My name is Otto Iivari, and I’m a Finnish composer pursuing my artistic research doctorate at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. I’m currently at the University of Greenwich’s Sound/Image Research Centre for a three-month traineeship as a Visiting Researcher. My focus is on acousmatic music and using immersive audio technologies in the composition process. The traineeship takes place from September 14 to December 14.

Last November, in 2025, I visited the Sound/Image Festival, where one of my acousmatic pieces, Diagonals, was presented. I was very excited to participate and meet people from the field, since the UK has such a long and outstanding history in acousmatic music, and the Sound/Image Festival attracts a lot of international composer colleagues whom I finally got to meet. Acousmatic music practice is very rare in Estonia and Finland, so this aspect of sharing thoughts and networking with other composers becomes especially important. During the festival visit, I was struck by the passion and kindness of the Sound/Image staff. I immediately felt warm and welcome, and in the back of my head, I remembered that part of the doctorate at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre involves spending three months at another institute abroad. This wasn’t my plan for the visit, but already during that festival, I started asking if I could join the team somehow for three months, and I’m very happy that it eventually worked out.

In my artistic research project, I’m looking into dance theories and human movement analysis, and how they might inform, inspire, and possibly reshape my approach to spatial electroacoustic composition using ambisonic sound. The immersive audio technologies at Sound/Image are among the best in the world, and it’s obvious how useful it is for my ongoing artistic research to be able to work in such an environment. Anyhow, sincerely, I would say the main reason for wanting to be here is the vibe and the people of Sound/Image. I somehow feel like the more experienced you get in your own practice, the more you start to also value the people you work with. My supervisor here is Prof. Andrew Knight, and I think that already during my first two weeks, we’ve had invaluable discussions about the current state of electroacoustic music practices.

My goal as a Visiting Researcher here is to learn from the people and share what I know as much as possible. I also want to experience and be part of the everyday life at Sound/Image, rather than only focusing on my own research. I’m looking forward to taking part in the work behind the scenes, including helping with the organisation of the Sound/Image Festival, and to getting a better understanding of everything that goes into creating an event like this. I’m also very excited to get to be part of helping out the third-year students with their first research projects. And lastly, I must say that the view from the studio window in the King William building offers me some much-needed inspiration and a change of perspective during the last year of my doctoral studies.

I will be presenting my doctoral project, Moving Sound: A Choreography-Inspired Approach to Spatial Electroacoustic Composition, in one of the listening labs. The lab session includes my latest composition, Zoetrope, which recently won first prize in the International Competition for Acousmatic Music Métamorphoses 2026 during the L’Espace du Son festival in Belgium. I warmly welcome everyone to come and listen to the creative output and ideas of my work.