ten years institute for computer music and sound technology The present CD release contains a heterogeneous collection of pieces related in different ways to the Institute of Computer Music and Sound Technology at the Zurich University of the Arts. It includes works of artists studying, working at or visiting the ICST. The CD presents individual approaches and by no means any sort of institutional aesthetics what- soever. This goes in line with the idea of artistic practice at the institute. While issues like sound generation, spatiality, interaction, performance practice or aesthetic context are continually the subject of debate in labs, studios and classrooms, the specific answers within the artistic practice always reflect autonomous positions, which of course does not exclude mutual influences or shared interests and methods. Nevertheless, a common ground could be formulated as the question how perception, artistic creation and inter- action in a performance space are today challenged by technology. The question seems relevant if we understand musical practice within a broader cultural context in which tech- nology increasingly influences social activity and communication. Here, artistic research and practice play an important role by generating new fields of experience and reflection. In doing so, academic institutions become open spaces where different discourses and cultures communicate and help to establish links between artistic tradition and contempo- rary practice.

Germán Toro Pérez, Director ICST Partikel, vernetzt 05:22, 2015 Philippe Kocher

This piece’s sound synthesis is based on a self-regulating network algorithm. The artisti- Philippe Kocher (*1973) is a musician, composer and researcher. He studied piano, cally most attractive property of this sound synthesis algorithm lies in the fact that it allows electroacoustic music, music theory, composition and musicology in Zurich, Basel, Lon- to generate pitches, timbres, textures and rhythmic patterns at the same time and within don and Bern. His work encompasses instrumental and electroacoustic music as well as one single formalism. A network consists of nodes and connections, which in this case sound installations. His artistic and scientific interests lie in algorithmic composition and can be characterized as follows: The nodes act as gates, i.e. an incoming signal is only computer generated music and art. He works at the Institute for Computer Music and let through if its average amplitude falls between a lower and upper threshold. All nodes Sound Technology as research associate as well as at the Zurich University of the Arts as are connected to other nodes as well as to themselves. Every connection delays the lecturer for music theory and computer music. signal by a certain small amount of time. Because of the many feedback loops thus cre- ated in the signal flow, the network exhibits self-sustaining behaviour: Once excited with www.philippekocher.ch a short burst of noise it continuously produces sound without any further input. The to- pology of the network used for this piece was modelled after the geometric structure of a dodecahedron, a platonic solid that has twenty vertices where always three edges meet. Accordingly, the network consists of twenty nodes and each node is connected to three neighbouring nodes. In order to make the network’s activity audible, the signal is picked up at every node, which results in a twenty-channel output. For this CD, the output was mixed down to stereo. All sections of the piece were generated by the same network, only the deliberate choice of parameters (delay times, thresholds etc.) led to various sound qualities. The details of the sound textures emerge from the network’s autonomous activity and are therefore not the immediate result of human authorship. However, the arrangement of the different sections was decided by the composer in order to establish the overall form and the narrative of the music. Rothko IV 12:56, 2008 Germán Toro-Pérez

From the perspective that time has given us on his whole work, Rothko appears to me as Born 1964 in Bogotá. First music theory studies at the Universidad de los Andes in Bo- an artist who over the years followed a path towards abstraction to express the fullness of gotá, composition studies and Master degree in arts at the University of Music and Per- his subjects through space and colour in a deeply personal way, independent of the daily forming Arts, Vienna. Conducting courses with Karl Österreicher and Dominique Rouits. ephemeral necessities of the art business. In Rothko’s work what is being shown acts Studies on electroacoustics and computer music in Vienna and at IRCAM in Paris. His similarly to what remains concealed. Form and colour language rise from the reflection catalogue includes instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed compositions, as well as about his subjects: the Greek myths, the origin of tragedy, the structure of the psyche, works in collaboration with graphic design, painting and experimental video. Publications surrealism, the fresco paintings from Fra Angelico, etc. These are not aesthetical ends in and texts on artistic research, composition theory and aesthetics of electroacoustic music themselves. What remains after slow distillation contains the essence of its origin. Not as well as on history and identity of Latin American music. He was director of the comput- only that; what is being seen is thus present, as is that, which became outwardly dis- er music course and guest professor of electroacoustic composition at the University of pensable. Music in Vienna. Since 2007, he is director of the ICST and professor for electroacoustic composition at the Zurich University of the Arts. He was professor for composition at the Rothko IV defines a clear syntax based on composition models combining continuous International summer courses in Darmstadt 2012. and discontinuous elements. Discontinuous elements have the quality of recognizable sound objects that are combined in sequences leaving open spaces to perceive the www.toro-perez.com sounds behind them. Continuous sounds appear as surfaces and as a fluctuation pro- cesses. The piece is a further attempt to approach the idea of space as a superposition of layers that enter and leave the sound space covering and discovering further sound layers existing in the background and suggesting a process that continues beyond the limits of conscious perception. Harman‘s object 05:03, 2008 Marcus Maeder

