Since 2005 the association 23.03 (Reims, France) has made it its mission to foster the creation and dissemination of art, while promoting an intercultural dialogue, by nurturing artistic projects rooted in cooperation and mobility between various European and International centers. 23.03’s chief concern is with the notion of territory. It endeavors to unite, bring face to face or link together different artistic responses to this question, so as to bring about a series of productions in an array of very diverse cultural settings. The association sets up short or long-term residencies, artists’ exchanges, exhibitions, or conventions. As often as possible it also complements these events with printed or digital publications (23.03.fr), as a form of historical and critical archive. Artists, scholars and amateurs interested in Contemporary Art gather through 23.03 into a think-tank on art practices, their circulation, their mediation, their reception… Through partnerships, notably with the University Reims Champagne-Ardenne, 23.03 also takes part in exhibitions, conferences, and training or exchange modules.
Amongst other modes of intervention(1), particularly in the realm of experimental artistic practices(2), 23.03 pursues a reflection on art’s collaborative aspects and the presence of artists within the school system, enabling primary school students to meet with artists interested in teaching, for example. These creative residencies, dubbed Pr10/20, have been assigned two goals: educational workshops are set up for the students to explore the work of the artist in residence, and original creations are produced. At the tail end of their residencies the artists’ creations are presented to the public as work-in-progress, or experimental art, perhaps open to further development.
Reims-born sound artist Nicolas Canot was Pr10/20’s first guest, in 2012. Along with several meetings, Q&A sessions and workshops introducing 4th and 5th graders to his work Anoph Speia (featured here), Nicolas developed and staged for the first time his installation (and acoustic creation) Spin, a new work that involves a prototypical pair of automated, rotating loudspeakers.
At the end of 2013 and during the first quarter of the 2014 school year, the Portuguese sound artists and composers Jose Alberto Gomes and João Menezes came on behalf of the Digitopia Collective (Porto, Portugal) to implement a two-part program: first, drawing on their experience as teachers in Porto, they shared their thoughts on education with several classes of 2nd and 3rd graders, and second, they conducted sound tests for what was to become A Perpetuação do tempo sob o presente, an acoustic and spatial work on eight tracks, created on September 20, 2014, under the dome of Reims’ Bouligrin market and the auspices of the European Heritage Days.
The present publication decided to release these two creations together, along with a vinyl record. It could appear as a bold move, since these works so radically differ on questions of aesthetics or technology; but they share a similar interest in the exploration of acoustic space(3). Binaural sound(4) mixing was used for Anoph Speia, while in the case of A Perpetuação do tempo sob o presente the artists chose to rely on the technology of stereo reduction(5). These choices have their drawbacks: not only do they evade the crucial questions of acoustic pressure(6) or the importance of broadcasting(7); they also cannot avoid the lack of spatial depth that so traditionally comes with stereophonic listening. But these sacrifices were accepted, knowing they would help these creations reach a broader audience.
These works can be listened here : https://soundcloud.com/23-03-art-contemporain

(1) Such as the various editions of the works Double Stereo and Reloaded, or its extensive collection of catalogs and publications. For more information on these subjects see: http://2303.fr
(2) Whether these experimental works are staged in public or not.
(3) In the case of Anoph Speia, this acoustic space could be called semi-fictitious since two of the four tracks that make up the original installation are head-set tracks, creating spatial illusions for the listener; A Perpetuação do tempo sob o presente creates a soundscape on eight tracks played within a 240 sq. yard area.
(4) See above the text “Uncorporealized” (Nicolas Canot).
(5) The work was submitted twice to this treatment: first as originally broadcasted at the Boulingrin Market, then (modelised) as it sounded two hours later, distorted by the market’s acoustical response. This subject is given further attention in the “Interview with Felipe Lopes”, see below.
(6) A particular loss in the case of Anoph Speia.
(7) A particular loss in the case of A Perpetuação do tempo sob o presente.

