Verbalizing Sculptural Sound Phenomena in Electronic Music and Sound Arts – Towards a Share Perceptual Space (SPS)

Gerriet Krishna Sharma / Angela McArthur, IEM Graz / Queen Mary London

This contribution is concerned with questions whether the aesthetics of spatialized electronic music of today take into account the perception of the audience at all and how to find terms that could be helpful for composition and analysis of spatialized sound. We are dealing for some time now with spatial sound phenomena that have spatial dimensions like proliferation, width, height etc. forming diverse sound masses that can penetrate, layer, move around each other and define by their properties – space itself. However, to date with the different formats existing, projection techniques and devices, software tools, spatial concepts explained and discussed it is virtually unresolved what the different listening groups hear where in the created space, how they experience plastic sound objects and how they would describe them for themselves. Therefore, the question of common spatial perception remains important in a field of art that claims space and spatial experience as aesthetically being central. Thus, these phenomena are perceived by composers, scientists and audiences causing ‘something’ we call a shared perceptual space (SPS) defined as the intersubjective space where the perception of these different listener groups intersect. While there has been plenty of exchange between science and art since the beginning of computer music, there has been very little between composers and the audience about the possibilities of appreciation and different perceptions of the spatial sound phenomena that are actually inherent in the spatial sound-composition. Electroacoustic music hosts two diametrically opposite cultures: On one side we find the exact sciences of acoustics, informatics, and engineering all of which define conditions of sound production, the very instruments of executing any compositional design. On the other side we find the culture of music appreciation by the ear. Whereas the first aspect is heavily loaded with well-defined verbal concepts that are shared among a community of specialists, the aural, musical aspect that embodies musical thought and projects it to the audience is almost devoid of a consistent terminology as far as electroacoustic music is concerned. Thus a fundamental problem within every aesthetical discussion in this field resides in the contradicting approaches of science and art: Scientific discourse seeks to eliminate ambiguity in its terminology and definitions. An artistic discourse would on the contrary often seek to be as polyvalent as possible, suggesting a network of meanings or implications. Thus the scientific ideal is more often than not alien to an aesthetically oriented discourse. However, there is also a need for some intersubjective agreements in the aesthetic field so that music can be meaningfully discussed in words. Within this lecture approaches and methodologies are introduced how to develop and derive a specific terminology on “sculpturality” for a certain way of spatial sound projection. By this we intent to encourage the aesthetic discussion about space in spatial sound composition and therefore enlarge the compositional contingencies of this art.

Biography

Angela McArthur is an artist, lecturer, and PhD student at Queen Mary University London. Her work draws from the technologies, perception and art of sound in space, to tackle an intersection of the three. In recent years she has been focused on the aesthetics of distance in spatial audio for immersive environments. She has worked in studio, live and location environments, and maintains a commitment to field recording as part of the compositional process. Her explorations centre around natural environments and micro listening. 

The interdisciplinary imperatives of spatial audio have shaped her thinking and work, and she values an almost intertextual approach to working across different disciplines. With a background in sound as well as image, she is interested in the assumed need for sound and image to synchretise, and adhere to realism. She challenges such notions by foregrounding the aesthetic potential inherent in the medium, and asking whether spatial audio attributes might not instead elicit new ways of listening. What does it mean to listen in three-dimensions?

She was recently artist-in-residence 2019 at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM) I Graz. She recently exhibited at Ars Electronica (cinematic VR film in collaboration with the BBC), Tate Modern (Exchange, in collaboration with the People’s Palace Projects), Society & The Sea (audiovisual installation) and worked with a US-based geo-scientist’s infrasonic recordings of the ocean, for an installation to highlight the impact of marine acoustic pollution. In 2017 she co-directed a Sheffield Docfest-shortlisted cinematic VR film, using interactive granular synthesis. She is working towards her PhD at the Centre for Digital Music and in the Media & Arts Tech programme. She completed her masters in the School of Music & Fine Art at the University of Kent with composer Claudia Molitor and fine artist Sarah Turner. She has lived mostly in London, but other places include New York, Sydney,

Canada, and Hong Kong.   www.angelamcarthur.com  Twitter @AngelaMcArthur1

Gerriet Krishna Sharma is a composer and sound artist. He studied Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and composition/computer music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. In October 2016 he completed his doctorate at the scientific-artistic doctoral school Graz. His thesis is titled “Composing Sculptural Sound Phenomena in Computer Music”. He lives in Berlin and Graz. 

Within the past 15 years he was deeply involved in spatialisation of sound in 3D environments like Ambisonics and Wave-Field Synthesis and the transformation of sound into body-space relations. Between 2010 and 15 he conducted the series of works „Oblivious to Gravity“, an artistic research project with electroacoustic aural architectures in vacant urban spaces. Commissioned by the cultural fonds of the state of Styria/Austria (A9) and the Sparkassenstiftung Cologne/Germany.

He was senior researcher and composer within the three year artistic research project “Orchestrating Space by Icosahedral Loudspeaker” (OSIL) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) with 40 publications, over 20 lectures and 12 internationally premiered compositions. He had been appointed as DAAD Edgar Varèse guest-professor at Electronic Music Studio, Audio communication (AK), TU Berlin for WS 2017/18. Since 2019 he is working on a book on „spatial practices“ and new compositions, exhibitions and a lecture series.    

https://www.gksh.net/