo” for en-
semble in 6 groups, 18 pictures and
electronics. Foto from a perfor-
mance played by Klangforum Wien,
Centre Pompidou, Paris 2021; Photo:
AROTIN & SERGHEI Contemporary
Art 2021.
References
Auslander, P. (2008). Liveness:
Performance in a Mediatized Culture,
Routledge.
-ibid. (2013). “Sound and Vision: The
audiovisual economy of musical
performance”, in: Richardson, J. et al.
(eds.). The Oxford Handbook of New
Audiovisual Aesthetics, Oxford Univ.
Press: 605–621.
Pauset, B. (2021), Vertigo/Infinite
Screen, Edition Gravis.
Cavalletti, A. (2022). Vertigo: The
Temptation of Identity, Fordham
University Press.
space
Chapple, F. & Kattenbelt, C. (2006).
Intermediality in Theatre and
Performance, Rodopi: 11-25.
Chattha, Umer Asghar a.o. (2020)
“Motion Sickness in Virtual Reality:
An Empirical Evaluation”, IEEE Access
8: 130486–130499.
Clarke, E. F. (2013). “Music, space and
subjectivity”, in: Born, G. (ed.). Music,
Sound and Space. Transformations of
Public and Private Experience,
Cambridge Univ. Press: 91–110.
Cook, N. (2001). Analysing Musical
Multimedia, Oxford University Press.
Cox, A. (2016). Music and embodied
cognition: listening, moving, feeling,
and thinking, Musical meaning and
interpretation, Indiana Univ. Press.
Dan-Goor, E. and Samra, M. (2012).
“Benign paroxysmal positional
vertigo after use of noise-canceling
headphones”, American Journal of
Otolaryngology 33/3: 364–366.
Gelly, C. (2021). “Music, Memory and
Repression in Hitchcock’s Vertigo
(1958)”, Miranda. Revue Pluridisci-
plinaire Du Monde Anglophone 22,
https://journals.openedition.org/
miranda/36484 (last access Feb. 16,
2022).
12
array2022
Hasche, E. and Ingwer, P. (2016).
Game of Colors: Moderne Bewegt-
bildproduktion: Theorie und Praxis für
Film, Video und Fernsehen, Springer.
Hosokawa, S. (1984). “The Walkman
Effect”, Popular Music 4: 165–180.
Kaltenecker, M. (2008). “Subtraktion
und Inkarnation. Hören und Sehen
in der Klangkunst und der musique
concréte instrumentale”, in: Musik als
Wahrnehmungskunst. Untersuchun-
gen zur Kompositionsmethodik und
Hörästhetik bei Helmut Lachenmann,
Pfau: 101–126.
Kittler, F. (1995). Aufschreibesysteme
1800-1900, Fink.
Stahnke, M. (2001). “Infinite
Meloharmonik: Vermutungen über
den Wind”, in: Stahmer, K. (ed.). Neue
Musik 2000, Königshausen & Neu-
mann: 19-26.
Schroedter, S. (2017). “Musik erleben
und verstehen durch Bewegung.
Zur Körperlichkeit des Klanglichen
in Choreografie und Performance”,
in: Musik und Körper. Interdisziplinäre
Dialoge zum körperlichen Erleben und
Verstehen von Musik, transcript:
221–243.
Utz, C. (2016). “Wahrnehmung”, in:
Hiekel, J. P. and Utz, C. (eds.). Lexikon
neue Musik, Metzler: 602–609.
space
Waldenfels, B. (2007). “Sich
bewegen”, in: Brandstetter, G. and
Wulf, C. (eds.). Tanz als
Anthropologie, Fink: 14–30.
13