Digitopia Collective
“A Perpetuação do tempo sobre o presente”

When, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sound, in its natural state or modified, entered in the world of music, a new era in the history of music was open. It was not a new style or a new musical genre that was created, it was a whole new world of sound experiences. From Russolo’s futurist point of view until the latest virtual instruments a great way was done : a way of acceptance, a way of technological development, a way of challenge to composers, musicians and public.

As part of these ways, education has a great responsibility to provide new audiences tools to understand new music, new instruments and new approaches. Digitópia has, among other roles, this responsibility within the education service of Casa da Música.

Since the opening of Casa da Música in 2005, it became very clear to everyone that contemporary music has a special place in its annual program. Having an ensemble as Remix as one of its resident orchestras only reinforce this idea. Digitópia was so created as a tool to give all public, from children to senior citizens, an opportunity to experience and create electronic music as part of a work that has the goal to familiarize an audience to new music.

However Digitópia became much more: not only a place in Casa da Música foyer but a group of talent monitors and musicians who created Digitópia Collective (a performance group), a team able to develop education software and apps for smartphones and tablets and experts in composition and electronics music that have been working with Casa da Música resident groups (choir, symphonic orchestra and Remix Ensemble) as consultants for pieces that have electronic parts or electronic processing.

If the twentieth century brought a new listening to sound, the twenty first will probably bring new ways of performing, writing and creating music. Digital tools, virtual instruments, software and apps will give opportunity to a new type of performers and composers where classical techniques can be overtaken by the digital world. We want Digitópia to have an important role in this development, taking the lead in its task of engaging audiences and allowing everyone to a musical experience in the digital field.

Jorge Prendas
Head of Education of Casa da Música

Abstract

A perpetuação do tempo sob o presente ( The perpetuation of time under the present ) is a site-specific sound installation designed for the Halles du Boulingrin Market in Reims, France.

As a site-specific installation, two aspects must be taken into account: the Market’s social and historical role, and its design (and its acoustic consequence). On the social domain, markets have been important places for trade and public involvement between local neighborhoods and regions. In fact, the etymological origin of the latin word commercium (trade) assumes the contact between people, rather than just a exchange of goods or services. On the architectural domain, the Boulingrin has a particular structure marked by a revolutionary arc-shaped defining the landscape of the city from the day of its construction to the present day. This special design, covers an area of 5000 m2, which behaves as an open and reverberant space, promoting interesting relations between sound phenomena such as reverb, echo and loudness.

The Boulingrin defines the content of this installation. This building is not only a common market, but a place that represents Reims, being a scenery, and several times a participant, of the recent history of the city. As such, we define as aim to create an interpretation of Reims as a social, geographical and historical place. Not an historical recreation, instead, an artistic approach of what Reims is in a so short time lapse and what people want (or not) to transmit about it.

This concept results on a sono-spatial narrative for 8 speakers, 8 microphones and 8 light bulbs evenly distributed in space, the installation character lays on an audio feedback network that put in use the listener’s sonic-spatial understanding, where the manipulation and shaping of sound matter unfolds questions of the Market’s architecture and acoustic design.

In order to do so, each loudspeaker is vertically aligned with a microphone. In this way, each microphone is directly fed with the sound that is emitted by its underlying speaker, as well as the Boulingrin’s acoustic response. As the musical piece is reproduced, the hall’s acoustic response is recorded and feeded back into the system, eventually leading to the extinction of the initial music piece, while breathing Boulingrin’s natural tone. This real-time recursive process of sampling and delayed playing back through the hall acts as an audio feedback system. However, instead of rising as a sonic thread between the sound source and the amplification source, it subtle gathers the hall’s response according to the musical composition that is being recursively reproduced, as well as the listeners sound and location in space. Therefore, one could say that listeners are an active participant within a larger acoustic ecology.

Finally, 8 light bulbs are placed alongside each microphone. Bulb’s brightness is directly related with the loudness of the sound that is being reproduced, fostering an audio visual symbiosis, where light events are connected to sound phenomena. By the time the initial music piece becomes totally absorbed by Boulingrin’s natural tone, listeners will be submersed in dark, as the time perpetuates under the present.

