Sound Anthology: Program Notes - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

Binaural Representations of
HDLA Music: Eric Lyon, Curator

This edition of Computer Music
Journal’s Sound and Video Anthology
complements two special issues
devoted to computer music composed
for high-density loudspeaker arrays
(HDLAs), CMJ 40:4 and CMJ 41:1.
The intent of this anthology is to
share the experience of listening to
music for HDLAs, to the extent that
it can be reproduced, in binaural
recordings. The recordings included
on this anthology are all intended
for headphone listening. All seven
works were composed for HDLA
performance. Five were recorded
on-site at HDLA facilities, and the
remaining two were produced with
3-D spatialization plug-ins.

This is the first CMJ anthology
presented exclusively in binaural
format for headphone listening. Bin-
aural recordings and music performed
on HDLAs both enable listeners to
focus on spatial attributes of music.
In other ways, listening to binaural
music is nearly the polar opposite
to the HDLA experience. Whereas
experiencing spatial music at an
HDLA performance space is inher-
ently a social experience, headphones
provide the most private listening
space possible, short of internally
imagined sound. And whereas HDLA
facilities are still few and far between,
headphones are nearly ubiquitous.
And this ubiquity makes headphone
listening an ideal medium for lis-
teners who do not have access to an
HDLA facility to get a sense of the
spatial richness that is possible for
HDLA-conceived music.

The HDLA spaces represented here
are The Cube at Virginia Tech (Hagan
and Nichols), The SARC Sonic Lab at
Queen’s University Belfast (Sazdov),
and the Zentrum f ¨ur Kunst und Me-
dien (ZKM) Klangdom (Br ¨ummer). It
is fascinating to listen to these on-site
HDLA recordings, which convey an

doi:10.1162/COMJ e 00408

impressive amount of spatial informa-
zione, especially regarding elevation
cues. The differences in acoustic
properties of the HDLA spaces are
also very much in evidence on these
recordings. Allo stesso tempo, the lim-
its of on-site binaural recordings must
be acknowledged. Any ambient noise
in the space will be captured on the
recording. E, having experienced
multichannel music in the Cube,
Klangdom, and Sonic Lab, I can attest
that a binaural recording represents
a significant reduction from the full
experience of inhabiting an HDLA
space during a musical performance,
where one is free to move one’s head,
and sometimes one’s body as well, A
interactively explore spatially artic-
ulated sound. A binaural recording,
by contrast, reports only a fixed per-
spective of the space. And despite the
considerable spatial information con-
veyed with these binaural recordings,
the spaces also seem to be smaller in
headphone listening, as if they were
shrunken around one’s head for the
benefit of the listening process. IL
remaining binaural recordings on this
anthology in which the 3-D spaces
were artificially produced (Barrett
and Lopez-Lezcano) provide an im-
portant contrast to the on-site HDLA
recordings. The artificial recordings
would seem to have an advantage,
in that they are using spatialization
plug-ins for their intended purpose:
to create a binaural impression of
3-D projection of sound into space.
These recordings sound both spatially
rich and qualitatively different to my
ears than the on-site recordings. I’m
pleased that we can offer examples
of both methods of producing spatial
music for binaural listening, so that
listeners can form their own opinions.
Although we have focused primar-
ily on technical aspects in these notes,
this collection is, above all, a set of
elegant pieces of computer music,
created by artists with a keen sense
of the possibilities of spatial articula-
tion as a central element in musical
construction. There is much to be
learned by careful listening to each of

these works. After listening once for
technical details, I hope you will then
go back and enjoy the collection again
as a curated concert for headphone
listening. As with all headphone use,
I recommend listening at a moderate
volume level. It is not necessary to
play this music loudly to appreciate
its spatial subtleties.

About the Music

We begin with Spin, a large-scale work
by Ludger Br ¨ummer. The main mate-
rial for the work is produced through
interpreting data files as sound. Questo
noisy material is articulated har-
monically, formally, and timbrally,
and then orchestrated and clarified
by spatial articulation in 32 discrete
channels for the ZKM Klangdom. IL
spatial element is both contrapuntal,
E, in some very beautiful passages,
articulated by slow spinning of the
sound field. As with the rest of the
music on this anthology, Spin is best
enjoyed with eyes closed. The work
was recorded on-site on the Klangdom
of the ZKM Kubus, and this recording
bears traces of the lovely acoustics of
that wood-paneled hall.