Vertigo of the ears and eyes

Chagas, Paulo

Sound Imaginations: Listening Cultures and Audiovisual Immersion

Hagan, Kerry

ICMC 2021 breaks new ground
in the pandemic
By Kerry Hagan
The International Computer Music
Association (ICMA) convened the
first International Computer Music
Conference (ICMC) in 1974 at Michi-
gan State University in the US. The
ICMA was a new organization, only
just incorporated as a non-profit in
California, USA. For nearly ten years
of ICMC, various institutions in the
US hosted the event. Then, in 1982,
the Venice Biennial hosted the ICMC
outside of the US for the first time.
That marked the beginning of a tour
of locations in the US and Europe.
Eleven years later, the first ICMC in
Asia took place in Japan.
In 2021, the Pontifical Universidad
Católica de Chile hosted the first
ICMC in South America. It was, how-
ever, a bittersweet first. Covid-19 de-
railed our 2020 conference hopes
and our wishes to visit Santiago.
And, as 2021 approached, we real-
ized that traveling to Santiago was
still not possible. So, though it was a
first for being hosted in South Amer-
ica, ICMC 2021 was the first time the
conference went online.
Rodrigo Cádiz and his team were
the perfect partners for undertaking
such a challenging task. They
quickly responded to the fluid
changes of lockdowns and restric-
tions and ultimately hosted a mar-
velous conference.With virtual con-
certs, installations, paper sessions,
workshops and booths, we could
meet each other online and share
our work and research.
Although I took on the role of Presi-
dent of ICMA in March of 2021, the
real work on behalf of the ICMA
Board came from the previous Presi-
dent, Tae Hong Park, and our former
VP of Conferences, Rob Hamilton.
Rob worked with Rodrigo and sup-
ported virtual installations on Mozil-
la Hubs, creating more firsts for us.
We learned a lot about presenting
virtual events, experiencing what
worked well and what did not. It
gave us experiences that will help us
in future ICMCs to be more accessi-
ble to a broader membership. Given
this knowledge, the next ICMC will
be a hybrid conference hosted in
Limerick, Ireland, and online.
Since the University of Limerick is
hosting ICMC 2022, I am tasked with
5
array Special Issue ICMC2021
two roles: President of the ICMA and
Conference Chair of ICMC 2022, and
I cannot express my excitement for
the conference to come. I’m working
with a phenomenal committee of
colleagues in Limerick and relying
on the years of expertise of the
ICMA Board, including Rodrigo. He
continues with the ICMA as an
Americas Regional Director.
ICMC 2021 taught us many valuable
lessons, and it demonstrated the
large and global community in com-
puter music. Cádiz and his team
pulled off a great accomplishment
and gave us a model for online con-
tent in future ICMCs. The online for-
mat broadened the contributors
and connected us around the world
in virtual concerts, workshops,
booths, installations and through
meeting rooms and chats. In these
ways, ICMC 2021 truly broke new
ground.
We hope that this encourages you
to actively engage with us. If you
are, e.g. interested in hosting an
ICMC in your region, or if you plan
concerts or festivals that might be of
interest for our community, please
contact me or one of your region di-
rectors for more information.
6
array Special Issue ICMC2021


