Visualizing Acoustic Space

This article explores concepts of acoustic space in postwar media studies, architecture, and spatial music composition. A common link between these areas was the characterization of acoustic space as indeterminate, chaotic, and sensual, a category defined in opposition to a definite, ordered, and rationalized visual space. These conceptual polarities were vividly evoked in an iconic sound-and-light installation, the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. Designed by Le Corbusier, the Philips Pavilion also featured a black-and-white film, color projections, hanging sculptures, and Edgard Varèse’s Poème électronique, a spatial composition distributed over hundreds of loudspeakers and multiple sound routes. Typically remembered as a sequence of abstract sound geometries, the author argues that Poème électronique was instead an allegorical work that told a “story of all humankind.” This narrative was expressed through a series of conceptual binaries that juxtaposed such categories as primitive/enlightened, female/male, racialized/white, and sensual/ rational– contrasts that were framed within the larger dialectic between acoustic and visual space.Cet article explore le concept d’espace acoustique en relation avec les études des médias de l’après-guerre, l’architecture et la composition de musique spatialisée. Le lien entre ces différentes approches est la tendance à définir l’espace acoustique comme indéterminé, chaotique et sensuel, par opposition à un espace visuel défini, ordonné et rationnel. Ces polarisations conceptuelles étaient soulignées à grands traits dans l’installation son et lumière du Pavillon Philips à l’Exposition universelle de Bruxelles de 1958. On trouvait au Pavillon Philips, conçu par Le Corbusier, une projection de films en noir et blanc, des projections de couleurs, des sculptures suspendues et le Poème électronique d’Edgard Varèse, une composition musicale spatialisée diffusée par des centaines de haut-parleurs disséminés dans le Pavillon. Si on l’a souvent décrit comme une suite d’abstractions sonores, l’auteur prétend plutôt que le Poème électronique était au contraire une oeuvre allégorique racontant une « histoire de l’espèce humaine ». Ce récit s’exprimait à travers une série de concepts binaires juxtaposant des catégories telles que primitif/évolué, femelle/mâle, sensuel/rationnel – des contrastes qu s’inscrivaient dans la dialectique plus large entre espaces acoustique et visuel

Urgent listening: a conversation with Hardi Kurda

This conversation, which took place in Oxford, England, is part of a series of conversations hosted by Gascia Ouzounian on the theme “Countersonics: Radical Sonic Imaginaries.” It has been lightly edited for clarity and length

Lockdown sonics: a conversation

This discussion brings together Gascia Ouzounian and Matilde Meireles, collaborators on the research project Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism. They discuss Meireles’s Sunnyside, a composition that was recorded entirely in Meireles’s home in Belfast during the initial Covid-19 lockdowns. Sunnyside is a reflection both on the under-appreciated sounds of domestic spaces, and on the relationship of domestic spaces to wider urban infrastructures. They further reflect on Recomposing the City, a research network founded in 2013 by Ouzounian and architect Sarah Lappin which has brought together numerous sound artists, architects and urbanists in examining questions around sound and urbanism

Aftersound: Mhamad Safa in conversation with Gascia Ouzounian

This conversation, which took place at The Showroom, London, on March 8, 2022, brings together the sound producer and architect Mhamad Safa and the sonic theorist Gascia Ouzounian in exploring Safa’s work on sound, trauma, and acoustic jurisprudence, with a focus on Beirut and Lebanon. The conversation covers a range of topics, from the differential policing of noise along lines of social difference; to earwitnessing war and conflict; to the long-term unfolding of auditory forms of trauma and “sonic aftershocks.” Safa and Ouzounian discuss the need for better legal frameworks for confronting the harms of sound; what “collateral damage” might constitute in the context of listening to warfare; and what justice would mean for survivors of sonic violence

Speculative designs: towards a social music

This paper introduces a collaborative research project in which the authors explored the possibilities of music making using social media. We aimed for this music to reflect the various genres born of social media, for example the selfie, the tweet, the emoticon. Our research was therefore propelled by questions like “what might a musical selfie sound like?” and “how might an audio emoticon extend the language of online communication”? This project explored the potential of speculative design, or “design fictions”, in the creation of new musical interfaces. Overall, the project revealed the vast potential for new kinds of music making in today’s socially networked world

Urgent Listening

This conversation, which took place in Oxford, England, is part of a series of conversations hosted by Gascia Ouzounian on the theme “Countersonics: Radical Sonic Imaginaries.” It has been lightly edited for clarity and length

2012: To be inside someone else’s dream: music for sleeping and waking minds

Music for Sleeping and Waking Minds (2011–2012) is a new, overnight work in which four performers fall asleep while wearing custom designed EEG sensors which monitor their brainwave activity. The data gathered from the EEG sensors is applied in real time to different audio and image signal processing functions, resulting in continuously evolving multi-channel sound environment and visual projection. This material serves as an audiovisual description of the individual and collective neurophysiological state of the ensemble. Audiences are invited to experience the work in different states of attention: while alert and asleep, resting and awakening

Understanding Gesture Expressivity through Muscle Sensing

Expressivity is a visceral capacity of the human body. To understand what makes a gesture expressive, we need to consider not only its spatial placement and orientation, but also its dynamics and the mechanisms enacting them. We start by defining gesture and gesture expressivity, and then present fundamental aspects of muscle activity and ways to capture information through electromyography (EMG) and mechanomyography (MMG). We present pilot studies that inspect the ability of users to control spatial and temporal variations of 2D shapes and that use muscle sensing to assess expressive information in gesture execution beyond space and time. This leads us to the design of a study that explores the notion of gesture power in terms of control and sensing. Results give insights to interaction designers to go beyond simplistic gestural interaction, towards the design of interactions that draw upon nuances of expressive gesture