As an architectonic space Boulingrin will determine which sound will survive and for how long. Using the Time and Space, and its representation and impact in the “memory”, at the end the piece will be completely merged by the Boulingrin’s acoustic space.

Digitópia

Born in 2011, Digitópia is a digital music platform based at Casa da Música in Oporto, which encourages the act of listening, performance and musical creation. Based on digital tools, although not exclusively, Digitopia emphasizes collaborative musical creation, software design, music education, social inclusion, aiming to emerge multicultural communities of performers, composers, curious and music lovers.

For this project Digitópia Collective is represented by João Menezes and José Alberto Gomes

João Menezes is a sound and media artist, working at the intersection of sound, interaction and media. Having digital means as the core of his artistic process, João’s work ranges from live music/theatre performances, Installations; to the development of unique audio software and sonic interaction devices. He is a regular collaborator on art-technology environments, such as Max MSP and the Jamoma platform, having developed several objects and modules which provide functions towards the data sonification, automatic music generation, computational geometry and physical computing fields.
João has been lecturing workshops and presentations in festivals, universities and conferences, such as: Code Control Festival, Get Set Art Festival, Semibreve Festival, London College of Communication – University of the Arts London, Faculty of Engineering as well as the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, Leicester College, Artech – International Conference on Digital Arts, among others.
Born in 1989. In 2010, concluded is BA in Electronic Music and Musical Production. In 2012, concluded is MSc in Interactive Music and Sound Design with high distinction from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. Since 2010, he is a member of the Digitópia Collective at Casa da Música, Porto. Nowadays, he balances his time between personal work, Digitópia Collective, collaborations and commissioned projects.

José Alberto Gomes born in Porto in 1983. He started studying music at the School of Music’s Oscar Silva, where he graduated as an external student of piano at the Conservatoire of Porto. In 2007 completed a degree in Composition at the School of Music and Performing Arts and attended the Dartington College of Arts in England for a semester through. Created strong bonds with new technological possibilities and the role of music in music theater, film, installations and electronic improvisation, taking particular interest in seeking new ways and new musical “places”.
He taught in the courses of Electronic Music and Music Production – ESART, Audiovisual Communication and Multimedia – Lusófona University of Porto and Composition – ESMAE-IPP.
He is the curator of the project Digitópia of Casa da Música Foundation were investigate and guides a number of workshops in computer music creation and performances of the Education Department.
Currently is doing his PhD in Computer Music at Catholic University with a FCT scholarship.
He performs regularly in public projects both in solo and group projects. He is creator in music and sound design for theater plays and videos; creation and programming interactive sound installations; and composing for electronic and instrumental ensembles.

Interview with Filipe Lopes

Filipe Lopes was born in 1981, in Porto. He is a composer with strong bonds with electronic music and new media, collaborating as well in cinema, theatre or video-installations. In 2013 he won the European prize ECPNM for Live Electronic Music, using “Do Desenho e do Som”, a software conceived and built by him. At the moment, he has a scholarship by Fundação da Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), pursuing a PhD in Digital Media at Universidade do Porto and UT Austin. Supervised by Carlos Guedes and Bruce Pennycook, his area of investigation is focused on creating music with a space.

(Filipe Lopes) What is the purpose and how emerged this installation? Any reason for it to take place in the Boulingrin market?

(Digitópia) It started with an invitation by the 23.03, an association for the promotion and dissemination of contemporary art. The market was a proposal from the association, and we were very pleased to received it.

The idea of the city, as something that people want (or not) to transmit is interesting. How do you approach it sonically? How do you discover the characteristics that people don’t want to convey?

This element will be addressed in the musical content of the installation(1). During the residence process, we were in Reims as guests, and in this natural process of interaction, people will conveying the idea they have of their city, their own interpretation. Which is not necessarily a planned masking or exaggerating certain qualities. For example, was regularly told us that the inhabitants of Reims are not warm or welcoming, something that we did not feel at all in our experience. Often, sounds that we thought to be part of the Reims identity were not even.

