Programme > Conference abstracts - Day 1

Session 1: Real-Time Music Making

Future-proofing a large electronic music realization

Miller Puckette, IRCAM / UCSD

A new opera by Philippe Manoury, Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind) is loosely based on the very unperformable "play" (1915-1922) by Karl Kraus, written in reaction to the first world war.  Among the musical forces employed is a monstrous Pure Data (Pd) patch with about 1900 control parameters sequenced using Antescofo.  Because of the size of the project, it was possible to devote nearly two years to the development of the electronic realization.  From the beginning we decided to develop a continuous integration framework alongside the Pd patch itself to try to ensure the long-term stability of the realization.  Using this framework we can sequence the patch automatically through several representative portions of the opera (or, if desired, the entire thing), verifying that, given a standard collection of live audio inputs and control actions, an exactly correct audio output is produced.  This acts not only as a check against obsolescence of the Pd patch itself, but as a potent verification mechanism for the software components used, all of which are either open source or in the process of being released as such.  As machine architectures and operating systems evolve in the future, it should be reasonably easy to maintain a verifiably correct realization of the electronic sounds used in the opera.

Extended String Playing Techniques In Electroacoustic Music Performance

Gabriele Boccio, Conservatorio statale di Musica Alfredo Casella

The lecture explores the correlation between compositional practice and instrumental gesture in the repertoire for strings and electronics, reflecting on how the performing ensemble itself becomes an object of compositional design. The presentation focuses on selected case studies to illustrate how extended string playing techniques are central to shaping the electroacoustic performance ecosystem. The guiding question is: to what extent does the choice of specific extended techniques shape not only the conception of the instrumental part, but also the configuration of electronic performance resources? Methodologically, the study draws on theories of musical instrumentality (Alperson 2008) and ecosystemic approaches to musical interaction (Waters 2007), within a broader musicological framework of performative embodiment.  The proposed typology distinguishes between two operational types of creative practitioners: the “composer-user”, who integrates existing technologies into refined musical systems - as in Boulez, Saariaho or Harvey - and the “composer-luthier“, who invents or customizes tools as part of the creative act - as in Di Scipio, Behrman or Döbereiner. This distinction, inspired by Fleuret (1988) and Zattra (2021), highlights the role of instrumental and technical invention as compositional gesture. Through selected examples, the proposal examines how real-time interaction between extended string playing techniques and electronic processing defines a specific “écriture électroacoustique”, particularly crucial when working with string instruments given their expressive potential and historical-cultural weight. In this context, technology is not a neutral medium but a constituent part of musical expression. All included agencies — mechanical, electroacoustic, computational, and performative — can be understood as musical instruments in their own right, embodying new forms of instrumentality and performative creativity in contemporary electroacoustic practice.

Hybrid Networked/Live Performance, Listening, and Composition: Renewing the Concert Ritual

Marc Ainger, ACCAD - The Advanced Computing Center for Arts and Design

Ann Stimson, Ohio State University

Hybrid networked/live performance is an emergent form that has become increasingly common and accessible. Networked/live performances include both remote and in-person performers and an in-person audience, as well as the possibility to host remote audiences. In this paper, we will consider recent networked/live performances (specifically, the Sonic Networked Arts Performances in Vienna and Linz in 2023). We will imagine ways that this multiplicity of listening/viewing points may invite the creation of new forms of concert rituals, along with the possibility of the reconsideration and renewal of some of our older notions of concert rituals.

Session 2: Analysis 1

The ‘glissando Swarms' In Xenakis's Diamorphoses. A Case Study In Electroacoustic Music Analysis

Daniel Scorranese, Conservatory of L'Aquila

Agostino Di Scipio, Conservatory of L'Aquila

The analysis of electroacoustic music demands specific criteria and methodologies, useful also for studying other creative practices in today’s technological and media context. Even for pioneering works (1950s–1970s), renewed conceptual tools and descriptive strategies are needed, together with a deeper awareness of the technical practices involved, often bound to now-obsolete media. This study examines Diamorphoses, Iannis Xenakis’s first tape work (GRM, 1957) whose sound even today world defies clear categorizations and criteria related to Schaeffer’s notion of the ‘sound object’.

