Composing with Sculptural Sound Phenomena in Computer Music
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Composing with Sculptural Sound Phenomena in Computer Music Dissertation Gerriet K. Sharma University of Music and Performing Arts Graz Artistic Doctoral Degree Composition and Music Theory ID-V795500 Supervised by: Professor Marko Ciciliani (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) Professor Robert Höldrich (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) Professor Marco Stroppa (State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart) Professor Elena Ungeheuer (University Würzburg) Presented at the Artistic Doctoral School on 6th September 2016 A word of thanks I would like to thank my doctoral supervisors Marko Ciciliani, Robert Höldrich, Marco Stroppa and Elena Ungeheuer for their special support over the last three years. A special way of sharing emerged in each individual relationship, which in their own ways not only solved very specific problems in each case, but also often gave an impulse to understand long-term and complex questions and to pursue their answers artistically. I would also like to thank the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Both collegiality and professionalism created an environment in which this work could grow slowly and steadily, in which their standards had to be measured, and in which ideas had their space. I would also like to thank the Artistic Doctoral School at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, which has promoted and supported my lectures and concert activities in recent years, and in whose programs I have received ideas decisive for the development of this work. I would also like to thank Gerhard Eckel, Martin Rumori and David Pirrò, whose support in the years before this work began enabled me to draw my research questions from artistic practice and to pursue them later. I would also like to thank the PEEK/FWF research group OSIL (Orchestrating Space by Icosahedral Loudspeaker), especially Franz Zotter, Matthias Frank, Florian Wendt and Markus Zaunschirm. The support, impulses and the scientific environment, as well as the exchange of ideas and the long discussions about research questions, experimental set-ups, perceptual phenomena, reliability and instinct have decisively contributed to the fact that I as an artist accepted the role of the scientific researcher, crossing disciplines and making them useful for my artistic work. I thank Wolf Thiel and Edith Sharma-Thiel for their relentless confidence. Words fail to express the thanks I owe wife, Verena Lercher. 1 Note on Translation This document is the English translation of my dissertation "Komponieren mit Skulpturalen Klangphänomenen in der Computermusik". Though having published frequently in English over the last 10 years, after some deliberation I had decided within the framework of my doctoral studies to write the original work in German first. One reason for this was that as a composer, I aimed for a certain sound in a style of speech that in the context of artistic research would connect the fields of music, sound art, philosophy, sociology, musicology and engineering sciences, with my efforts leading to success in my native language. Additionally, many of the newly introduced terms, for example from the field of sculpture theory or theory of space are not one hundred percent handled equally by authors in both languages and I had to keep this investigative process out of the actual work. Alone the different use of the terms sculpture and plastic in English and German occasioned long discussions. The first version of the translation was scheduled for early 2017, but had to be postponed again and again due to my composition and concert activities, as well as the following appointment as Edgard Varèse guest professor at the TU Berlin for the winter semester 17/18. In the present translation by Christian Liberty Marshall and myself, it was very important to find both a sound and a flow in the English language close to the original work, in addition to the detailed and exact matching of the terms of various disciplines and their own research results. I must thank the Artistic Doctoral School at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz for having supported this lengthy translation process. (Gerriet K. Sharma, May 2018) 2 Abstract This thesis includes a practical and theoretical investigation into electroacoustic space-sound phenomena, plastic sound objects [González- Arroyo, 2012], previously little researched. Over the last 60 years these have increasingly appeared in certain sound projection techniques in the field of computer music. A special loudspeaker system developed by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, the icosahedral loudspeaker1(IKO), has been used and further developed for this purpose. The focus of all of the artistic