By the way, as R. Murray Shafer pointed out, when we are dealing with an unknown space, we naturally hear sounds in a different way, also we are susceptible to understand the soundscape in a different way from those who already live in this place, or hear it on a daily basis. Did you had the opportunity to compare your impressions with those of the locals?

As you said, we as foreigners probably had an easier time finding the sound profile of the city. One sound that immediately comes to mind is the horn of the trams, which was different from any other trams we have heard before. Another great sound is the massive reverberant halls from the cathedral. This are the kind of sounds that stands out on the soundscape, even though they’re completely normal for the Reims citizens. This was an important part of the research, since we had to gather as much information as possible regarding this ideas, and the only way to do it was to listen properly and carefully.

Regarding space and sound, and since you talked so much about the city as you talked about the market, is there any relation between them in the sound piece? Do you understand the city and the market as different spaces?

The market was abandoned, reaching a state of near ruin. This led to a point where even demolition was considered by the authorities. Faced with this possibility along with undergoing public discussion, the idea of recovery the building eventually “won”, leading to its reconstruction.

We are talking about a building that acquired or reacquired, if you will, its special character. Since its early days, the building was a identified by its architectural uniqueness, thus calling the attention of the architectural community. This is the first relationship with the city, an architectural icon that lived between uniqueness and ruin. Secondly, the social relationship of the market, being a local convergence of both, the city and surrounding areas.

Considering this, we will “use” the market as an historical symbol with the mostly representative sound elements. Furthermore, we will use its acoustic space and properties, through a feedback system that can be seen as a metaphor of a trading space, which implies the exchange and permanent contact, such as the constant exchange between the energy that dissipates and the energy that is reintroduced into the system.

If I understood correctly, the sounds that will be playing through the speakers will be made a posteriori. What is the character of the piece, and in which way does it relates with the space?

Thats right, an important part of the installation is an 8 channels piece that will be reproduced by the system. Its character is mainly our understanding of the cultural and historical heritages of the city. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are using concrete sounds, which probably would be the most literal way to convey some ideas. Instead, we made some acoustic measurements that helped us to have an overview of building acoustic behaviour. This led us to use different strategies, rather than go for the use of concrete elements and audio samples manipulation. Also, since the whole system is based on an audio feedback system, it doesn’t make sense to disassociate the sound from the space.

I am very curious about the idea of the listener as an active element of the composition. It is obvious that the audience will have an impact on the hall’s acoustic response, still does it makes the listener an active element? Or does the “active” refers to the audience’s listening role?

The microphones are disposed above each speaker. Our aim is to have the listener’s walking freely on space, that is to say, that they eventually can emit any sound that will be a part of the piece during its playback period. Of course, this will lead to the addition of new content for the piece. While we don’t necessarily have this purpose, we still face this in an open way.

This kind of works share some resemblances with works such as Alvin Lucier’s “I’m Sitting in a Room”, Jacob Kirkegaard’s “Four Rooms”, or even Pedro Rebelo’s “Partial Space”. Is there any singularity in your work when compared to the ones I referred to?

Our aim is not to do a recreation of those works and we are aware that the methodology its not completely unique. However, the way in which we approach the system and the content that we are introducing, is. We can see the feedback technique as a tool that allows us to explore the sound space with unique singularities, however the whole narrative and experience as to do with content and articulation of sonic movements. In this way, this piece makes sense in this time and in this (Boulingrin) space.

For instance, unity between light and audio is a vastly explored concept, and has been widely used over the past decade. However, as it happens with sound component, the articulation a movements of light and shadow in the space, would be something unique, that wouldn’t behave in the same way if disposed in a different space. In this way, we are taking methodologies from different works and contexts, applying them to our unique singularity, which is the market.

The book “Sonic Experience: a guide to everyday sounds”, by Augoyard and Torgue(2), reports several acoustic phenomena which are notorious in the auditory perception while carrying a musical expression, such as reverberation, echo, among others. Being the market as large and reverberant (as you mentioned previously in the abstract), don’t you think that the variety of acoustic phenomena is underused?