In recent years, various new philosophical approaches have developed in the field of ob- Marcus Maeder is a sound artist and composer of electronic music. His artistic work fo- ject-oriented ontology and speculative realism regarding the things, thoughts and possi- cuses mainly on computer music and the artistic and media extensions of the term. As an bilities that make up our world. In most approaches, particularly in the work of philosopher author, Maeder has written on a number of topics in the fields of sound art, digital media Graham Harman, reality is conceived of as radically contextual and pluralistic: Harman’s and artistic research. Maeder studied Art at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts philosophy – and speculative realism in general – seeks to break away from a subject-ori- of Lucerne. He runs the music label domizil, which he co-founded in 1996 with Bernd ented view of the world and move towards a “democracy of objects”, where reality is no Schurer. Maeder has worked as an editor and producer for the Swiss radio station SRF longer shaped merely by human subjects: instead, every object – be it a living being, a and has been working as a curator and research associate at the Institute for Computer stone or a molecule – has its own reality, revealed to us in fragments. Music and Sound Technology of the Zurich University of the Arts since 2005. In his cur- rent research, Maeder is working on data sonification of ecological and climatic process- In the piece “Harman’s Object” I have attempted to work on Harman’s definition of objects es and studying the acoustic and aesthetic requirements for making them perceptible. in musical terms. For Harman, objects have a deeper reality than any of their ascribed characteristics, presenting aspects that are beyond human access and perception. www.marcusmaeder.net Accordingly, the piece contains a baseline of very low-pitched sounds, which are only partly audible. Furthermore, the perceptible low frequencies are almost physical in nature, sensed more by the body than by the ears. Objects possess a multitude of unexpressed characteristics. These are represented in the piece as slight changes in the timbre and volume of a sinusoidal tone, leaving listeners room for associations based on what they are able to hear. Again and again, objects elude association with other objects and even human interpretation: This is expressed in the piece as filtered noise enveloping the sound structures like an aura and intermittently disappearing from the audible range. Studie 21.2 04:22, 2015 Martin Neukom

The studies 21 deal with the synchronization of periodic processes as pulsating rhythms, Martin Neukom studied musicology, mathematics and psychology at the University of vibrato, turning of sound sources around the listener etc. and with the coordination of Zurich and music theory at the Musikhochschule Zurich. He is engaged in sound synthe- non-periodic parameters such as pitch, spectrum etc. In study 21.2 Van der Pol oscil- sis and composition with computers. Neukom works as a lecturer for music theory and lators are coupled in such a way that their parameters coordinate and synchronize by as a research associate at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology of the self-organization. Zurich University of the Arts.

www.domizil.ch/neukom.html Nothing exists... (Chance Cove Mix) 09:51, 2015 Jasch

At Chance Cove, Newfoundland, the unexpected suddenly appears, and leaves behind An artist-researcher, jasch is active in exploratory, open forms of music, media and a sense of wonder and astonishment. Crossing our paths are stories and spaces, and performance. His main focus lies on works that combine technology and gestural inter- perhaps glimpses of alternate realms that are always already here. It is these chance actions, both on stage and in installations. He has been invited as artist, lecturer and encounters that have the power to concentrate the energy of one instant only to get dis- researcher to numerous institutions and has presented installations, screenings, and sipated again in indetermination. The very close and the very remote share our attention. performances in clubs and at festivals such as the Sonar Festival, Barcelona, Transme- Gradually monologues and dialogues develop, affirmations are made, and dreamlike inner diale Festival, Berlin, Holland Festival, Amsterdam, TINA Festival, Sydney, Singapore Arts voices appear that seem lost in thoughts and that savour words as sensations rather Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Sonic Circuits Festival, Washington DC, Ultima than as signifiers. The three female performers become present through the immediacy Festival, Oslo, Sound Reasons Festival, Delhi, as well as many other venues worldwide. and corporeality of their voices. The intimacy of these voices and their closeness has the His research interests cover performance, embodiment, stage presence, listening, phys- potential to touch the listener and put her into states of sound, music, and altered listen- icality, and perception, carried out through investigations about the relationship between ing. Movements and actions take the stage then get displaced by the humming intensity movement and music, and sound and dance. of the night on Nova Scotia’s Linwood Harbour. The sounds of these inner and the outer states mix, blend, and intermingle. Is it the body in a state of music, the desiring body, www.jasch.ch the madness of being immersed in sound and music, which appears in those fragmented statements that fleetingly lay a web of meaning across the sonic spaces?

