The digital studio as compositional tool: towards a virtual performance platform

Current means for simulation of impossible sonic realities are yet unmatched in the delivery of sound. This research is a preparation for fully immersive and interactive audition of composed music. The compositions submitted in this portfolio are experiments towards understanding newer technological ‘affordances and constraints’ and the possibilities these will engender. Having developed a proof of concept for my invention 3DBARE, which will allow fully immersive interaction with multi-channel digital audio, I have explored ways in which this creates new possibilities for the composer. This commentary reports the methods and rationale for virtual performance experiments in acousmatic compositions seeking either to simulate human agency or which are palpably unreal (“impossible music”) and in geo-located soundscapes. The works submitted are explorations of uses of both physical and virtual space for controlled indeterminacy of audition, with listener-action as the controller of the heard totality of the music. The control resides in the compositional methods and outcomes; the indeterminacy arises in the free variability of individual listener action to create differentiated consecutive auditions to the same music. Geo-location of composed sound is concerned both with augmentation of reality and the intersections of reality with virtuality. The experiments in geo-location revealed profound differences between current and proposed means of composing and of encountering composed sound. The discoveries made in the course of this research are outlined from acousmatic simulation to geo-located soundscapes in the search for ‘adequate means of listening’ to virtual performance. I have sought to identify the boundaries of auditory credulity in simulating ‘liveness’ in preparation for a system of immersive binaural sound reproduction: the means to ‘walk inside a piece of music’ and inspect it as though a physical object