Key note Speakers

17-18

JUNE

2024

We are delighted to announce the following keynotes who will deliver special sessions at the symposium. ​Information about their sessions can be found below.

Annie Mahtani

Spatial Narratives: Creative Approaches to New Technologies

In the rapidly evolving landscape of spatial audio, new tools for composing, recording, and ​performance are transforming how we create and experience spatial audio works. This ​presentation delves into the composer’s own methodologies and creative processes as they ​explore these technologies, including tools for ambisonics composition, higher-order ambisonics ​field recording, and live performance with the IKO loudspeaker.

Through practical examples and live demonstrations, attendees will gain valuable insights into ​these tools and strategies used to sculpt spatial narratives within musical works.

Annie Mahtani (UK, 1981) is an electroacoustic composer, sound artist and performer working and ​living in Birmingham (UK). She studied with Jonty Harrison at master’s and doctoral level at the ​University of Birmingham, completing her PhD in 2008.

Her output encompasses electronic music composition from acousmatic music to free ​improvisation. As a collaborator, Annie Mahtani has worked extensively with dance and theatre, and ​on site-specific installations. With a strong interest in field recording, her work often explores the ​inherent sonic nature and identity of environmental sound, amplifying sonic characteristics that are ​not normally audible to the naked ear. Her music explores abstract and recognizable sound worlds ​and all the spaces in between. Annie works extensively with multichannel audio both in fixed ​medium works and in live performance.

www.anniemahtani.co.uk

Dr Brona Martin

Spatial audio explorations with the IKO Loudspeaker

This talk will discuss new spatial audio technologies such as the IKO loudspeaker. Throughout this ​talk I will provide examples of how composers and sound artists are using this loudspeaker to ​create works in response to the acoustics and materiality of a variety of different and unique ​spaces. This talk will also feature a demo of the IKO Loudspeaker.

Dr Brona Martin is an Electroacoustic composer and sound artist from Banagher, Co. Offaly, Ireland. ​Her compositions explore narrative in Electroacoustic music, acoustic ecology and spatialisation ​techniques through the creation of metaphorical and real-world representations of soundscapes ​where the aim is to reveal particular sonic characters that are not normally the focus of listening.

www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/las/brona-martin

Henrik Frisk

Spatialization, A Critical Overview

Spatialization as both a technique and a technology has been used in the arts and media for many ​decades. There are a number of technologies to help us achieve the sensations of three ​dimensional audio, and a broad range of techniques with which precise audio spatialization can be ​achieved. Yet, in my experice, the results are often quite unsatisfying.With a large array of speakers ​the sensation can still be impressive, but may lack the dynamics of world spatiality. It

also comes with great political implications and may be seen as an excluding construction for ​rendering electroacoustic music; its potential social dominance should be considered.

Although there is a great amount of knowledge in the commercial media industry of how to create ​a sonic space, but in terms of resources the multimedia industry has won the battle here. Not even ​academia can compete in terms of technology development. In the practice of field recordings ​there is a slightly different, but equally impressive knowledge about how to record and portray ​spatial sound. In my own work, however, I have felt a growing frustration

that is connected to my inability to use the methods of these and other practices and apply them ​to my compositionalpractice. Is there a knowledge gap somewhere in the continuity between ​accuracy, reproduction, meaning and spatialgestalt in sound art? To approach this frustration I ​have worked together with my colleague Jan Schacher for a few years in trying to better

understand what spatial listening may constitute. By engaging ourselves, students, and fellow ​artists in what may be best described as deep spatial listening exercises. Through these we have ​tried to expand our spatial sensibility, on the one hand, and our ability to conceptualize it on the ​other. Going on listening excursions and discussing our experienceswe have documented the ​results in various ways, employing qualitative and experimental methods on the results.

A brief summary of our experiences is that the basic method of listening excursions is effective at ​large and the firstgeneral chat (on site) about what was heard is also quite effective. However, ​which should come as no surprise, the phase is much more difficult.

Henrik is an active performer (saxophones and electronics) of improvised and contemporary music ​and a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music. He is professor at the Royal College of Music ​in Stockholm at the department for electroacoustic music composition, and his research is ​concerned with improvisation, interactivity, spatialisation and experimental electroacoustic music.