Various historical sources on the realization of Diamorphoses suggest the possible use of the phonogène and morphophone, magnetic sound-processing devices developed at GRM by Jacques Poullin. The use of the morphophone has so far remained speculative. We argue that it might have been used to generate the “glissando swarms” (Marta Brech) in the piece’s closing section. Our study reconstructs the technical procedures behind these sounds through the Digital Morphophone Environment (DME), a MaxMSP application that emulates the morphophone’s functionalities.

The findings provide indirect but consistent evidence that those peculiar sonic textures could only be achieved through the morphophone, in fact confirming Xenakis’s use of it. Moreover, they indicate that the composer employed it to empirically control the textural density, understood as a novel compositional parameter that he then soon explored again, based on more theoretical grounds, in Analogique B (1959).

This “analysis-by-synthesis” approach highlights the crucial role of reconstructing historical material conditions in electroacoustic music analysis and contributes to the ongoing research on software models of obsolete devices, fostering a historically-informed approach on early electroacoustic creativity.

Intercultural Resonances: Electroacoustic Music and East Asian Aesthetics in Contemporary U.S. Composition

Ching-Nam Hippocrates Cheng,  The State University of New York at Binghamton

This paper investigates the intersection of electroacoustic music and East Asian intercultural composition within the contemporary United States, focusing on how composers engage with East Asian sonic materials—instrumental, vocal, philosophical, and ritualistic—through the lens of electronic media. Drawing on recent case studies including works by composers of East Asian descent and American composers influenced by East Asian traditions, I explore how electroacoustic practices open up new dimensions of cultural hybridity, multisensory listening, and sonic embodiment.

Methodologically, this study bridges music analysis, ethnographic insight, and critical theory. It examines how electroacoustic works incorporate timbral qualities of traditional instruments (e.g., guqin, shakuhachi, gayagum), forms of extended vocality (e.g., overtone singing, Buddhist chant), and digital manipulation to construct a reimagined cultural space that transcends geographic and stylistic boundaries. I argue that these works complicate binary narratives of East/West or acoustic/electronic, instead fostering dynamic in-between spaces of sound that engage with diasporic memory, identity politics, and postcolonial critique.

Furthermore, I assess how the performance contexts of these works—university settings, experimental music festivals, and online platforms—mediate reception and interpretation. This paper contributes to broader discussions in electroacoustic music on intercultural ethics, sound ecology, and the role of technology in reconfiguring tradition. Ultimately, it proposes a framework for understanding electroacoustic music not only as a site of technological innovation but also as a terrain for cultural negotiation and aesthetic pluralism.

Session 3: Socio-Cultural Issues

Politics of Noise(s): Sonic Cartographies of Urban Violence and Democratic Exclusion

Sylvain Souklaye, Center for Arts Design Social Research

"Politics of Noise(s)" is an electroacoustic public research project that positions urban noise as a form of structural violence and democratic erosion. Through binaural and ambisonic field recording technologies, this work creates detailed sonic cartographies of New York City, revealing how acoustic environments function as sites of political contestation, ethnic discrimination, economic stratification, and mayoral elections.

Building upon the electroacoustic tradition from Schaefferan objet sonore to Schafer's acoustic ecology, and influenced by Mathew Herbert’s One Pig, Pauline Oliveros' deep listening, Earshot’s audio investigations, and the Bomb Squad's wall of noise, this public project advances the field by integrating spatial audio technologies and unfiltered noise with critical frameworks from urban studies, environmental justice, and human rights discourse.

The work explores the concept of "sonic emergency” within late-stage capitalism. It examines how communities endure 10-15 decibels higher ambient noise levels than affluent areas, creating what the project terms "sacrifice zones" that undermine voting access, community organizing, and public assembly rights.

