The perception of potential: interference, dimensionality and knowledge

This paper presents a system that investigates the sonification of wave interaction in a performance space and its interaction with a live performer – the illumination of sonic activity within a real space, in contrast to conventional ALife algorithmic, event- or material-based approaches. The model maintains three parallel representations of the entire live/virtual system: wavespace, symbol space and performance space. The cross-modal analysis and representation of behavior is important to the evolution of the system, which displays emergence on multiple levels of structure. Micro-evolution takes place within the population of wave-emitting and –listening agents. A higher level of structure emerges from their aggregate in interaction with the live performer, and a formal level as symbol space learns from the performer. Cross-modal representation is seen as a significant factor in the evolution of Western art music, in the development of multi-leveled structure and of work that affords many dimensions of engagement. We discuss the nature of knowledge produced through working with such systems and the role of the subject in ALife-generated knowledge. New models of simulation-derived knowledge are seen as important to cultural understanding

After Sound: Toward a Critical Music - G. Douglas Barrett. London: Bloomsbury, 2016 [Book review]

This review article considers issues raised by G. Douglas Barrett's recent original but problematic book

Folto Giardino II

Chamber ensemble, live electronics and installatio

Music, discourse and intuitive technology

This paper proposes that intuitive technologies play a vital role in cognition and cultural reception. The case of music is considered in particular. The perceived temporality of contemporary technology is shown to be an artificial barrier to the acknowledgement of longer-term dynamics. The increased role of explanatory metaphors from technology is traced across various fields of study. Processes of sense-making – conscious or otherwise – are seen as an informal, unreflected repertory of mechanisms ranging from predictive models to instrumental metaphors. It is suggested that these derive by assimilation and induction from the technological milieu within which the subject develops and operates. The acquisition of these models and metaphors is itself an imaginative process, based on experience ranging from partial expertise to fantastical extrapolation

Prado Florido (after Guerrero) [Score / CD]

Ensemble La Tricotea & Jonathan Impett Breathless Type of composition - wind quartet - percussion and live electronic

Folto giardino: hybrid cross-pollination of score, performance, installation and technology

This article presents a series of works for chamber ensemble (incorporating both scored and improvised material), electronics and an installation of long strings. The folto giardino of the title (derived from Mozart/Da Ponte) is a listening, performing environment in which a dramaturgy of relationships, of knowing, hearing, understanding or ignoring, can be played out. Such an approach is offered as a way of thinking about form and material when dealing with the hybrid resources typical of contemporary musical work