The text fragments are by Roland Barthes: “Nothing exists, save desire – all’acqua, all’ombra, ...” (from ‘Fragments d’un discours amoureux’, 1977), and “la musique une folie – pénétrée de désir – le corps en état de musique” (from ‘Rasch’, 1975). More words appear loosely and may represent a map of the poetic and imaginary territories that were explored during recording sessions in Canada in August 2015, Zurich in May 2015 and in Lucerne in 1999. The piece was composed with the voices of Sarah Swinwood, Kornelia Bruggmann, and Alexandra Frosio. Procep 04:17, 2015 Bojan Milosevic

Using a sinus oscillator and frequency modulation, a continuous sound is generated. Bojan Milosevic’s (*1986, Serbia) main interest lies in sound art and music, but also Sudden interruptions of the musical flow, leaps to other parts of the composition, warp in other fields of art and science. Since 2000, he has been working as a producer its original temporal development. This short study explores the aesthetical implications of electronic music. From 2005 until 2009, he studied at the School of Electrical and of such a technique. Techniques such as reverse development or leaps in time are often Computer Engineering of Applied Studies in Belgrade, department of Audio and Video used in films. A film can begin with the ending and end with the beginning. This can help Technologies. Since 2013, he has been studying towards an MA in Electroacoustic to enhance our attention and improve our understanding of certain events or characters Composition at the Zurich University of the Arts. He works on experimental sound in the film. in various ways including sound synthesis, algorithmic and generative composition as well as using different combinations of computer-generated and recorded sound. With sound, these leaps can be masked using different techniques. In this way, it is very Milosevic’s background includes fixed media, live audio-visual performances, installa- difficult to perceive a leap as deformation of time. In Procep, the intention was not to tions and research work in various fields. mask these leaps, but to emphasize them and to study them in the light of modern com- position. https://soundcloud.com/bojan-milosevic-7 Transient Beauty 07:24, 2015 Dimitris Maronidis

The work “Transient Beauty” was composed at the ICST during a two-week residency Dimitris Maronidis (*1980) composes acoustic, electroacoustic, mixed media and in August 2015. It reflects all the dramatic conditions I was going through in the previous interactive music. In his most recent works, he tries to bring together these fields and month during a very unstable period (politically and economically) in Greece. The form he extensively explores algorithmic processes for organizing his musical material. of the piece consists of a transition from a very dense, noisy, harsh and chaotic sound world to the beauty and tranquillity of a calm woman’s voice reflecting the alteration be- Dimitris has studied Counterpoint, Orchestration and Composition at the State tween feelings of immense anxiety and hope. Some of the music material is based on Conservatory of Thessaloniki and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 2009, he recordings Luc Ferrari made in May 68 in France. completed his PhD in Music Composition at the University of York with financial sup- port granted by the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece. In 2011, he moved to United States of America and pursued a post-doc research as a visiting Fulbright scholar at Harvard University. He has also studied computer music at the Institute of Psychoacoustics (IPSA) in an experimental project conducted at the Aristotle Univer- sity in collaboration with the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA). There he was introduced to the techniques of computer assisted composi- tion and electronic music.

www.maronidis.net Antipodean Rim 04:48, 2015 Jeroen Visser

‘Antipodean Rim’ is a work constructed almost entirely out of a Lorenz Attractor. This Jeroen Visser (*1961, Netherlands) studied at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht mathematical weather model has been analyzed and dissected in multiple ways. Partly with Jaap Vink, Gottfried Michael Koenig, and Floris van Manen. Following this, he its components were used to synthesize the sounds in the work; partly they were used worked as music technologist at Ton de Leeuw’s Electronic Studio of the Sweelinck on a larger time scale to generate formal structures. This is mainly an algorithmic com- Conservatory Amsterdam. In parallel, he did work as a composer, musician (p/bs) and position, although it makes use of empirical methods as well. It is based on some of the sound engineer. His musical activities today cover compositions for electroacoustic neo-plastic principles as proposed by the 1920’s art group “De Stijl”. Particularly some music, theatre and pop music. Apart from this he realizes sound installations, per- of the proposed uses of color and non-color have been transferred to the use of sound forms experimental sound/dance projects, improvises with live-electronics and also and silence. The spatialization has been used in an effort to establish planes in the per- leads an intercontinental Ethiopian-European music group, combining and opposing formance space, integrating the sound in the room architecture. Nevertheless, the work traditional Ethiopian music and contemporary European improvised Jazz. With this suggests an organic, nearly phrase-like structure. group, he developed a great and ongoing interest in Ethiopian pentatonic music. His current artistic interest heads towards the integration of composition and space. In a concert situation, the composition – conceptualized to be performed in a cube loud- speaker arrangement, where the audience is enclosed by – is being played over eight Several of his compositions have been published on CD, MC and Vinyl. Currently loudspeaker channels. No visual direction is prescribed. It is therefore possible, and even studying electroacoustic composition at ZHdK Zürich, he will complete his MA in the encouraged, to listen to this composition facing another direction as the neighbouring summer of 2016. listener. For this composition to be enjoyed on a stereo medium, a special version of the work has been rendered as a binaural representation of the eight-channel original. To do justice to the spatialization, an essential part of the composition, it is imperative to hear it with a pair of quality headphones. Only then can the spatialization effect be fully per- ceived. Published 2015/2016 by domizil Mastering: Jeroen Visser Graphic design: Medusa Cramer Proofreading: Lucas Bennett Thank you: Tobias Gerber, Sabine Egli, Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK www.icst.net www.domizil.ch