This public research contributes new analytical frameworks—sonic mental health analysis, democratic soundscape analysis, and human rights acoustics—while demonstrating how electroacoustic composition can serve as both aesthetic practice and advocacy tool. By positioning the "right to quiet" within environmental justice and human rights frameworks, "Politics of Noise(s)" opens vital pathways for socially engaged public electroacoustic practice addressing systemic inequalities in contemporary urban environments.

Collective Individuation and the Politics of Co-Creativity: Reconfiguring Knowledge-Sharing and Collaboration Across Virtual Spaces

Hans Kretz, Université Paris 8, Laboratoire d'études et de recherches sur les logiques contemporaines de la philosophie LLCP / École Supérieure de Musique Bourgogne-Franche-Comté

This practice-based research seeks to question how the meaning of the prefix "co" in "cocreativity" can be fully understood. This question is central to artistic and educational communities employing AI in co-creative practices, and will be addressed in this research project, which employs AI and remote collaboration technologies to enhance accessibility in collective music-making, through a methodology integrating principles of co-design, universal design and collaborative co-creation. By applying philosophical and aesthetic frameworks, it investigates how the implementation of distributive, inclusive and de-hierarchizing technologies can challenge Western traditions of authorship and expand our understanding of collaborative music-making and knowledge production. I will draw on the use of co-creative software such as Somax2 and Dicy2 and software for networked performance such as JackTrip to highlight how a 'sound object' becomes an 'object of thought,' inherently involving knowledge production about it. I hope to thus explore the nature of the convergence of science, technology and aesthetics with regard to the notions of creativity and co-creativity in music. The practice of ensemble improvisation in conjunction with the use of co-creativity software offers a heuristic method opening up a possible avenue for facing these questions, in which the sound object is constructed at the same time as the knowledge of this object. To better understand this aspect, we need to be able to interpret interdisciplinarity in relation to the science and aesthetics of co-creative software in a way that runs counter to the classical conception of the notion, and thus erase the phenomenological distance between subject and object.

Is it possible to collaborate? Transdisciplinary electroacoustic music experiences in education, research, and creation

Ricardo Dal Farra, Concordia University, Montreal

Can an anthropologist, philosopher, or illusionist meaningfully contribute to an electroacoustic music class by drawing on their personal experiences and backgrounds? What leads us to choose careers as mechanics, composers, historians, or astrophysicists? I am not only referring to the context and circumstances that may have influenced or inspired us; I am also considering the decisions we make in our daily lives that gradually guide us along a particular path. This presentation is not about adapting or translating from one field to another (for example, from space design to musical composition). Instead, the focus is on integrating diverse methodologies, perspectives, and overall values in a process that can enhance our understanding of collaboration, sharing, discussion, and comprehension.

Electroacoustic music can serve as a laboratory of thought and perception, where methodologies from other domains are not only juxtaposed but also transformed through sound. Unlike representational media, sound unfolds temporally and spatially in ways that invite multiple forms of interpretation, making it an ideal medium for exploring complexity. Through its capacity to embody ambiguity, simultaneity, and layered causality, electroacoustic music offers a model for interdisciplinary dialogue that emphasizes mutual transformation rather than mere translation.

In electroacoustic music, unity is achieved not through homogeneity but through dynamic interaction. Working with sound can prepare us to live in plural, interconnected worlds, fostering environments where creativity and responsibility are inseparable. Integrating electroacoustic music and science in education is not merely a theoretical exercise but a practical necessity in a world facing unprecedented challenges. By fostering transdisciplinary collaboration and encouraging creative thinking, we can develop new models of education that are better suited to the needs of the future.

Keynote 1

Interdisciplinarity's Little Music

Basile Zimmermann, Global Studies Institute, University of Geneva

The way in which interdisciplinarity and interculturality are conceived and put into practice varies across scientific communities. This presentation draws on a case study of electroacoustic music in China to test some recent ontological and epistemological approaches. More specifically, I will discuss whether Manuel DeLanda's assemblage theory, Karen Barad's agential realism, and my work on waves and forms can strengthen interdisciplinary research in the field of electroacoustic music studies.