In the majority of discussions surrounding the design of digital instruments and real-time performance systems, notions such as control and mapping are seen from a classical systems point of view: the former is often seen as a variable from an input device or perhaps some driving signal, while the latter is considered as the liaison between input and output parameters. At the same time there is a large body of research regarding gesture in performance that is concerned with the expressive and communicative nature of musical performance. While these views are certainly central to a conceptual understanding of ‘instrument’, it can be limiting to consider them a priori as the only proper model, and to mediate one’s conception of digital instrument design by fixed notions of control, mapping and gesture. As an example of an alternative way to view instrumental response, control structuring and mapping design, this paper discusses the concept of gesture from the point of view of the perception of human intentionality in sound and how one might consider this in interaction design.

The article tries to explain different aspects of sound art in public space in the context of an understanding of a modified language of twentieth-century visual art and music. It gives a description of different approaches to colouring situations and contexts with sound. Various examples of sonification and artistic treatments in our surrounding are shown. It shows an artistic practice which is linked to social-cultural aspects and their critical role in art. Therefore sound installations are placed into a genealogy of installation practice in public space.

Throughout the short history of interactive digital music, there have been frequent calls for a new language of interaction that incorporates and acknowledges the unique capabilities of the computational medium. In this paper we suggest that a conceptualisation of possible modes of performance–time interaction can only be sensibly approached in light of the ways that computers alter the social–artistic interactions that are precursive to performance. This conceptualisation hinges upon a consideration of the changing roles of composition, performer and instrument in contemporary practice. We introduce the term behavioural object to refer to software that has the capacity to act as the musical and social focus of interaction in digital systems. Whilst formative, this term points to a new framework for understanding the role of software in musical culture. We discuss the potential for behavioural objects to contribute actively to musical culture through two types of agency: performative agency and memetic agency.

This article discusses the installations that have been produced at the ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics since 1997. The first part of the article will present common characteristics of these installations. The primary quality the installations share is their orientation towards interactivity. Some installations additionally distinguish themselves through their relationship to (computer) games, for example, while others are characterised by their suitability for use as didactic tools. The second part of the article will describe the installations individually and highlight their unique features.

Mobile phones offer an attractive platform for interactive music performance. We provide a theoretical analysis of the sensor capabilities via a design space and show concrete examples of how different sensors can facilitate interactive performance on these devices. These sensors include cameras, microphones, accelerometers, magnetometers and multitouch screens. The interactivity through sensors in turn informs aspects of live performance as well as composition though persistence, scoring, and mapping to musical notes or abstract sounds.

This paper reports a study that sought to discover the necessary aural skills for composing, performing, and understanding electroacoustic (EA) music and the extent of their teachability by traditional aural training according to an analysis of a mixed-method (qualitative/quantitative) questionnaire completed by a purposive sample of 15 experts in the field of electroacoustics. The participants evaluated a list of 50 potentially necessary aural skills, which were gathered from skills described in existing, but insufficiently applied, aural training systems and theoretical methods related to aural perception in EA, and provided additional skills they found necessary for EA. The survey revealed that the aural skills deemed the most necessary for EA by the participants were not regarded as sufficiently teachable by traditional aural training and the majority of the skills considered teachable by traditional aural training were not thought of as significantly necessary for the EA musician. Moreover, among the 50 skills listed in the questionnaire 56 per cent were deemed at least very necessary by the participants, with only 18 per cent of them viewed as sufficiently teachable by traditional aural training. The main implication of this study is a pressing need for further development, research, and experimental testing of aural training methods for EA.

The use of sound for representation and narrative may go beyond what we might conventionally term musical. Film has gradually brought into focus the practice of sound art as something distinct from music yet existing at the end of a unified continuum between abstraction and representation. Music has gradually been subsumed into the soundtrack as another element of the film sound world, and sound design is often on an equal footing with it. Sound designers are now increasingly exploring the more psychological (as opposed to merely representational) dimensions of sound.

This article introduces the recent sound works of Heidi Fast, a Finnish voice and performance artist. Fast’s creative practice operates between art and philosophy, and articulates several ‘zones of becoming’: what Fast designates as ‘the clinical’, ‘the virtual’ and ‘vocal thought-material’. Using a methodology of routing, the article shows how these zones emerge as aesthetic, ethical and political concerns within Fast’s work.

Since 2005, Fast’s sound works have variously taken shape as miniature concerts, social sculptures, imaginary soundscapes and environmental music performances. Drawing upon the writings of theorists who have helped shape her practice, this article argues that Fast uses sound and voice to propose an ‘actualising philosophy’. This philosophy actualises virtualities (unrealised potentials), affecting transformative shifts through tiny mutations in perceptions and behaviours.