Robert Sazdov’s rich, dramatic
composition Sveti Kliment focuses
on creating the subjective impression
of engulfment for the listener. Questo
recording is particularly effective at
capturing elevation cues necessary for
the effect that Sazdov is working to
achieve. The work was recorded in the
Sonic Lab of the Sonic Arts Research
Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.
Kerry Hagan’s Morphons and Bions

is based on noise-like sounds, E
largely retains the broadband aspect
of these sources, which are optimal for
localization. The algorithmic design
of Hagan’s composition lends itself
well to reconfiguration for alternative
HDLA performance spaces. In this
recording, a fixed-media 32-channel
version was prepared for binaural
recording in the Cube at Virginia
Tech. Morphons and Bions starts out
quite sparsely, and gradually builds

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to considerable density and intensity.
Even at its points of maximum den-
sity, the spatial articulation remains
clear.

In Charles Nichols’s Il Prete Rosso,

a live violinist’s sound is captured,
recombined, and spatialized through-
out the performance hall. Violinist
Sarah Plum performs the virtuosic
part with vigor and intensity. IL
work was composed for the 124.4
HDLA in the Cube at Virginia Tech,
where this binaural recording was
produced. The spatial trajectories,
including elevation cues, are clear
and vivid in this recording, benefit-
ting from both the dry acoustics of
the Cube and the familiarity of the
violin sound. The canny choice of
bariolage arpeggiation as the primary
musical material provides rapid ar-
ticulations that are much easier to
localize in space than more sustained
material would be. A motion sensor,
designed and built by the composer
and mounted on the violinist’s right
wrist, provides a layer of filtering on
the violin sound, directly connecting
changes in timbre to the physical
motion of the performer’s bowing.

Natasha Barrett’s He Slowly Fell
and Transformed into the Terrain is
the first recording on this anthology
that was not recorded on-site at an
HDLA facility, but rather directly
encoded to binaural format with the
Harpex encoder. Listeners will find
it of great interest to compare this
recording with the on-site HDLA
recordings, particularly in their dif-
ferent senses of spatial environment.
This composition provides a spatial
feast for the ears, with a wide vari-
ety of spatial trajectories, perceived
distances, and elevations, often pre-
sented simultaneously in a rich
spatial counterpoint. The work owes
much to the acousmatic tradition,
with a striking and varied gestural
language and a broad vocabulary of
sound sources that lend themselves

well to spatial articulation. It is very
easy to imagine the additional power
that this work would take on when
projected over an HDLA.

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano’s Space,
S[acred | ecular] is also directly en-
coded to binaural format. The model
for the artificial acoustic space of this
work comes from Hagia Sophia, one
of the great surviving examples of
Byzantine architecture, whose acous-
tics have been studied by researchers
at Stanford with the goal of digital
recreation of the acoustics of the
spazio. Spazio, S[acred | ecular] così
brings a rich existing acoustic model
to its spatial world, as is readily appar-
ent in the binaural version presented
here. Having heard the work per-
formed in the Virginia Tech Cube, IO
can attest that Space, S[acred | ecular]
benefits greatly from being able to
breathe freely in an HDLA facility,
given the magnificent physical archi-
tecture that underwrites its spatial
imagination.

The anthology concludes with
mirage 4 by Gerriet K. Sharma.
This work was recorded in the
Karl-Schussler Hall at Technische
Hochschule K ¨oln. This hall does not
have an installed HDLA. Invece, IL
spatial projection is accomplished
with an icosahedral loudspeaker,
which projects beams of sound in all
directions. Simultaneous projection
of multiple trajectories is a striking
feature of this work, which trans-
lates well to the binaural recording
presented here. The slow and sparse
textural language of the composition
allows us to end the collection on an
appropriately pensive note.

1. Spin—Ludger Br ¨ummer

After working with granular synthesis
and physical models, I became inter-
ested in a sound quality that was more
or less already present in all of the

techniques used: noise. The sounds I
have used in this work started with
digital noise. These sounds resulted
from video or data files that were
read as raw data into a sound editor,
then modified so that the information
structure inside the video file became
audible. Ovviamente, I was looking
for files with a considerable amount
of periodic information included so
that this could be interpreted as a
more-or-less pitched or repetitive
sound quality. After modifying these
sounds, they were cross-composed
with other algorithmic structures I
had previously created. This process
resulted in different, more-or-less
noisy sounds ranging from hiss to
“dirty” timbres.

