Paper Session 1
Development, Composition, and Performance in the Early Years of IKO: A Practice-Based Perspective by Gerriet Krishna Sharma
This session provides an overview of how IKO, originally conceived as a scientific instrument, evolved into a distinctive loudspeaker-based musical system through sustained artistic practice and research.
Following my initial encounter with the prototype in 2008, I was particularly struck by the instability and variability of its spatial sound phenomena, which differed markedly from conventional loudspeaker environments.
Over the subsequent eighteen years, a small interdisciplinary group of scientists and I systematically investigated the conditions under which these phenomena could be observed, stabilized, and artistically shaped.
Within my artistic practice, IKO has been explored and presented in more than seventy concert settings, spanning a wide range of architectural and acoustic contexts.
These performances functioned as experimental platforms for examining the interaction between spatial configuration, sound behavior, and perceptual experience.
This session outlines key findings from this long-term inquiry, focusing on the practical conditions necessary for effective deployment and composition with IKO, and reflects on the implications for its continued development as both a research tool and an expressive instrument.
Gerriet K. Sharma (www.gksh.net) is a Berlin-based composer, media artist, and artistic researcher in spatial practices. Within the past 20 years he was deeply involved in the spatialisation of electroacoustic and instrumental compositions in Ambisonics and Wave-Field Synthesis. Furthermore, he was extensively concerned with textural transformation processes into 3D-sound sculptures. He studied Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) and composition & computer music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). In October 2016 he completed his doctorate “Composing with Sculptural Sound Phenomena in Computer Music” at the scientific-artistic doctoral school Graz. From 2009 to 2015 he was curator of “signale-graz” concert series for electroacoustic music, algorithmic composition, radio art, and performance at MUMUTH/KUG His works were presented at international festivals, conferences and symposia. Sculptural works for the icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO) and loudspeaker hemispheres were presented amongst others at Darmstädter Summer Courses 2014, Music Biennale Zagreb 2015, New York Electronic Music Festival 2016, Kontakte Festival Berlin 2017 & 25, and Wiener Festwochen 2022, Berlin Art week 2025. He received numerous awards and scholarships amongst the German Sound Art Award 2010. Senior artistic researcher within the three-year project “Orchestrating Space by Icosahedral Loudspeaker” (OSIL) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). He was appointed DAAD Edgard Varèse guest-professor at the TU Berlin in 2017/18. Publications in international journals and books on spatial practices, music and sound – “Aural Sculpturality – Spatio-temporal Phenomena within Auditive Media Techniques” was published by ZKM in 2019. His binaural spatial sound model (ssm) firniss redux was published by mille plateaux in 2020 and was part of the lumbung radio project at documenta 15. Initiator of the Special Interest Group “Spatial Aesthetics and Artificial Environments” within the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) and co-founder of the “Lab for Spatial Aesthetics in Sound” (spæs: www.spaes.org)) at Funkhaus Berlin in 2020. From 2022 to 24 he was appointed guest professor for experimental sound and space at HfG/ZKM Karlsruhe. In October 2024, his AI-assisted composition for chamber orchestra, electronics, spatialization with two IKOs and reactive piano “Th1s 1s W4t3r” was premiered in the Beethovensaal of the Liederhalle Stuttgart. Since 2025 he is fellow at the Electronic Studio of the TU Berlin, establishing a new lecture series “Sound as Mediatised Construction of Space”. He is founding member of the international Spatial Sound Consortium www.spatialsoundlab.org
10.40-11am: Master multiple spherical arrays in six easy steps! by Angela McArthur
Working with multiple channels of audio is a challenge for many reasons, yet technical aspects often become a focus. With so many tools and technologies now available, we might assume that success for a piece of work rests upon its engineering. However, the challenge of speaking honestly about the aesthetic or conceptual imperatives and rigour behind spatial work is often neglected by comparison. Just because we can do something, does it mean we should? Which communities can we draw from, for approaches which attend to both technical and conceptual spatialities? And how do we master multiple spherical arrays by the end of this presentation?!
Dr. Angela McArthur is an artist, academic and interdisciplinary advocate. She leads a Master’s programme in spatial sound in the department of Anthropology at University College London. She has undertaken many artist residencies and interdisciplinary collaborations, including a five month residency working with the IKO loudspeaker at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM) in Graz. She initiated the first UK tour of IKO works in 2019. Her work centres around the practice and theorisation of aesthetics in sound, underrepresented (including other-than-human) onto-epistemologies, and ocean environments. She champions diversity in access and representation. She’s worked in studio, live and location environments and founded Soundstack, an annual series of workshops, masterclasses and concerts about spatial sound aesthetics.
11-11.20am: “Artificial ” trajectories on the IKO by Sinan Bökesoy
This presentation introduces ANEMOI, an ongoing research project and software application for composing and performing real-time spatial sound trajectories on the IKO icosahedral loudspeaker using AI-generated scores. Rather than manually specifying discrete beam positions, composers describe motion in natural language to a large language model, which translates their intent into continuous mathematical trajectories — orbits, figures, distributed pulses etc. — evaluated at high resolution and dispatched as OSC beamforming commands.
Sinan Bökesoy is a London-based sound artist, and the principal developer of sonicLAB. Holding a Ph.D. in computer music from Université Paris 8, under the direction of Horacio Vaggione, Bökesoy has carved a niche for himself in the synthesis of self-evolving sonic structures. Inspired by composers such as Xenakis, his work leverages algorithmic approaches, mathematical models, and physical processes to generate novel synthesis results. Bökesoy strives to establish a balanced workflow that bridges theory and practice, as well as artistic and scientific approaches. Currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, Bökesoy has presented his work at venues such as Ars Electronica / Starts Prize, IRCAM, Radio France Festival, and international biennials and art galleries. He has published and presented at conferences including ICMC, NIME, JIM, and SMC, as well as in the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press).