ICMC 2021 breaks new ground in the pandemic

Carvallo, Antonio

Considerations about the In-
ternational Computer Music
Conference 2021
By Antonio Carvallo P.
Between July 25th and 31st, 2021,
the International Computer Music
Conference ICMC was held in
Santiago de Chile, organized this
year by the International Computer
Music Association and Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile.
The conference, which should have
taken place in 2020, was held online
in 2021 due to the pandemic.
In my role as music co-chair I could
see that this new format meant
new challenges, but also new op-
portunities.
It is true that trips and the opportu-
nity to know another country, an-
other culture were missed this year.
However, accessing a paper or a
workshop held in a distant country
from home seemed to give a differ-
ent dimension to the technology
with which we work and whose mu-
sical scope has always been re-
flected on at the ICMC. Curiously,
technology – always coming to the
conference from different levels of
our work such as analysis, sound, or
algorithms generation – found a dif-
ferent dimension now: if it was use
to gather us together to meet our
interests, now it also brought us the
opportunity to meet each other and
listening to each other in a much
broader sense.
Through pandemic times it was
comforting to meet – via Zoom –
with several colleagues in the real-
time spaces of papers and work-
shops. In fact, these rooms for con-
versation balanced certain coldness
and distance from the previously
recorded exhibitions; because these
probably were too perfect, too di-
rect. All sum up, the essence of what
summoned us in this type of activi-
ties seemed intact: the exhibitor
managed to communicate the
achievements of his artistic or re-
search work and a frank and open
dialogue was generated between
him and the attendees. However, at
the end of the paper presentation,
when the questions and the conver-
sation with the author finished, a
void was suddenly opened: the pri-
vate conversations with some of the
attendees outside the exhibition
hall was replaced with the closure of
the application (Zoom) and the sub-
sequent silence or local noise of our
own environments.
7
array Special Issue ICMC2021
When the concert time had come,
we join from the now ambiguous
comfort of our own home, our own
space, we once again missed, al-
ready more radically, the space it-
self. Something was missing from
those stereophonic concerts. An es-
sential part of our works, since the
years of the pioneers, is the relation-
ship between sound, us, and space.
Although this problem can be
solved through binaural techniques
and the use of headphones, it was
clear that a vast majority of the
compositions did not aim at a work
on this field. A considerable distance
appeared here between these con-
certs and a face-to-face instance.
Noticing this lack of proximity, a ret-
rospective question for the papers
related to the study of spatialization
emerges. This year these reached
the status of impertinent due to a
technical deficiency that we never
imagined: the impossibility of being
together.
Despite this, just imagining an en-
counter like this around another
kind of music seemed difficult.
Somehow, the pandemic scenario
and the online version of the ICMC
2021 to which it pushed revealed a
dimension of our music that we do
not usually think about: the techno-
logical resource seems to be physi-
cally present with discretion today,
endowing our creative processes
with a kind of immateriality that al-
lows us to connect with great fluid-
ity, putting reflection and knowl-
edge at the center of our activity:
the thought at the center of every-
thing. At some level, our work tool -
the device - was never so absent as
it was this year conference; it
seemed like its only job was to con-
nect us. In this 2021 conference we
were witnessing a single technical
deficiency: the impossibility of get-
ting together physically. The lack of
physical proximity has been saved
by the technique itself, which this
time seems to act inconsiderately in
the background, allowing our reflec-
tion to be brought to others and to
other areas, a reflection that arises
from technology and finds its possi-
bility in it.
We had a great remote conference,
but we want to meet again. I think
that in the next face-to-face ICMC
we should take everything that al-
lowed us to be together this 2021.
Technology has gained a new space
that I think should not be sup-
pressed. Thus, I imagine an ICMC like
8
array Special Issue ICMC2021
the ones before, but with the pres-
ence of colleagues that present
themselves in a virtual way, adding
another dimension to the Confer-
ence, an immateriality that is heard.
It will always be relevant to be in
person to listen to the space that
sounds and resonates, but another
dimension has been opened for the
Conference. Therefore, I believe that
a certain number of papers dictated
remotely by those who cannot face
the trip to the organizing city
should be kept in a face-to-face con-
ference.
After ICMC 2021, physical distance
should not be an impediment to
hearing everything that can be said.
Therefore, it would be interesting to
keep the "listening room" from this
year Conference. The next one could
include a certain number of stereo
works and, why not, it could be
available, from now on, to the gen-
eral public, an audience that, inter-
ested in this type of artistic-musical
expression, begin to deepen their
listening experience. From technol-
ogy itself, the International Com-
puter Music Association would es-
tablish an unprecedented liaison
with the non-specialist public.
Finally, I believe that we must think
about how we can relate to this new
reality that the pandemic has
brought: being able to meet despite
the distance. The virtual format can
provide a door into a space which is
traditionally filled by the confer-
ence’s local space, being open to all
those who, for any reason, are far
away; a space for works and papers
exhibited remotely, which can be
accessed online from different coun-
tries; a space to talk, to comment,
and to meet.
Although we can only imagine the
future from this new situation, we
know that it has been made possi-
ble and will continue to be made
possible by computer media, the
media that are our element, which
have served to articulate our artistic,
scientific and research work and
thought.
9
array Special Issue ICMC2021


Considerations about the International Computer Music Conference 2021

Editorial
This ICMC was very special in several
respects. It was the first ICMC to be
held in South America, it was post-
poned for one year, and the double-
feature ICMC was the first ever ICMC
taking place fully virtual using the
platform Deck10.
Hence, also this ICMC Special Issue
is be a bit different from the previ-
ous ones. Besides a review on the
opening concert, which contextual-
izes the presented music in a
broader historical context, you can
explicitly to the ICMC call in reaction
to ICMC2021’s virtual format.
find personal experience reports as
well as reviews of XR works – a new
category within the ICMC call, which
was launched for the first time and
explicitly in reaction to the change
of ICMC2021 to a virtual format.
And last but not least, congratula-
tions to all the winners of the ICMA
awards, which were presented dur-
ing this conference for two years,
2020 and 2021!
Hence, this issue aims to provide
you with a glimpse on how it was
like to organize and attend this very
special ICMC2021.
4
array Special Issue ICMC2021
Figure 1. Campus at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (photographer:
Gonzalo Beltrán)