Nikos Stavropoulos

The Material Agency of Acoustic Space

This talk suggests a compositional approach which considers acoustic space as material in the ​construction of acousmatic works and introduces the notion of aural micro-space, an acoustic ​space whose aural architecture is not accessible unless it is mediated by recording technology. ​The methods discussed here are an attempt to unify spatiomorphology and spectromorphology in ​the collection, processing and organisation of sound materials and propose the extension of the ​acousmatic ethos to the development of the spatial attributes of the work.

Nikos is a composer of predominantly acousmatic and mixed music. He read music at the University ​of Wales (Bangor, Wales, UK), where he studied composition with Andrew Lewis and completed a ​doctorate at the University of Sheffield (England, UK) under the supervision of Adrian Moore.

Simon Emmerson

Imagining Space and Place Through Sound and Music

This paper picks up from my contributions to the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination ​(2019) – ‘Playing the Inner Ear – Performing the Imagination’ - and to MuSA 2023 (Manchester) - ​‘Imagination and Image (in sonic art)’. In these I suggested that the imagination was the most ​powerful tool for sound synthesis that we possess. But what of space, movement and, most ​importantly, listener perspective? How do we imagine these? How do we describe and represent ​them (‘write them down’)? On the one hand we have geometric and distanced worldviews of space ​and on the other, participatory and immersive representations of place which we might also ​describe as environmental or ecological. (I shall critique this distinction.) I present two case studies ​from my own work. Solo Flute Quartet (2017-18), for a solo performer on four flutes, with live ​electronics. This attempts to create a surround soundworld of multiphonic timbral material such ​that the listener is suspended in an ever changing web of flute sound. The soloist and listener ​remain stationary while the sound is continuously in motion. I describe Near and Far (at Once) - ​which will be performed at one of the concerts during the symposium - as an imaginary ​soundwalk, a multichannel acousmatic work which ‘walks us’ from the wind farm off Brighton’s ​coast, onto the beach, through the pier, the city, via loud and quiet places - real or imaginary - on ​up to the top of the Downs on a hot day. Here the opposite is the case – the imaginary listener is in ​constant motion across the dynamic landscape. A link between the sounds and scenes is the ​‘murmuration’ of birds, humans, vehicles, insects, trees, atmospheres. The silent movie of a starling ​murmuration is (for me) already sounding. These are profoundly spatial – how might this be ​captured or synthesised, and how best presented to the listener? [SE]

Simon is an electroacoustic music composer working mostly with live electronics. He studied Natural ​Sciences and Music Education at Cambridge (1968-72) where he first encountered electronic music. ​During a PhD at City University London in the 1970s, he founded the studio there and was its director ​until 2004 when he moved to De Montfort University.

programme

Monday 17th June

17-18

JUNE

2024

12:15 - 20:30 PACE STUDIO 2

Looped throughout the day

Audio Visual Works

Elliot Hernández

Leviathan (7:19)

***

Jérémie Martineau

Distractions, Horizons (5:34)

***

Edmar Soria

Distant Motility (13:21)

***

Zohreh Baghban and Kristian Parker

Grim Posterity (4:10)

***

Kristian Parker

SPUTNIK (5:00)

***

Simon Le Boggit

Entwining of Lost Souls (Aberration 3) (9:11)

Installations

Gareth Mitchell

Spatial Sonification of Patterns in Nature

programme

Tuesday 18th June

17-18

JUNE

2024

12:15 - 16:00 PACE STUDIO 2

Looped throughout the day

Audio Visual works

Elliot Hernández

Leviathan (7:19)

***

Jérémie Martineau

Distractions, Horizons (5:34)

***

Edmar Soria

Distant Motility (13:21)

***

Zohreh Baghban and Kristian Parker

Grim Posterity (4:10)

***

Kristian Parker

SPUTNIK (5:00)

***

Simon Le Boggit

Entwining of Lost Souls (Aberration 3) (9:11)

Installations

Gareth Mitchell

Spatial Sonification of Patterns in Nature

Organising Team

17-18

JUNE

2024

17-18

JUNE

2024

We are looking for volunteers to help with the smooth running of the symposium.

You will need to be:

• Availiable for at least 1 full day of the symposium
• A student of De Montfort University.

We encourage students of all fields who would like work experience to apply.

Volunteers who are also submitting work for the conference will get priority selection.

Refreshments will be provided to those assisting at the event.

Once submitted, we will be in contact (via email), to confirm if you have been successful and to provide ​meeting location/agenda information.