research endeavors is the question of “Shared Perceptual Space” (SPS), the space in acousmatic music [Chion, 2009, 144] within which the perceptions of composers, scientists and audience intersect in respect of three-dimensional sound objects. The research aims to use artistic actions in order to demarcate this space or to trigger its formation. To do so it repeatedly implements a three-phase process: within the context of a series of progressively evolving electroacoustic compositions, the plastic qualities of these sound phenomena are explored. Parallel to the compositional process, an attempt will be made to find the language to establish generalizable descriptions of the objects produced. Research into existing terminologies and their application was employed to this end. Further to this, these terms were reviewed in an attempt to classify the researcher’s own compositional process. Additionally, engineering sciences were used to simulate and explain the artistically produced spatial sound phenomenon in psychoacoustic terms with listening experiments, measurements and virtual modeling. The resultantly interlocked descriptions and also collisions of perceptions gradually informed the ensuing compositional process and led to an expanded understanding and a different practice of artistic work with these phenomena. 1 Throughout the thesis, gender-specific terms may be used in order to ease the text flow. Whenever a gender- specific term is used, it should be understood as referring to both genders, unless explicitly stated. 3 Table of Contents A Word of Thanks 01 Note on Translation 02 Abstract 03 Chapter I Conditions - Methods and Practices 10 1. Introduction 10 1.1. Artistic Research 10 1.2. Personal Background and Compositional Practice in the Field of Research 11 1.3. Desideratum of this Artistic Research – Towards a Shared Perceptual Space (SPS). 14 1.3.1. SPS: The Acousmatic Paradigm - the Perceptual Situation as an Established State of Exception – Beyond Mediatized Space 14 1.3.2. SPS: Intersubjectivity as the Spectrum of Perception in Mediatized Space – Research Questions 18 2. Tool and Instrument I – Conditions 20 2.1. The Icosahedral Loudspeaker 20 2.2. Beamforming 21 2.3. Starting Points for Artistic Research with the IKO 22 2.3.1. Transfer of Previous Experience 22 2.3.2. OSIL (Orchestrating Space by Icosahedral Loudspeaker) 23 PEEK AR 328 3. Methods and Practices 24 3.1. Establishment of an Iterative Work Process 24 3.1.1. Investigation 24 3.1.2. Composition 25 3.1.3. Scientific Analysis 25 3.2. Extended Concert Practice 26 3.3. Lectures and Workshops 27 4 CHAPTER II Research: Conceptual Fields and their Coordinates 28 1. Verbalization 29 1.1. 100 Years of Verbalization of Musical Sound Phenomena - Stages and Strategies 31 1.1.1. L’Arte dei Rumori - Russolo 31 1.1.2. Serial Thinking and Musique Concrète 31 1.1.3. Listener-Based Terminology Research According to Thies 33 1.1.4. Spectromorphology According to Smalley 35 1.1.5. Space-form and the Acousmatic Image According to Smalley 37 1.1.6. Perceptually Informed Organization by Repertory Grid According to Grill 38 1.1.7. Interdisciplinary Topology According to Nystrøm 39 1.2. Summary and Classification 40 2. Sculpture, Plastic, Object - First traces of the sculptural in electronic music 41 3. Sound as Sculpture - 3.1. Sound Sculptures 46 3.2. Classification of the IKO 49 4. Dramaturgy and Staging of Sculptural Sound Shapes 50 4.1. Visuality 50 4.2. Staging the IKO 52 5. Suitable Terms for the Description of Sculptural Spatial Relations 53 5.1. Body-Space Relations 54 5.1.1. Kernel Plastic/Body Plastic 54 5.1.2. Spatial Plastic 55 5.1.3. Kernel-Shell Principle 55 5.2. The Sculptural in the Context of this Work 57 6. Sound as an Object 58 5 6.1. The Shaping of Listening, the "Auditory Impression” 59 6.2. The Sound Object within the Scope of this Thesis 60 7. Compositional Material 62 7.1. Tone, Sound, Noise 62 7.2. Sound as Texture 64 7.3. Sound as a Spatial Texture 65 7.4. Conclusion: The Raw Material for the Sculptural Sound Composition 67 8. Space 68 8.1. Traces in (Computer-)Musical Application 68 8.2. Spatial Turn 70 8.3. Three Space Theories (for the Constitution of a SPS) 71 8.3.1. Three Dimensions of Space Production by Henri Lefebvre 72 8.3.2. Spaces and Places by Michel de Certeau 74 8.3.3. Spacing and Synthesis by Martina Löw 75 8.4. The Concept of Space within the Framework of this Thesis 77 8.5. Scientific Attributes of Perception of Spatial Dimensions in Loudspeaker Environments 78 8.6. Space and Spatialization 80 8.6.1. Spatialization of the First Order 80 8.6.2. Spatialization of the Second Order 81 8.7. Summary 82 CHAPTER III Research in the Current Practice of Spatial Sound Composition 83 1. Tools and Instruments II - Environments 83 1.1. Classification in the Field of Current Multichannel Loudspeaker Systems 83 1.2. The Virtual IKO (ViKO) 86 2.