Koljatic, Tomás

A virtual ICMC
By Tomás Koljatic S.
I was absolutely thrilled when, dur-
ing 2019, Rodrigo Cádiz suggested
that the Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile (the institution
where we both work in Santiago)
should host the ICMC 2020. Antonio
Carvallo and I jointly accepted his
invitation to join the team (as Co-
chairs of the music track) and assist
him in the organization of the con-
ference. Up to 2018 I had been in
charge of an international contem-
porary music festival hosted in
Chile, and, as a composer, I had
some background in music technol-
ogy, so I was thankful and delighted
to have an opportunity to put my
experience to a good cause. The un-
foreseeable global COVID-19 pan-
demic, the ensuing stay-at-home or-
ders, and restrictions on interna-
tional travel, prevented the ICMC
from taking place in 2020.When it
finally did take place, in July 2021, it
was a conference quite unlike the
one we had originally imagined.
Just like the rest of the world had to
readjust to a new reality, so did this
conference, and, after consulting
with the ICMA, the decision was
taken to completely stream the
event through the internet.
Of course, the change in format en-
tailed some inescapable drawbacks
for the organizing committee. For
one thing, we could not showcase
our country's culture, our hospital-
ity, and the formidable landscape of
the Andes mountains which towers
over Santiago. Participants missed
the opportunity to explore our
beautiful university campus, for-
merly a convent built in the early
20th century in an impressive Neo-
Romanesque style. We could not en-
joy the natural acoustics of the large
church, where concerts are fre-
quently held, and we were not able
to host the event at the Centro de
Extensión Oriente, a brand new con-
vention center with a concert hall
seating some 250 spectators, and
equipped with a state-of-the-art au-
dio system. The ICMC 2020 would
have been the first large-scale event
hosted in the venue! Most regret-
tably, we lost the opportunity to
meet and socialize in-person, and to
share, unhindered by computer
screens, our spontaneous reactions
to the concerts, presentations, pan-
els, installations and workshops.
10
array Special Issue ICMC2021
COVID-19 cases in Santiago spiked
dramatically in the months leading
up to the conference. As a conse-
quence, strict lockdown orders were
put in place by national health offi-
cials, which meant that we were un-
able to access the premises of our
university for several months. This
created a new level of challenge as
we could not produce ourselves
new recordings of all the works for
instruments and electronics se-
lected for performance at ICMC.
Thus, we had to rely mostly on
recordings provided by the com-
posers themselves, which resulted
in only a handful of local instrumen-
talists being able to collaborate in
the event.
In addition, the audiovisual works
presented at the conference had to
be streamed through the internet,
which entailed mixing them down
to stereo (in the case of multichan-
nel pieces), and compressing the au-
dio and video. It also meant that the
quality of the listening and viewing
experience was restricted by the
quality of the equipment available
to each member of the audience
(which could range from low-cost
11
array Special Issue ICMC2021
Figure 2. Screenshot from a concert in Deck 10 during ICMC2021.
earbuds or laptop speakers to pro-
fessional audio systems, and from
smartphone screens to high-defini-
tion projectors) and the acoustic
and visual conditions of the room
where the conference was streamed
from. Similarly, installations (which
are meant to be experienced di-
rectly, firsthand, in a particular space
and time) had to be canned and
played back. As a result, I am sure
that many, if not all, artists featured
at ICMC would agree that their
works would have been better
served had the conference been
held in-person. For better or for
worse, quantitatively speaking, to-
day most art is experienced (or
more aptly stated, "consumed")
through internet services such as
YouTube, Spotify, or Netflix. Ar-
guably, many works presented at
ICMC 2021 seemed to embrace
these rather restrictive formats com-
patible with streaming platforms
and thrive in them.
The technology provided by Deck
10 made ICMC 2021 possible. The
company offered a first-class solu-
tion for hosting the conference on-
line: a platform with a slick web de-
sign that integrates, among other
resources, audio and video stream-
ing, and social networking capabili-
ties. Most of the activities were pre
recorded (and well rehearsed!), and
uploaded to the platform in ad-
vance. The events could be watched
both in real-time as well as on-de-
mand, which was very handy for
participants in different time zones.
For this instance, holding a virtual
conference was, evidently, an emer-
gency solution prompted by the
global pandemic. I am no futurolo-
gist, but I believe that most forth-
coming summits, academic confer-
ences, trade shows and other such
events will include both online and
in-person activities. Video confer-
encing can be a very valuable tool
to permit the participation of those
unable to travel long distances. In
the coming years, remote participa-
tion will be even more common, al-
though I see it as highly improbable
that, in the short run, we will es-
chew international gatherings alto-
gether. Although some things can
be done very efficiently through the
internet, networking (one of the
most important reasons these
events exist in the first place) seems
much more difficult to carry out ef-
fectively through a computer
screen. This may gradually change
12
array Special Issue ICMC2021
as technology advances, and as we
learn to use and take advantage of it
in improving group dynamics.
Despite the unexpected complica-
tions, technology and ingenuity al-
lowed the team led by Rodrigo
Cádiz to hold a memorable ICMC
2021. Video conferencing and hy-
brid classrooms have become a sta-
ple of the daily routines of most of
us in the last few years, and this ten-
dency is likely to keep growing in
the future. The forthcoming ICMCs
will undoubtedly face (and answer)
the question of, "in what manner,
and to what extent, to allow for re-
mote participation?". The success of
the virtual 2021 ICMC has set an im-
portant precedent for future edi-
tions.
13
array Special Issue ICMC2021