In conjunction with samples of

string instruments and modified
voices, I created the narrative form
of Spin with the intention of gen-
erating an experience of noise. IL
sound structures were mixed and sep-
arated again for the 32-channel spatial
version of the work, which on this
recording is reduced to stereo. It was
the aim to mix the dense structure
in the concert space by moving it
through a cluster of speakers. Questo
enables the listener to experience a
world of sound containing a percep-
tual and auditory focus from inside an
individual perspective, while reveal-
ing many other features. Ovviamente,
the stereo version can only reproduce
a fraction of this, but it still provides a
good idea of the potential of the work.

Production Notes

The recording took place on 1
Dicembre 2016 in the Kubus of the
ZKM Karlsruhe (http://veranst.zkm
.de/Kubusindex.html). The recording
engineer was Alexandre Rodrigues.
A Neumann KU100 dummy-head
microphone was placed at a height
Di 1.5 meters in the center of the
Klangdom. The Klangdom consists of

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

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Figura 1. Ludger Br ¨ummer.

Figura 2. Robert Sazdov.

merce] Pompeia, S ˜ao Paulo, 2010) E
The Origin of Noise—The Noise of
Origin (Donaufestival Krems, 2012).
Br ¨ummer’s focus is in physical
modeling of sound, video, granu-
lar synthesis, other techniques for
sound synthesis, spatial music, E
databases. Awards: Folkwang Award
Essen, WDR Award Cologne; Busoni
Award Academy of the Arts, Berlin;
Golden Nica Ars Electronica 1994
and second prize at the Ars Electron-
ica 1997; Larry Austin Award from
ICMA; Pierre d’Or Bourges 1997 E
2001; first prize at the rostrum for
electroacoustic music by UNESCO;
Musica Sacrae 2001, Fribourg Switzer-
land; Menzioni D’Onore at the Luigi
Russolo Award, Italy; and the Stock-
holm Electronic Music Award.

2. Sveti Kliment—Robert

Sazdov

The composition Sveti Kliment
(2007) implements various spatializa-
tion techniques based on perceptual
research and psychoacoustics. These
include techniques to exploit the
elevated loudspeakers within the
multichannel setup in the Sonic Lab
of the Sonic Arts Research Centre
(SARC), Queens University, Belfast.
The aim was to generate a sense of
being covered by sound—engulfed,
and not simply enveloped (“sur-
rounded by sound”). The composition
was inspired by Saint Clement of
Ohrid (ca. 840–916 CE), patron saint
of Ohrid, the Republic of Macedo-
nia, and the Macedonian Orthodox
Church, whose life was committed
to research, teaching, and improving
the lives of those in his diocese. Lui
was considered the most learned of
Saint Cyril’s and Saint Methodius’s
disciples, and he not only improved
the Cyrillic alphabet, but was also a
prolific writer and translated various
texts using the Cyrillic script. In 886,

43 Meyer Sound UPJ-1P loudspeakers
E 4 HP700 subwoofers.

Ludger Br ¨ummer was born and raised
in Werne, Germany. He received his
master’s degree in psychology and so-
ciology at University Dortmund and
completed composition studies with
Nicolaus A. Huber and Dirk Reith
at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen.
He collaborated with choreographer
Susanne Linke on the work Ruhrot
and with the Nederlands Dans The-
ater with his orchestral work Riti
Contour. International performances
of his work have taken place at
GRM, Paris, and at ICMC confer-
encess in San Jose, Tokyo, Banff, E
Thessaloniki. He has been a visiting
scholar at the Center for Computer
Research in Music and Acoustics
(CCRMA) at Stanford University; UN
teaching assistant at the Folkwang
Hochschule, the Technische Univer-
sit ¨at (TU) Berlin, and the School of
Design Karlsruhe; a research fellow
at Kingston University; and a lecturer
for composition at the Sonic Arts
Research Centre Belfast. Since 2003
he has been the head of the Institute
for Music and Acoustics at ZKM
Karlsruhe and guest professor at the
School of Design. He is a member
of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin.
Notable performances include the
operas Amazonas (Biennale Munich
and SESC [Social Service of the Com-

he established in Ohrid a center of
higher learning, best described in
modern terms as a university, Quale
during its existence taught literature,
lingua, medicine, music, art, E
agriculture to over 3,500 students.

Production Notes

The recording was undertaken in the
Sonic Lab at SARC. The Neumann
KU100 dummy-head microphone
was used for the recording and
positioned in the “sweet spot” of the
audience seating area. The KU100
was set up at a height of 120 cm
to reflect the average height of a
seated person. The acoustic panels
in the Sonic Lab were lowered to
create a reverberation time RT60 of
0.2 sec as used in electroacoustic
music concerts such as the Sonorities
Festival of Contemporary Music. IL
recording was done by the composer
and recorded using a Digidesign Digi
002 interface and Digital Performer
software on 25 Febbraio 2007.

