CuDAS: An interactive curriculum combining pedagogic composition with interactive software for the teaching of music technology

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Within the framework of education of Music Technology for 16-18 year olds there exists a lack of thorough teaching and learning resources sufficient for a broad understanding of the basics of audio and electronic synthesis. This PhD submission outlines the role of the composer in the classroom in addressing this fundamental issue through the development of a curriculum containing pedagogic composition and interactive software. There will be a discussion of the principles of pedagogic methodologies developed by various composers and of the current model of learning provided in Music Technology Alevel. The programming tools used to develop the software are investigated, as well as an exploration into the current learning psychology that informed the curriculum development. This submission consists of a written thesis that accompanies a set of compositions and a multimedia DVD, which includes the software for the CuDAS curriculum. Within this software is contained a presentation of a series of interactive tutorials alongside compositions in the form of scores, recordings and interactive exercises. There is also include written supporting documentation and sound files of techniques and recordings from contrasting genres of music history

Mobile-Based Interactive Music for Public Spaces

With the emergence of modern mobile devices equipped with various types of built-in sensors, interactive art has become easily accessible to everyone, musicians and non-musicians alike. These efficient computers are able to analyze human activity, location, gesture, etc., and based on this information dynamically change, or create an artwork in realtime. This thesis presents an interactive mobile system that solely uses the standard embedded sensors available in current typical smart devices such as phones, and tablets to create an audio-only augmented reality for a singled out public space in order to explore the potential for social-musical interaction, without the need for any significant external infrastructure

Tracing the Compositional Process. Sound art that rewrites its own past: formation, praxis and a computer framework

The domain of this thesis is electroacoustic computer-based music and sound art. It investigates a facet of composition which is often neglected or ill-defined: the process of composing itself and its embedding in time. Previous research mostly focused on instrumental composition or, when electronic music was included, the computer was treated as a tool which would eventually be subtracted from the equation. The aim was either to explain a resultant piece of music by reconstructing the intention of the composer, or to explain human creativity by building a model of the mind. Our aim instead is to understand composition as an irreducible unfolding of material traces which takes place in its own temporality. This understanding is formalised as a software framework that traces creation time as a version graph of transactions. The instantiation and manipulation of any musical structure implemented within this framework is thereby automatically stored in a database. Not only can it be queried ex post by an external researcher—providing a new quality for the empirical analysis of the activity of composing—but it is an integral part of the composition environment. Therefore it can recursively become a source for the ongoing composition and introduce new ways of aesthetic expression. The framework aims to unify creation and performance time, fixed and generative composition, human and algorithmic “writing”, a writing that includes indeterminate elements which condense as concurrent vertices in the version graph. The second major contribution is a critical epistemological discourse on the question of ob- servability and the function of observation. Our goal is to explore a new direction of artistic research which is characterised by a mixed methodology of theoretical writing, technological development and artistic practice. The form of the thesis is an exercise in becoming process-like itself, wherein the epistemic thing is generated by translating the gaps between these three levels. This is my idea of the new aesthetics: That through the operation of a re-entry one may establish a sort of process “form”, yielding works which go beyond a categorical either “sound-in-itself” or “conceptualism”. Exemplary processes are revealed by deconstructing a series of existing pieces, as well as through the successful application of the new framework in the creation of new pieces

Proceedings of the 19th Sound and Music Computing Conference

Proceedings of the 19th Sound and Music Computing Conference - June 5-12, 2022 - Saint-Étienne (France). https://smc22.grame.f

Cybernetics in Music

This thesis examines the use of cybernetics (the science of systems) in music, through the tracing of an obscured history. The author postulates that cybernetic music may be thought of as genera of music in its own right, whose practitioners share a common ontology and set of working practices that distinctly differ from traditional approaches to composing electronic music. Ultimately, this critical examination of cybernetics in music provides the framework for a series of original compositions and the foundation of the further study of cybernetic music