A virtual ICMC

Qi, Mengjie Maggie

An Excursion into Electro-
acoustic Music History
By亓梦婕Mengjie Qi Maggie
ICMC 2021 was successfully held on-
line from July 25th to 31st. It was
hosted by the Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
The inaugural concert on the 25th
opened the festival, and all six
pieces were electroacoustic: a fixed-
medium piece Spectral Variations by
José Vicente Asuar, interactive elec-
tronic and video piece TheMetered
Tide by Chris Chafe, an improvisa-
tion Another Time by Chris Chafe
and the Quarantine Session Per-
formers, After Long Drought for vi-
braphone and live interactive elec-
tro-acoustics by Elainie Lillios and
Scott Deal, and Kontrol for per-
former and electronics, and visual
music Tesseract by João Pedro
Oliveira. This concert was a perfect
interpretation of the conference
theme“the virtuoso computer: re-
defining limits”. It highlighted the
role of the computer and of virtuos-
ity in computer music. The relation-
ship between computer and com-
poser/performer is always a matter
of concern in electronic music. With
the fixed media, interactive com-
puter music, and visual music works
presented on this concert, it clearly
outlined the features of different
stages of electronic music from an
historical perspective. Virtuoso
refers to the skills and interpretation
of the music performer in the per-
formance. In computer music, it also
means the composers utilize and
personalize the endless possibilities
provided by computer. This concert,
a sampling of computer music from
different periods, was an excursion
into electro-acoustic music history.
It is a highlight of various genres
and techniques and provided the
audience with a sense of the evolu-
tion of computer music. This review
also focuses on the musical aspects
of these pieces from an ontology
perspective.
In the 1950s, with Pierre Schaeffer
and Pierre Henry in Paris, Stock-
hausen in Cologne, Vladimir Us-
sachevsky, Otto Luening, Milton
Babbitt, CharlesWuorinen at the Co-
lumbia-Princeton Electronic Music
Center in NewYork, and Toshiro
Mayuzumi in Tokyo, the classical stu-
dios were established and in their
golden time. These composers were
the giants in electronic music his-
tory. However, José Vicente Asuar’s
Spectral Variations (Variaciones es-
14
array Special Issue ICMC2021
pectrales) on the program reminds
us that there were so many other
talented composers from various
parts of the world who were study-
ing, composing, and contributing to
the electronic music field at about
the same time. They added their cul-
tural background into music,
brought the concept and technique
of electronic music back to their
country, and helped to disseminate
electronic music virtually every-
where. Spectral Variations shows
how the music was wonderfully
conceived and delicately created.
The first piece of this concert fea-
tures one of the most well-known
works of Asuar, who is one of the
founding fathers of Chilean elec-
troacoustic and computer music,
and the inspiration behind the con-
ference’s theme. He was regarded as
the pioneer of Chilean electronic
music at the national level and the
first electronic music composer of
the Latin America. This concert was
also a tribute to this founding fa-
thers of Chilean electronic music.
Spectral Variationswas composed in
1957. It is musically consistent. The
four movements are based on the
interval-based motive at the very
beginning. The motive fully devel-
ops with rhythmic patterns, repeti-
tions and arpeggiations though-out
the movements; especially the
voices in high, middle and low regis-
ters work together in terms of repe-
tition and crescendo, finally leading
the music to the climax in the fourth
movement. This last part is a blend
of all materials and enhances the
motive. José Vicente Asuar uses sine
wave, square, impulses and white
noise in four variations: Acordal, Lin-
ear, Evocativa and Obsesiva. The
consistency is also reflected in the
texture and timbre of the four
movements. The melodic voices in
the high, middle and low register
create dialogues between each
other. The clear structure of the
form reminds on the influence and
foundation the composer absorbed
from the western composition tech-
niques. This piece is a sound experi-
ment within musical structure. Even
though it is an electronic music