Robert Sazdov is a composer and
experimental psychologist. His com-
positions have received prizes and

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Figura 3. Kerry L. Hagan.

awards from various organizations
and institutions including the Pierre
Schaeffer Competition, the Mu-
sica Nova Competition, the Sonic
Arts Awards, the Bourges Interna-
tional Competition, and the Audio
Engineering Society. His work has
been performed at festivals and con-
certs, with recent performances at
inSonic–ZKM, STEIM, the Interna-
tional Conference on Spatial Audio,
the New York Electronic Music Fes-
tival, PURE Ambisonics–IEM, E
Gaudeamus. Sazdov’s current re-
search focus is on the perception of
three-dimensional sound and formu-
lating compositional approaches for
immersive loudspeaker setups, COME
well as formulating terminology for
describing three-dimensional sound.
He has taught at institutions includ-
ing the Western Australian Academy
of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan
Università; Digital Media and Arts
Research Centre, University of Lim-
erick; the Film Academy; Università
of Goce Delchev; and the Sydney
Conservatorium of Music, Università
of Sydney. He was recently employed
as a scientific researcher at Fraun-
hofer Institute (IIS), Internazionale
Auditory Laboratories, Erlangen. Lui
currently teaches in the School of
Communication at the University of
Tecnologia, Sydney.

3. Morphons and Bions—Kerry

l. Hagan

Morphons and Bions is a real-time
Pd composition that explores noise-
based synthesis techniques and ran-
dom processes to create the impres-
sion of living mechanisms. These
mechanisms live and grow indepen-
dently until reaching a critical mass,
when they become a single organism.
The morphologically independent
sounds combined with the sounds

real-time methods for spatialization
and stochastic algorithms for musi-
cal practice. Her work endeavors to
achieve aesthetic and philosophical
aims while taking inspiration from
mathematical and natural processes.
In this way, each work combines
art with science and technology
from various domains. Her works
have been performed in San Diego,
Belfast, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo,
New York, Toronto, Sydney, E
Perth, among others. As a researcher,
Hagan’s interests include real-time
algorithmic methods for music com-
position and sound synthesis, spatial-
ization techniques for 3-D sounds,
and electronic and electroacoustic
musicology. Her research has been
presented at ICMC, SMC, and EMS
conferences in Montreal, Berlin,
Belfast, Crete, New Jersey, Perth,
Texas, and elsewhere. In 2010, Hagan
led a group of practitioners to form the
Irish Sound, Science and Technology
Association, where she served as Pres-
ident until 2015. Currently, Hagan is
a lecturer at the University of Lim-
erick in the Digital Media and Arts
Research Centre. She is the principal
investigator for the Spatialization
and Auditory Display Environment
(SpADE).

Il Prete Rosso—Charles
Nichols

Il Prete Rosso, for amplified violin,
motion sensor, and computer, era
inspired by the violin concertos
of Italian baroque composer and
virtuoso violinist Antonio Vivaldi,
who was nicknamed The Red Priest
because of his red hair and Catholic
ordination. In the piece, the amplified
violin is recorded live and played
back in four parts, spatialized around
the audience, as an accompaniment
with itself. Following the violinist,
a computer musician triggers wah,

that behave together as a single organ
give rise to the title. As a real-time
piece, the details of each realization
change from performance to per-
formance, although the consistent
timbres and overall form of the work
retain the piece’s identity.

All sounds in the work are syn-

thesized. The sound sources rely
fundamentally on white noise and
digital noise mediated by classical
synthesis techniques and random
processes. Because the work is built
on a substrate entirely made of noise,
the piece is situated within certain
philosophical and aesthetic issues
surrounding noise, its use, and its
definition. This piece is not, Tuttavia,
“noise music.” Despite the acoustic
groundings in noise, the sounds ex-
hibit harmonic and quasiharmonic
behaviors, especially as the sounds
develop in the course of the work. Ul-
timately, the piece crosses back and
forth over the thin line of “sound”
and “noise,” where both are valid
musical materials.

Production Notes

Recorded in the Cube at Virginia
Tech on November 28, 2016. Sound
engineer: Tanner Upthegrove.
Microphone: G.R.A.S. 45BB KEMAR
Head and Torso Simulator.

Kerry L. Hagan is a composer and
researcher working in both acoustic
and computer media. She develops

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

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Figura 4. Charles Nichols.

