The Sound Monad: A Philosophical Perspective on Sound Design

Abstract This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based on the decomposition of complex sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting "sound-atom" on Leibniz's notion of monad, intended both as a "simple substance without parts" and as a "nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis." The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda

Capacidade de imitação de bibliotecas de corda em quartetos

Orientador: Maurício DottoriMonografia (bacharelado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Artes, Comunicação e Design, Curso de Graduação em MúsicaInclui referênciasResumo : Esta pesquisa busca medir a capacidade discriminatória de músicos em relação a excertos musicais reais e virtuais, avaliando a possibilidade de recriação da expressividade musical humana por meios digitais. Para tal, performances de quatro quartetos de corda distintos foram selecionadas e replicadas digitalmente, com a utilização de instrumentos MIDI e bibliotecas de corda. Excertos dos áudios originais e das cópias digitais foram inseridos em um questionário, no qual 260 músicos, de expertises diversas, testaram suas habilidades de diferenciação entre as origens dos trechos tocados. A capacidade de imitação da expressividade humana pelos instrumentos virtuais foi medida utilizando o Jogo da Imitação, de Alan Turing, enquanto as tendências de resposta e os possíveis critérios utilizados foram mensurados e discutidos utilizando a Teoria da Detecção de SinaisAbstract : This research aims to measure the overall discriminatory capability of musicians when it comes to real and virtual musical excerpts, questioning the possibility of replication of human musical expressivity by means of digital tools. Performances of four distinct string quartets were selected and recreated virtually with MIDI instruments and string libraries. Excerpts, extracted from both sources, were inserted in an online survey, in which 260 musicians of various expertises tested their abilities to discern between its origins. The capability of human musical expressiveness by virtual instruments was evaluated making use of Alan Turing’s Imitation Game, while the participant’s responsive tendencies and possible bias were measured and discussed using Signal Detection Theor

Electronic Music Studios London Ltd (EMS), the Synthi 100 synthesizer and the construction of electronic music histories

The study of the institutional electronic music studio has become a popular way of framing historical narratives of postwar electronic music. Recent studies of sonic and musical devices from a material cultures perspective likewise construct histories of electronic music through its technologies. My investigation into Electronic Music Studios (EMS), which was both a studio and an electronic instrument company, starts from a reading of this literature. It also combines archival research with readings from philosophy of technology and science and technology studies (STS) to critically explore the multiple temporalities, discontinuous narratives, and wider cultural significance of electronic music histories. Founded in London in 1969 by Peter Zinovieff, EMS was set up during a period of exciting developments in music, art, design and technology in the UK. It was unique in being both a private studio which hosted prominent composers, and a manufacturer of commercial synthesisers under the name EMS London Ltd. The computer-controlled ‘hybrid’ studio system developed at EMS was among the most advanced of its kind, making EMS an important location in the international development of computer music in the 1970s. I examine the role of the computer in music and other art forms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, asking how wider cultural perceptions of new digital technology affected ideas about computing and creativity. As an instrument manufacturer, EMS was, and is, best known for its VCS3, a small analogue synthesizer launched in 1969. In this study, I focus mainly on the Synthi 100, a large hybrid digital/analogue synthesizer developed in 1970–71. I chart the development of this instrument from its invention to its rehabilitation in the present day. Examining how the Synthi 100 was acquired and used at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, London, and the Electronic Studio at Radio Belgrade, I consider the importance of EMS’s instruments and philosophies to different electronic music studio cultures in the 1970s. Through the lens of the ‘new organology’ of John Tresch and Emily Dolan as well as Susan Leigh Star’s notion of the ‘boundary object’, I develop a ‘map of mediation’ around the Synthi 100 and its users. A number of projects to restore Synthi 100s have taken place in the last decade, both privately and with institutional support. Through a case study of a recent restoration project, I demonstrate that reconstruction and restoration processes help to illustrate the changing status of an historical electronic instrument, from investment through obsolescence, to become a new compositional tool, and, finally, a valuable object through which the cultural heritage of an institution can be enhanced. In conclusion, I propose that the complex entanglement of past and present in electronic music histories can be perceived through the reoperationalisation of historical music technologies

Following the instruments and users: the mutual shaping of digital sampling technologies

The socio-musical practice of sampling is closely associated with the re-use of pre-existing sound recordings and the technological processes of looping. These practices, based on appropriation and repetition, have been particularly common within the genres of hip-hop and Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Yet early digital sampling instruments such as the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument (CMI) were not designed for these purposes. The technologists at Fairlight Instruments in Australia were primarily interested in the use of digital synthesis to imitate the sounds of acoustic instruments; sampling was a secondary concern. In the first half of the thesis, I follow digital sampling instruments like the Fairlight CMI and the E-mu Emulator by drawing on interviews with their designers and users to trace how they were used to sample the sounds of everyday life, loop sequenced patterns of sampled sounds, and sample extracts from pre-existing sound recordings. The second half of the thesis consists of case studies that follow the users of digital sampling technologies across a range of socio-musical worlds to examine the diversity of contemporary sampling practices. Using concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this thesis focuses on the ‘user-technology nexus’ and continues a shift in the writing of histories of technologies from a focus on the designers of technologies towards the contexts of use and ‘the co-construction’ or ‘mutual shaping’ of technologies and their users. As an example of the ‘interpretative flexibility’ of music technologies, digital sampling technologies were used in ways unimagined by their designers and sampling became synonymous with re-appropriation. My argument is that a history of digital sampling technologies needs to be a history of both the designers and the users of digital sampling technologies