Bonfire of the inanities

Times are hard and cuts have to be made, so let’s start by putting an end to verbosity and all those mind-bogglingly long assignments, research papers and reports,writes Peter Lennox, succinctl

3-D Sound: Massive and minute

A Technical, perceptual and aesthetic exploration of cellular "multi-scale" artificial auditory environment

Pecking Order

Peter Lennox keeps chickens, and they have taught him a great deal about behaviour, ethics, evolution and the psychopathic nature of modern 'efficiency' More Info: Light-hearted article in Times Higher Education. Co-authored with Edie, Dolly, Gertie and Fl

The emotional contents of the ‘space’ in spatial music

Human spatial perception is how we understand places. Beyond understanding what is where (William James’ formulation of the psychological approach to perception); there are holistic qualities to places. We perceive places as busy, crowded, exciting, threatening or peaceful, calm, comfortable and so on. Designers of places spend a great deal of time and effort on these qualities; scientists rarely do. In the scientific world-view physical qualities and our emotive responses to them are neatly divided in the objective-subjective dichotomy. In this context, music has traditionally constituted an item in a place. Over the last two decades, development of “spatial music” has been within the prevailing engineering paradigm, informed by psychophysical data; here, space is an abstract, Euclidean 3-dimensional ‘container’ for events. The emotional consequence of spatial arrangements is not the main focus in this approach. This paper argues that a paradigm shift is appropriate, from ‘music-in-a-place’ to ‘music-as-a-place’ requiring a fundamental philosophical realignment of ‘meaning’ away from subjective response to include consequences-in-the-environment. Hence the hegemony of the subjective-objective dichotomy is questioned. There are precedents for this, for example in the ecological approach to perception (Gibson). An ecological approach to music-as-environment intrinsically treats the emotional consequences of spatio-musical arrangement holistically. A simplified taxonomy of the attributes of artificial spatial sound in this context will be discussed

Composing and Capturing 3-D Soundscapes

A poster report: A cohort of <50 final year BSc students were given access to proprietary hardware/software solutions to enable them to capture and manipulate large natural sound fields. Their task was to develop novel and innovative solutions to uncommon spatial sound problems. The results showed that it is theoretically possible to mount very large navigable sound fields and that the principles are (unlike domestic technologies) upwardly scalable to an unknown limit. The students had no technical precedents to follow, and developed their solutions empirically through ‘trial and error’ methods. They subsequently theoretically analysed the psychoacoustic results

Report on a medium-scale three dimensional artificial soundscape rendition: research and development system

A geodesic dome housing a 32Xspeaker <3rd order ambisonic system for Sound Art experimentation at the 2002 Maxis Festiva

Tissue-conducted spatial sound fields

We describe experiments using multiple cranial transducers to achieve auditory spatial perceptual impressions via bone (BC) and tissue conduction (TC), bypassing the peripheral hearing apparatus. This could be useful in cases of peripheral hearing damage or where ear-occlusion is undesirable. Previous work (e.g. Stanley and Walker 2006, MacDonald and Letowski 2006)1,2 indicated robust lateralization is feasible via tissue conduction. We have utilized discrete signals, stereo and first order ambisonics to investigate control of externalization, range, direction in azimuth and elevation, movement and spaciousness. Early results indicate robust and coherent effects. Current technological implementations are presented and potential development paths discussed

Inside-outside: 3-D music through tissue conduction

Eliciting an auditory perception by means of mechanical transduction bypassing the peripheral hearing apparatus has been recorded as early as the 16th century. Excluding its audiometric use to assess ear pathology, bone and soft tissue conduction has received very little interest until the last two decades. Previous work during this time (Stanley and Walker 2006, MacDonald and Letowski 2006) has indicated robust lateralization is feasible via mechanical transduction. We have extended this, adding the front-back and up-down axes

Hearing Without Ears

We report on on-going work investigating the feasibility of using tissue conduction to evince auditory spatial perception. Early results indicate that it is possible to coherently control externalization, range, directionality (including elevation), movement and some sense of spaciousness without presenting acoustic signals to the outer ear. Signal control techniques so far have utilised discrete signal feeds, stereo and 1st order ambisonic hierarchies. Some deficiencies in frontal externalization have been observed. We conclude that, whilst the putative components of the head related transfer function are absent, empirical tests indicate that coherent equivalents are perceptually utilisable. Some implications for perceptual theory and technological implementations are discussed along with potential practical applications and future lines of enquiry

From surround to true 3-D

To progress from surround sound to true 3-D requires an updating of the psychoacoustical theories which underlie current technologies. This paper shows how J.J.Gibson’s ecological approach to perception can be applied to audio perception and used to derive 3-D audio technologies based on intelligent pattern recognition and active hypothesis testing. These technologies are suggested as methods which can be used to generate audio environments that are believable and can be explored