Figura 5. Natasha Barrett.

the expressive potential of instru-
mental ensembles, computer music
systems, and combinations of the
two, for the concert stage, and col-
laborations with dance, video, E
installation art. His research in-
cludes motion capture for musical
performance, spatial audio, data soni-
ficazione, telematic performance, E
haptic musical instrument design. Lui
teaches Composition and Creative
Technologies at Virginia Tech, E
is a Faculty Fellow of the Institute
for Creativity Arts and Technol-
ogy. He has earned degrees from
Eastman, Yale, and Stanford, E
previously taught at the University
of Montana, where he directed the
Mountain Electroacoustic Laptop
Ensemble (MELEe) and the Com-
posers’ Workshop Pierrot Ensemble.
He has conducted research as a visit-
ing scholar at the Sonic Arts Research
Centre at Queen’s University Belfast,
taught computer music workshops at
the Banff Centre, Charlotte New Mu-
sic Festival, University of Rome, E
the Center for Computer Research
in Music and Acoustics at Stanford
Università, and composed as a resi-
dent at the Ucross and Brush Creek
artist retreats. His recent premieres
include Beyond the Dark, ambient
synthesized sound for installation
art and 3-D projection; Epimetheus
Gift, a densely textured and spa-
tialized piece for amplified bassoon,
computer, and ambisonics, inspired
by the Swedish extreme metal band
Meshuggah; Sound of Rivers: Stone
Drum, a multimedia collaboration
with sonified data, electric violin,
and computer music, accompanying
narrated poetry, dance, animation,
and processed video, based on sci-
entific research into the sound of
rivers; and Nicolo, Jimi, and John, UN
three-movement concerto for ampli-
fied viola, orchestra, and computer,
inspired by the virtuosity of Paganini,
Hendrix, and Coltrane.

5. He Slowly Fell, E

Transformed into the
Terrain—Natasha Barrett

“The metal horses had lost their
colour. The leaves dry, the stones
worn, the ice froze, then waned.
He slowly fell, and transformed
into the terrain.”

This composition—a fiction—
takes the listener on a journey in
the mind of a character born to
explore the harmony between hu-
man constructions and nature. As
constructions begin to take over,
he needs to find a new balance. Lui
slowly falls from the enjoyment of
a fairground carousel, and the allure
of the natural terrain overwhelms
his being. The new balance grad-
ually embodies a landscape of dry
leaves and lost children, worn stones,
melting snow, and a final release
into abstraction. He Slowly Fell, E
Transformed into the Terrain is in two
sections: a main journey and a final
coda. The work was commissioned
by Electric Audio Unit (EAU) con
funds from the Norwegian Cultural
Council.

Production Notes

The work has been composed in
sixth-order 3-D Ambisonics (HOA).
The spatialization applied IRCAM’s
Spat package (http://forumnet
.ircam.fr/product/spat-en), IL

phaser, and delay effects that process
the amplified violin. A motion sensor
on the hand of the violinist tracks
bow-arm performance gestures, A
interactively control the frequency
sweep of the wah effect. The piece
was written for Sarah Plum, con un
commission from Drake University.
The full premiere was performed
in the 124.4-channel spatial audio
system installed in the Cube of the
Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech.

Production Notes

The Cube of the Moss Arts Center
at Virginia Tech; Holophone H3
surround sound microphone, Allen
& Heath GSR24M preamplifier
with 48-kHz sample rate and 24-bit
depth, Steinberg Cubase, MacBook
Pro; Recording engineer: Tanner
Upthegrove, 1 Dicembre 2014.

Composer, violinist, and computer
music researcher Charles Nichols
(www.charlesnichols.com) explores

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Figura 6. Fernando Lopez-Lezcano.

composer’s own unpublished 3-D
higher-order Ambisonics (HOA)
granulation software Granddad, E
Ambisonics recordings using the
Soundfield SPS200 microphone. IL
binaural version has been rendered
with Harpex (http://harpex.net) from
the Ambisonics encoded stream.

Natasha Barrett (www.natashabarrett
.org) is a composer, performer, E
researcher in the field of contem-
porary electroacoustic art music.
She received her doctoral degree in
1998 from City University in Lon-
don and has since followed a career
predominantly as a freelancer.