The space is huge. Until we decided to go for the 8 columns spread in the central 400 m2 area, we have tested different setups that ranged from disposing the speakers to suspend them in the ceiling or chandeliers, in order to explore the space as much as possible, as well as to enhance different acoustic experiences. Although, being a functioning market, instead of a space where we could work and set all up in one week. This constraint has obligated us to focus on a methodology that would allows to reach our aims within the time we have.

In this way, the use of space remains the most important element, which is addressed in the composition process, considering the acoustic measurements that were previously made, and taking advantage of the frequencies which are enhanced and those which are cancelled. Lastly, the disposition of the eight speakers through the space, which obviously plays an important role on the exploration of the sound space.

In the book “Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?” from Blesser and Salter(3), sound is often referred as a “space illuminator”. Rasmussen also observes that, one can’t hear architecture since it doesn’t produce any sound, however, it emits no light and can still be seen. They are both interesting analogies, while in their case the term illumination is used metaphorically, in your case it is literal. One can even say that as the resonant frequencies are revealed through the feedback process, the visual space follows the opposite path.

Why do you felt the need to use light in a work that is obviously focused on sound, and therefore, to what extend do you think that light will enhance the sonic experience?

On one hand, for us it is important to have control over light, in order to enhance the acousmatic experience. On the other hand, we are interested on the relation of sound and light gestures and their behaviour in such a space. Nonetheless, it is essentially a reinforcement of the listener’s sensorial abilities.

During the exhibition period, will the space work as a market or will it be closed?

During the presentation, the space won’t work as a market but is still open to the public. As such, the audience plays an important role on the piece, affecting both the feedback system, since their presence alters the acoustic response of the space. Additionally, if the audience starts to emit louder sounds, those will automatically became part of the piece as we previously mentioned.

In the abstract, you refer to the work as being site-specific. It is clear that you use idiosyncratic elements from the space, and I think thats the reason why you define it as site-specific. What makes a given work site-specific? Is it mostly related with the elements, the way you use these elements, both perhaps…?

In one way it has to do with the elements that we use. Also, the space asked for this kind of approach. We are always conditioned by the space where we are intervening and by the aesthetic references that we carry. Therefore, I (José Alberto Gomes) can say that my aesthetic background can lead me to make use of similar systems in similar spaces, however, the sonic material is unique, being a specific element of space and time. In this case, the centenary of the First World War, an event which destroyed a large part of Reims, as well as our experience during the first part of the residency.

(1) this interview was held in spring 2014, i.e before the actual public performance of the piece.
(2) Sonic Experience: A Guide To Everyday Sounds” – Jean-François Augoyard, Henri Torgue. (McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP, Apr 5, 2006)
(3) Spaces speak, Are you Listening? : Experiencing Aural Architecture” – Barry Blesser, Linda-Ruth Salter. (MIT Press, 2007)

Nicolas Canot
Uncorporealized

Although radically different both in their means and attitude, Anoph Speia and Spin, the two acoustic creations presented here as part of Pr10/20#00 artist-in-residence program, share a common reflection, inquiring as they are into the questions of the spatial and social position of the listener listening, and the individualization of the listening experience.

Following the rise of the modern concert hall in the 19th century, the concert-goer was made to give way to the progress of music by forgoing their dancing, or at the very least moving body, in favor of increasingly learned composition and technical playing. The spirit as a pure ear, abiding by the rules of the auditorium: “sit down, shut up, and listen”.

Popular music such as Rock and Jazz(1) appear to have been comparatively spared by this evolution. It might be the case, simply because they kept intact, more or less, their relation to the beat, linking music to dance and dance to the body. At any rate the situation today is that of composers and interpreters of scholarly music facing an audience somehow uncorporealized (or could one say: cast off into abstract, unfleshliminal space?).

The audience, it would seem, seamlessly adopted its new role: one only has, to pay attention to the rising tide of bouts of coughing and throat-clearings engulfing the concert-hall in between movements of a concerto to convince themselves of the fact; or better yet, to feel the rattling moment of solitude the spectator suffers, who didn’t expect a Gigue after the Saraband. How quickly then does the fellow music-lover turn into a neighborly nuisance!