piece, it involves traditional means
including polyphony, ostinato, repe-
tition, and the importance of inter-
vals.
TheMetered Tide composed by
American Composer Chris Chafe
and videographer Greg Neimeyer is
a composition for visuals, electronic
15
array Special Issue ICMC2021
cello and electronic music. This work
touches one important aspect of
electronic music, namely improvisa-
tion. The composition includes three
kinds of sound materials: concrete
sounds (sea waves, surrounding
sounds), the electronic cello (cel-
letto) improvisation, and an sound
element with an electronic synthe-
sizer timbre generated from one
hundred years of tidal data records
which serves as the base of the
structure.While listening to the con-
crete sounds, the live performer
Chris Chafe is able to react with his
cello play in real-time to the gener-
ated sound and improvise; the con-
sistency of his performance per-
fectly shows his improvisation virtu-
osity. The sound materials hereby
closely intertwine with each other.
The wide register range between
celletto and the electronic sounds
are distinct, which makes the two
voices to some degree independent.
I would take this contrast as two dif-
ferent roles within the music.
The video is filmed in the Crissy
Field, Golden Gate National Recre-
ation Area at the upper tip of San
Francisco next to the southern end
of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is
the visual background of the perfor-
mance. The visuals include three el-
ements which are the waveform in-
teracting with the sound signal, the
shore and sea waves, and Chris
Chafe as performer playing elec-
tronic cello. In the final section of
this piece, the performer put down
his instrument and walks away from
the center of the image, leaving
only the sound and image of sea
waves until it ends with a black
screen. This kind of performance
management is quite narrative and
it is also a significant character of
concert performance. It provides
the audience with a more immersive
impression, just like the experience
in a concert hall. The waveform cen-
tered in the image vividly responds
to the title of the piece. It could be
regarded as a new dimension to me-
ter the sound and the visual. The vis-
ual center includes the waveform
and the performer. Even though the
visual scenes change frequently, the
images are quite effective to en-
hance the dramatic tension of the
music, especially, as the sound and
images are closely synchronized
which allows the musical climax to
build up with the fast-changing im-
ages.
Chris Chafe, the Director of Stanford
University’s Center for Computer Re-
search in Music and Acoustics
16
array Special Issue ICMC2021
CCRMA has been devoted to elec-
tronic music improvisation for many
years. In this concert, Chafe impro-
vised with Quarantine Session Per-
formers to offer a tribute to all musi-
cians and composers who have en-
deavored to spread music during
the COVID-19 period. All the sound
materials were collected from the
online performances and talks from
March 2020 to July 2021, thus creat-
ing a retrospective of this special
period. Chris Chafe and Scott Deal
are the main passionate supporters
in this field. The format of online
sessions also comes with some extra
benefits, such as helping to reduce
CO2 emissions, and providing the
possibility for people to join the
event to share ideas and music with-
out traveling.
After Long Drought (2016) for vibra-
phone and live, interactive electro-
acoustics is composed by Elainie Lil-
lios and performed by percussionist
/composer Scott Deal. Lillios was in-
spired byWally Swist’s poem with
the same title. It is one of my fa-
vorite pieces and it was included on
the concert I curated on the Design
Day Marathon Festival in October
2021. The collaboration between
composer and musician is always a
subject in electroacoustic music
performance. In this case, they both
have encountered each other’s com-
posing and performing from 2011.
The collaboration between musi-
cian, composer, and methodology
involved in creating a piece to-
gether not only relies on virtuosity
and techniques in western composi-
tion and computer music, but also
the common understanding of mu-
sical structure and the shared aes-
thetics. Scott Deal has put his en-
ergy into exploring the diverse
