Instruments for Spatial Sound Control in Real Time Music Performances. A Review

The systematic arrangement of sound in space is widely considered as one important compositional design category of Western art music and acoustic media art in the 20th century. A lot of attention has been paid to the artistic concepts of sound in space and its reproduction through loudspeaker systems. Much less attention has been attracted by live-interactive practices and tools for spatialisation as performance practice. As a contribution to this topic, the current study has conducted an inventory of controllers for the real time spatialisation of sound as part of musical performances, and classified them both along different interface paradigms and according to their scope of spatial control. By means of a literature study, we were able to identify 31 different spatialisation interfaces presented to the public in context of artistic performances or at relevant conferences on the subject. Considering that only a small proportion of these interfaces combines spatialisation and sound production, it seems that in most cases the projection of sound in space is not delegated to a musical performer but regarded as a compositional problem or as a separate performative dimension. With the exception of the mixing desk and its fader board paradigm as used for the performance of acousmatic music with loudspeaker orchestras, all devices are individual design solutions developed for a specific artistic context. We conclude that, if controllers for sound spatialisation were supposed to be perceived as musical instruments in a narrow sense, meeting certain aspects of instrumentality, immediacy, liveness, and learnability, new design strategies would be required

Artech 2008: proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Digital Arts

ARTECH 2008 is the fourth international conference held in Portugal and Galicia on the topic of Digital Arts. It aims to promote contacts between Iberian and International contributors concerned with the conception, production and dissemination of Digital and Electronic Art. ARTECH brings the scientific, technological and artistic community together, promoting the interest in the digital culture and its intersection with art and technology as an important research field, a common space for discussion, an exchange of experiences, a forum for emerging digital artists and a way of understanding and appreciating new forms of cultural expression. Hosted by the Portuguese Catholic University’s School of Arts (UCP-EA) at the City of Porto, ARTCH 2008 falls in alignment with the main commitment of the Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR) to promote knowledge in the field of the Arts trough research and development within UCP-AE and together with the local and international community. The main areas proposed for the conference were related with sound, image, video, music, multimedia and other new media related topics, in the context of emerging practice of artistic creation. Although non exclusive, the main topics of the conference are usually: Art and Science; Audio-Visual and Multimedia Design; Creativity Theory; Electronic Music; Generative and Algorithmic Art; Interactive Systems for Artistic Applications; Media Art history; Mobile Multimedia; Net Art and Digital Culture; New Experiences with New Media and New Applications; Tangible and Gesture Interfaces; Technology in Art Education; Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. The contribution from the international community was extremely gratifying, resulting in the submission of 79 original works (Long Papers, Short Papers and installation proposals) from 22 Countries. Our Scientific Committee reviewed these submissions thoroughly resulting in a 73% acceptance ratio of a diverse and promising body of work presented in this book of proceedings. This compilation of articles provides an overview of the state of the art as well as a glimpse of new tendencies in the field of Digital Arts, with special emphasis in the topics: Sound and Music Computing; Technology Mediated Dance; Collaborative Art Performance; Digital Narratives; Media Art and Creativity Theory; Interactive Art; Audiovisual and Multimedia Design.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio