ImMApp: An immersive database of sound art

The ImMApp (Immersive Mapping Application) thesis addresses contemporary and historical sound art from a position informed by, on one hand, post-structural critical theory, and on the other, a practice-based exploration of contemporary digital technologies (MySQL, XML, XSLT, X3D). It proposes a critical ontological schema derived from Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) and applies this to pre-existing information resources dealing with sound art. Firstly an analysis of print-based discourses (Sound by Artists. Lander and Lexier (1990), Noise, Water, Meat. Kahn (2001) and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. LaBelle (2006» is carried out according to Foucauldian notions of genealogy, subject positions, the statement, institutional affordances and the productive nature of discursive formation. The discursive field (the archive) presented by these major canonical texts is then contrasted with a formulation derived from Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: that of a 'minor' history of sound art practices. This is then extended by media theory (McLuhan, Kittler, Manovich) into a critique of two digital sound art resources (The Australian Sound Design Project (Bandt and Paine (2005) and soundtoys.net Stanza (1998). The divergences between the two forms of information technologies (print vs. digital) are discussed. The means by which such digitised methodologies may enhance Foucauldian discourse analysis points onwards towards the two practice-based elements of the thesis. Surface, the first iterative part, is a web-browser based database built on an Apache/MySQIlXML architecture. It is the most extensive mapping of sound art undertaken to date and extends the theoretical framework discussed above into the digital domain. Immersion, the second part, is a re-presentation of this material in an immersive digital environment, following the transformation of the source material via XSL-T into X3D. Immersion is a real-time, large format video, surround sound (5.ln.l) installation and the thesis concludes with a discussion of how this outcome has articulated Foucauldian archaeological method and unframed pre-existing notions of the nature of sound art

Media Encounters in Dark Ecologies: Soundscapes and Solar-powered Sound Circuits

This paper reflects upon recent creative practice, and seeks thereby to discuss contemporary systems of digital sound practices and technologies, a reflection upon encountering digital art in outdoor environments and a consideration of the variable durations experienced by various entities around the work

The ImmApp: A Digital Application for Immersive Interaction with Sound Art Archives

This paper introduces a doctoral research project which is developing an innovative digital research methodology based around a MySql [2] database. The project’s aim is to deliver an innovative re-presentation of sound art discourse from a digitized, post-modern, post-Cageian perspective

Immersive Sound Masterclass

Immersive Sound Techniques and Virtual Worlds. This presentation offers a theoretical and practical overview of contemporary sonic themes, issues and techniques arising around immersive and interactive sound within virtual environments. The affordances offered by 360 audio technologies and techniques (e.g ambisonics) present new opportunities for sound designers, composers and their creative collaborators. The traditional sound stage – as manifest by the long established stereo standard – is greatly expanded in virtual spaces into a spherical, fully immersive sound world. This new 4-dimensional compositional space (x, y, z + time) offers a number of creative challenges and presents some intriguing questions during the production process at the point of capture, and subsequently in post-production during the mixing process (or its virtual equivalent). In our contemporary context, the ubiquitous trope of immersion operates alongside emerging principles of non-linear, interactive and adaptive sound composition. A variety of tools exist to enable the creation of such content within V.R., e.g. Fabric (Tazman Audio), Fmod (Firelight Technology), Wwise (Audiokinetic, exemplary practical examples exist and a theoretical vocabulary has developed derived from digital media, game audio and film sound on one hand, and the legacy of experimental and contemporary music and sound arts on the other. This presentation outlines a creative methodology informed by various creative practices of sound art and design (soundscape studies, acoustic ecology, game audio, film sound, sound installations and acousmatic / electroacoustic music) and explores the remediation of related historical concepts within the apparently new world of contemporary V.R

Immersion: An Immersive Digital Application for Creative Interaction with Sound Art Archives

My research involves a study of historical and contemporary sound art from a digitized postmodern perspective. Previous theorizing of the field has proved problematic, reliant as it has been upon natural language, the silent page and a passive listening experience. Sound as a medium remains ephemeral, site-specific, connective and immersive. My work proposes that in a post-literate society, possibilities suggested by immersive digital technologies offer an alternative understanding of creative practice and associated discourse. It is an intention that theory and practice coalesce in an open digital space that embodies the divergent and dispersed nature of historical and contemporary sound art. A significant output of the project is a demonstration of the immersive digital computer application ImmApp that offers a unique presentation of sound art. A digital research methodology makes it possible to assemble, interrogate and manipulate primacy and secondary sources, and within the context of performance, to explore the spaces inside and between digital artifacts