Technology paralleled this evolution towards the individualization of the listening experience with the domestication of recorded or broadcasted music at the beginning of the 20th century, followed by its nomad/monad-isation(2) with the invention and spectacular spreading of head-set use, from Sony’s Walkman cassette-players in the early 80’s, all the way to today’s digital-encoding formats (such as mp3) that let us carry around with us extensive sound or music-libraries, spirited away into but a few grams of precious metal.

We are about to reach a new technical landmark in individualized listening (with head-set) thanks to the encoding technology binaural(3). It already works beautifully, but the updating of smartphones and other portable audio-file players with personalized HRTF(4) filters will further improve it(5).

Yet a sound wave is a sound wave and music just air, essentially!

Anoph Speia and Spin turn these questions on their head: Anoph Speia stops and sits down the auditor, quite ideally, into a comfortable deckchair, and straps them with a headset. The auditor is led to focus their attention on the spatial localization of sounds that don’t actually exist anywhere. Layers upon layers of these permanently moving sounds seem at times to be emitted inside the auditor’s body; a body, however, always reminded of the outside world (and its possible dangers) by the physical phenomenon of acoustic pressure. In this fashion the auditor is almost completely denied their freedom: freedom to dance, freedom of movement, freedom to complain even, since their neighbors won’t hear them! They give complete command to the composer – individualization turns to sweet alienation.

Heading in the opposite direction, Spin frees the auditor, letting them run the risk of frustration. The pair of rotating loudspeakers that form the original installation shape the exhibition space into an acoustic space, where sound waves, projected forward, are reflected or absorbed by the walls before dispersing and scaling the room. Each hearing body, unconstrained, perceives an individualized version of the piece dependent upon their own localization. In so doing they also disrupt, subvert what the others perceive since each absorbing body becomes a tiny part of the global acoustic system, a stand-in – of sorts – for the neighborly nuisance of the concert-hall, an avatar whose own body alters each perception.

The auditor faces the difficult question built in the exercise of liberty, the question of choice: what hear I if I stay, what lose I if I move? Full powers have been granted them, what will they do?

Notes about Spin#01(6)

The piece performed under the dome of Reims’ Boulingrin market was a half-hour long electro-acoustic improvisational performance relying on old and recently collected sound-material.

These materials all had in common the fact that they had been collected in Reims, on several separate occasions such as, amongst others, the commissioning of the TGV interconnection railway station, the 800th birthday of the cathedral Notre-Dame de Reims, or the renovation of the Boulingrin market.
These sounds had been used in previous creations as raw acoustic material, out of their original context, but surprisingly had, to this day, neither been confronted to one another nor to the places of their recording. These places, although diverse, share common traits: they are huge spaces, transit areas, and because of their different functions they all present particular, easily identifiable acoustical characteristics. Today, they also all have to do with mass tourism and its practices, which implies another set of characteristics (the varied sounds of foreign languages mingle at Boulingrin’s Saturday morning market, shuttles’ engines hum on the parking areas surrounding the Cathedral, the coming and going of trains and passengers is announced by narrow band loudspeakers at the railway station, etc.)

Here these audio samples have been divided into two categories: Some are kept apart to be broadcasted raw (without the electronic do-over that would render them unrecognizable, rootless, defined spatially yet territorially unbound), while the rest went through, or will have to go through more radical electro-acoustic procedures focusing, notably, on time-scale oppositions (between sounds processed using convolution and microsounds obtained through granular synthesis, for example). On top of that other sounds of purely electronic origin add contrast: sine wave beat frequencies, impulse responses passed through resonant filters, etc.