In volume 12, number 2 of Organised Sound, we presented a revision of Pierre Schaeffer’s spectromorphology adapted to practical analysis. The present paper shows the steps of applying the proposed method of analysis to a specific work by the Swedish composer Åke Parmerud, as we pursue the application of two other central terms in Schaffer’s analytical work, namely ‘caractère’ and ‘valeur’. Whereas ‘sound-character’ would refer only to a timbral constant that supports pertinent values, we identify a form-building entity, termed integral sound-character, consisting of a union of sound-character and its temporal behaviour.

We present an experimental study on articulation in bowed strings that provides important elements for a discussion about sound synthesis control. The study focuses on bow acceleration profiles and transient noises, measured for different players for the bowing techniques detaché and martelé. We found that maximum of these profiles are not synchronous, and temporal shifts are dependent on the bowing techniques. These results allow us to bring out important mechanisms in sound and gesture articulation. In particular, the results reveal a potential shortcoming of mapping strategies using simple frame-by-frame data-stream procedures. We propose instead to consider input control data as time functions, and consider gesture co-articulation processes.

This article presents a theoretical framework for the design of expressive musical instruments, the Musical Interface Technology Design Space: MITDS. The activities of imagining, designing and building new musical instruments, performing, composing, and improvising with them, and analysing the whole process in an effort to better understand the interface, our physical and cognitive associations with it, and the relationship between performer, instrument and audience can only be seen as an ongoing iterative work-in-progress. It is long-term evolutionary research, as each generation of a new musical instrument requires inventiveness and years of dedication towards the practice and mastery of its performance system (comprising the interface, synthesis and the mappings between them). Many revisions of the system may be required in order to develop musical interface technologies that enable us to achieve truly expressive performances. The MITDS provides a conceptual framework for describing, analysing, designing and extending the interfaces, mappings, synthesis algorithms and performance techniques for interactive musical instruments. It provides designers with a theoretical base to draw upon when creating technologically advanced performance systems, and can be seen as a set of guidelines for analysis, and a taxonomy of design patterns for interactivity in musical instruments. The MITDS focuses mainly on human-centred design approaches to realtime control of the multidimensional parameter spaces in musical composition and performance, where the primary objective is to close the gap between human gestures and complex synthesis methods.

The following discusses the potential of soundscape work to reveal new aspects of our everyday aural environments. Openness to the voice(s) of one’s sonic surroundings is maintained as a hallmark of soundscape works, and also a key component of sound art more generally. Different perspectives and questions are articulated, with a consistent focus on the variety of spaces engaged by both sound(scape) artists and listeners. A case study is presented – a recently initiated sound art project on the part of the author entitled The Icebreaker. The latter is a musical instrument, performance piece and interactive installation made from piezo microphones and ice. Prepared compositions, including soundscape works, are diffused at different moments when one ‘plays’ The Icebreaker. I describe this emergent work as an example of the sort of considerations and negotiations that are at the heart of soundscape/sound art composition. My aim is to demonstrate how sound artworks bring us to attend to sounds we formerly failed to notice, revealing our own reactions to these stimuli at the same time.

Strategically placed with the right degree of persistence and ‘sympathetic vibration’, sound can reveal itself as a potentially devastating force. As used against the Branch Davidian religious sect in 1993 at Waco Texas, the FBI’s little remembered ‘sonic assault’ – involving Tibetan monks in prayer, dentist drills, and other bizarre recordings – arguably contributed to the tragic denouement of events as they were witnessed live on TV by millions around the world. The use of sustained, high-pitched, loud or repetitive noises and music added to an already incendiary narrative endgame, established first by the sect but later supported by the media. This essay draws on this tragic event, and later ‘forensic’ research conducted by the author in the process of writing, scoring and producing an audio performance work, Cantata of Fire. Specifically, it explores the way in which amplified ‘concrete’ sound and electronic ‘viral’ voices were used as a weapon at Waco – materially, psychologically, theatrically and ‘diegetically’. And in the context of a much longer (and repressed) history of sound as used in ‘theatres of war’ and other conflicts, the author reconsiders the overlooked and underestimated powers of sound, music and noise in an age dominated by digital ‘real-time’ electronic media and ‘tele-visual’ surveillance.

During the mid twentieth century, space was developed as a composable dimension. Composers used the three spatial dimensions in their own fashion, but space was understood primarily as an abstract concept. It was not until the development of sound installation art that space was discovered in a concrete manner, explored, performed in and could even acquire its own specificity, called site-sound (Ortsklang).

The article shows consequences and strategies of site-sound installations in three sections – from spatial sound to site-sound, public space as performance venue, and public strategies (acoustic interventions, interactive installations and participatory projects) – with three examples of site-sound installations (Site-Sound Marl Mitte, meta.stases and towersounds.2: watch tower).

Acoustic art in public spaces basically involves installing a space in another existing space, both physically and sensorially, and metaphysically and mentally – an interior space in an exterior space, so to speak. The original quality of sound art lies in the oscillation of interior and exterior space. Thus public spaces intensified by sound art cause transitional spaces to come into being, in a political and a psychoanalytic sense.