An Immersive Database of Sound Art: Towards a Minor History

This paper presents a practice-based project being undertaken as part of a PhD research program at the CRiSAP Research Unit (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice), London College of Communication. The project involves the development of a database of ‘sound art’ presented in an immersive installation environment, allowing a ‘post-convergent’ [1] experience of this ‘minor’ art history. Research activity has oscillated between a focus upon the technical means of delivering such a creative work, and a study of broader contemporary philosophy acting to inform and problematicise such an endeavor. The digital application being developed (ImMapp) is of particular relevance to the theme of the YTC conference. Much academic work addressing sound art has occurred within the confines of the monograph. The ImmApp however, attempts an alternative means of accessing and analyzing this fragmented history, and is in effect, a three-dimensional audio-visual atlas of the culture-space of auditory art practice and discourse. The open-source digital technologies used in the creation of this work operate upon a plane distinct from, but complementary to, print-based methodologies. The culture of sound art has provided a key inspiration in the design of the application and the ImmApp is intended to embody some of the tropes evident in much sound work (spatiality, multi-speaker set ups, simultaneity, collage). The project as a whole has been shaped then by a symbiosis between digital technology, the kind of structuring enabled/limited by such, and the culture-space of a ‘minor’ art practice. This paper will outline the historical and conceptual context for the work, discuss the technical framework that has been adopted, demonstrate my working methodology, and end by proposing some possible trajectories for future work

The role of White Academics in developing Decolonised Curricula

London College of Communication Staff Workshop

Hidden Architectures

An immersive performance installation and sensory experience, the work features an original live score composed for dancers, prepared electric guitars, and electronics. Hidden Architectures explores the connections and social knots that we make as humans. Driven by the interconnectivity of sound, movement & materials, it asks, what does it mean to be connected? Do our connections constrain us or liberate us? Are we ever able to act independently of one another? Hidden Architectures is performed by pairs of people, connected mouth-to-mouth by amplified, near-invisible threads which resonate as the people fall, trace, and carve through space. A weaving of movement, sound, materials, light and environment, in conversation with and transforming each other. The work is inspired by and includes excerpts from the writings of Tim Ingold: “To live, every being must put out a line, and in life these lines tangle with one another.” Tim Ingold, The Life of Line

Emerging from the Noise: Non-Nostalgia, Reactivation and Appropriation

This paper approaches noise from a media anarcheological paradigm closely informed by Siegfried Zielinski's notion of “deep media time”. The observation that noise is not absolute, but is variable is somewhat banal; yet if the temporal, methodological and aesthetic scope is extended beyond the conventional discourses around noise what implications for practice may be drawn? The origins of the paper derive from a research fellowship undertaken at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln which dealt with sound, noise and listening as practice-based research methodologies. A selection of discarded shellac records (cultural noise) forms the material basis of this study. This media detritus contains program material created during a problematic yet arbitrary period of Cologne's past (1929-62 – this period defined simply by the contingent array of shellacs found). These discs also offer today's listeners traces and scars of the damage and decay these traumatised objects have experienced in their lifetime. These material artefacts are noiseful in many regards: a conventional approach to archiving or preserving these might involve media migration into the digital domain after which processes of “noise-cleaning” may be undertaken. Such cleaning may aim to remove “noise” from “signal”. Yet how is such difference established? There are plentiful examples of problematic media cleansing - and a central issue explored in this paper is this distinction between what the authors frame as “primary” and “secondary” information. Hence, issues around the context and techniques used during the original recording (e.g. frequency transfer functions), the means by which this recording is produced as a capitalist object (e.g. post-emphasis curves), and the subsequent unintended inscriptions upon the media surface in the course of the objects' biography (e.g. careless handling) provide a deep media perspective upon the noisy media object

Geopolitics of sound. Colonial regimes and acoustic alterities of listening

The presentation Geopolitics of sound. Colonial regimes and acoustic alterities of listening / Geopolíticas del sonido. Regímenes coloniales y alteridades acústicas de la escucha was broadcasted through the REA MX YouTube channel (https://cutt.ly/OhsAiX3), on December 11th, from 12:20 - 13:20, (Mexico City Central Time) and/or Ex Teresa Arte Actual youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/Cdxteresa