sounds from the prepared percus-
sion instruments which give inspira-
tion to the composer. He performs
every section with one specific tech-
nique or timbre to enhance the tim-
bral diversity in the structure. In the
progress of writing this piece, Elainie
also left some space for Scott to im-
provise with the electronics which
contributes to his unique aesthetics
and experiences with the instru-
ments. The intense rhythmic begin-
ning with thunder and rain sounds
creates an atmosphere directly and
vividly outlining the scenery of the
desert in wind and storm. Each sec-
tion of this piece is presented with a
certain timbre and instrumental
technique to draw a scene of differ-
ent parts of the windy desert and re-
17
array Special Issue ICMC2021
flect the metaphor of the unpre-
dictability and tumult of life. The
music ends after a steady rain-storm
and fades into a peaceful moment.
Kontrol is a virtual percussion piece
for one performer and electronics.
João Pedro Oliveira introduced this
piece as: “Movements correspond to
sounds and sounds correspond to
invisible instruments”, that explicitly
shows the mapping of sound and
actions. Even though the percus-
sionist is not sending any sensory
information to the electronic music
modules, the seamless mapping of
his action to the sound contours
makes it convincing and interactive.
The sound contours and transforma-
tions are clearly recognizable in his
performance. They even enhance
the emotion and tension in the mu-
sical journey. In the coda section,
the music suddenly changes from
abstract granular and metallic tim-
bre to a typical drum sets. It looks
like the composer was demystifying
where the abstract sounds came
from. This unexpected design re-
veals Oliveira’s mature virtuosity in
communicating by way of his
sounds and music.
João Pedro Oliveira’s Tesseract (2017)
was the last piece of the concert.
The interaction and mapping of this
visual music is quite delicate. The
hypercube transforms into multiple
states and textures via transforming,
rotating, decomposing, reconstruct-
ing, erosion, twisting, and changing
the lighting and textures. The syn-
chronization of sound and image is
seamless, which is a typical charac-
teristic of algorithm-based art and
music composition. The visuals are
created by the composer as well, a
workflow which guarantees the
unity of sound and visuals. The
video starts showing a huge cube
on the canvas, which then splits into
many small-scale hypercubes in dif-
ferent sizes. While the visual ele-
ments go through decomposition,
rotation, reorganization, erosion,
distortion, color and light percep-
tion by changing the texture and
color temperature of the image, the
sound texture also changes its tim-
bre in a similar manner to the visu-
als. The image is transformed from a
cube with edges and corners to
lava-like images with animal
feather-like texture, plane images
with mirror texture, micro-cube ar-
rays with three-dimensional depth,
plane images with paper sheet-like
texture, and liquid dynamic images.
18
array Special Issue ICMC2021
At the same time, the particle-like
visual elements continue to swim
around the screen. The elegant
granular and bright clean metallic
sounds highlight the music
exquisitely.
This concert presented examples
from the development of electro-
acoustic music spanning from the
early studio piece in the 1950s,
mixed electroacoustic music with in-
struments, interactive music perfor-
mance and improvisation, to algo-
rithm-based audiovisual music. We
have seen the development and the
virtuosity of the technology and the
aesthetics changing the music para-
digm. This concert opened ICMC
2021 successfully, highlighting es-
pecially a tribute to Chilean com-
posers and their contribution to the
community.
19
array Special Issue ICMC2021


Not a member yet

Editorial

Networks of (tele)presence: tuning in to the environment through the INTIMAL App©

Glacial Music: Katie Paterson’s Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull (2007)

Vertigo of the ears and eyes

Sound Imaginations: Listening Cultures and Audiovisual Immersion

ICMC 2021 breaks new ground in the pandemic

Considerations about the International Computer Music Conference 2021

Editorial

A virtual ICMC

An Excursion into Electroacoustic Music History

0

0