Played on a 2500 sq. ft. quadraphonic set-up, sometimes from a single source, sometimes from all of them in a circle or in fast random succession, these materials considerably gained in scope thanks to Boulingrin’s acoustical response (mainly “slapback” echo and reverberation), especially in that the interpolation applied when panning from one speaker to another, for example, or the speed at which each sound circled round the set-up allowed the auditor to feel the space of the broadcasting just as well as its time components. It goes without saying that the massive dimensions of the building (a concrete wall topped by a thin but gigantic dome) call for high volume, if, at least, one does mean to draw upon the space’s own acoustical energy to liberate its latent sound-character. There is, right there, a paradox: the volume needed to conjure up these architectural and acoustical aspects will turn the market-space into a resonator, and the reverberation created will hinder the auditor’s ability to precisely locate the source of each sound. It’s as if the building, now itself a paradoxical instrument, played against itself, by amplifying and multiplying the sounds that would blur its contours. And the entire hall thus became a vehicle of sound; a grand sound-vessel to which the reverberation added a spiritual, shamanic dimension, like a cathedral or a cavern, or as Pascal Quignard writes: an echo temple.

As the Boulingrin market is a semi-open space, each auditor’s autonomy as concerns the way they would listen or interact with the sound was further amplified by the early choice they were given, to enter or not the half-lit grounds of the building. From the outside, the improvisation could at times be heard as a long, dull roar pierced through by shrill signals and saturated analogic howls. Inside fell a fine autumn rain of numerical particles so slight one wouldn’t have heard them out of doors. But of course, as what was perceived from the outside could have little to do with what was to be heard inside, the auditor was, as it were, left free again, chancing it against frustration.

(1) The statement isn’t as valid nowadays in the case of jazz, where more and more frequently the concert-goers find themselves in the same fixed, seating position as the auditors of scholarly music. This could have to do with the increasing complexity of jazz composition, where the metrical and rhythmical developments as well as the root choruses showcase growing levels of harmonic abstraction.
(2) Neologism based on Giordanno Bruno’s or Edmund Husserl’s theory of monads.
(3) A physical modelization of the audio signal that aims at reproducing into a head-set the spectral characteristics of a sound heard under natural conditions (depending on the azimuth and elevation of the source). The binaural treatment of a sound allows auditors to hear it as they would within a sphere, broadcasted from several hundred loud-speakers.
(4) Head Related Transfer Functions: Mathematical modelization used in the applying of pre-broadcasting filters on sounds meant to be played on a head-set, in order to adapt them to each auditor’s specific torso and face morphotypes. Judging by the high growth-rate in digital devices’ processing power, these techniques, still resource-greedy for today’s processors, should become more and more common in the future.
(5) See http://nouvoson.radiofrance.fr and ad hoc system, as recently developed by Radio France.
(6) The generic name ”Spin” (in the early 20th century, atomic physics sense of the word) is used here for a series of acoustic creations all concerned with the idea of rotation.
(7) See for example http://trapeze-revue.net/spip.php/article41 and https://soundcloud.com/nakatano/heterotopia-in-situ.
(8) A sort of acoustic mise en abîme?
(9) The rushing-by of TGVs immediately followed by long periods of silence at the train station, religious chanting and the acoustic manifestations of visitors/tourists at the cathedral, the sounds of renovation amplified by the enormous reverberation of the vault at the Boulingrin market.
(10) For a complete study on the phenomenon and methods of the granulation of sounds see Curtis Roads, Microsounds, MIT Press, 2002.
(11) In the realm of audio mixing, the term panning refers to an array of techniques used for the spatialization of sounds. Its aim is to give the auditor a sensation of space, rendered by a variation in the sounds heard or their intensity depending on the direction.
(12) A famous example is that of the Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, WA. (U.S.A) whose collapse, caused by forced resonance when its own structural frequency was matched by the wind’s periodic frequency, was recorded on camera on November 7th, 1940. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to exist any specifically sound-oriented archive of this exceptional acoustic event!
(13) On this topic, see Pascal Quignard, La haine de la musique, Paris, Gallimard, 1996.
(14) For a complete study on the « social » act of everyday listening, see Brandon Labelle, Acoustic Territories, Sound culture and everyday life, Continuum, New-York – London, 2010.
(15) See above, Uncorporealized.