Her work encompasses acousmatic

and electroacoustic concert compo-
sition, sound installations, theater
music, large-scale outdoor media pro-
ductions, sound-architectural works,
and interactive art. She regularly
collaborates with designers and sci-
entists, as well as musicians and
visual artists. Her work is inspired
by acousmatic sound and the aural
images it can evoke, particularly in
terms of the evocative implications
of space. Besides her compositional
activities, she has been employed as
a researcher at the Department for
Musicology, University of Oslo, E
is currently engaged as a professor
in electroacoustic composition at
the Norwegian State Academy for
Music.

Barrett’s works are performed
and commissioned throughout the
world and have received a long list
of prizes. These include the Nordic
Council Music Prize (Nordic Coun-
tries), first prizes in the Giga-Hertz
Award (Germany), Edvard Prize (Nor-
modo), jury and public first prizes in
Noroit-Leonce Petitot (France), five
first prizes and the Euphonie d’Or
in the Bourges International Electro-
acoustic Music Awards (France),
Musica Nova (Prague), CIMESP
(Brasile), Concours SCRIME (France),

International Electroacoustic Com-
petition Ciberart (Italy), two prizes
in Concours Luigi Russolo (Italy),
two first prizes in the International
Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music,
and an honorary mention at Ars
Electronica.

6. Spazio, S[acred | ecular]—
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey,
was once a cathedral, then a mosque,
and is now a secular museum. Its
main dome rises up to a height
Di 180 piedi (55 M) and the building
is one of the greatest surviving
examples of Byzantine architecture.
The Icons of Sound group at CCRMA,
Stanford University, and the Arts
and Art History Department at
Stanford sought to digitally recreate
its acoustics so that music created
centuries ago for that space could
be “heard” again as intended (at
least virtually). The highlight of the
still-ongoing project was a Stanford
Live concert in the 2013 opening
season of the Bing Concert Hall at
Stanford (“From Constantinople to
California”), in which the Cappella
Romana singers, a group specializing
in Byzantine chanting, performed
live within a computer-simulated
3-D rendering of the Hagia Sophia
acustica, inside Bing itself.

This recreation of Hagia Sophia
remains frozen in the digital domain,
and was the foundation and inspi-
ration for the creation of this piece
over a week of intense work in the
Kubus at the Zentrum f ¨ur Kunst und
Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe. It was also
the testing ground of a new reverber-
ation architecture that enabled the
composer to work completely in the
Ambisonics domain, creating sound
fields that are independent of the
number and location of the rendering
speakers. This 3-D environment

created a natural and convincing
re-creation of this enormous space, In
which the reverberation supports and
maintains the spatial information of
the music rendered within it. More
work on the piece was done later at
the CCRMA Listening Room and the
composer’s private studio.

The interplay between the secular

and sacred aspects of Hagia Sophia,
as well as the precise tailoring of
percussion and vocal sounds into
musical form inside the simulated
spazio, created the rest.

Production Notes

This binaural rendering was
created from the original fifth-order
Ambisonics master by using the
Ambix Ambisonics binaural decoder.
The composer used the SARC Sonic
Lab reduced set preset, which in-
cludes separate early and late impulse
response components and decodes
the full fifth-order Ambisonics signal
A 32 virtual sources, which are
convolved with the stereo impulse
responses of each speaker as recorded
in the hall (the recordings were done
with a Neumann KU 100 dummy
head).

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano enjoys imag-
ining and building new things, fixing
them when they don’t work, E
improving them even if they seem to
work just fine. The scope of the word
“things” is extensive, and includes

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

111

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Figura 7. Gerriet K. Sharma.

computer hardware and software,
controllers, music composition, per-
formance, and sound. His music
blurs the line between technology
and art, and is as much about form
and sound processing, synthesis,
and spatialization as about the al-
gorithms and custom software he
writes for each piece. He has been
working in multichannel sound and
diffusion techniques for a long time,
and can hack Linux for a living. A
CCRMA, Stanford University, since
1993, he combines his backgrounds
in music (piano and composition),
electronic engineering, and program-
ming with his love of teaching and
music composition and performance.
He discovered the intimate workings
of sound while building his own ana-
log synthesizers an exceedingly long
time ago, and even after more than 30
years, “El Dinosaurio” is still being
used in live performances. He was
the Edgard Var `ese Guest Professor
at the TU Berlin during the summer
Di 2008. In 2014, he received the
Marsh O’Neill Award for Exceptional
and Enduring Support of Stanford
University’s Research Enterprise.

7. Mirage 4—Gerriet K. Sharma

The work mirage 4 was developed
and composed in 2015 for and with
the IKO, the icosahedral loudspeaker
developed at the Institute of
Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM)
at ZKM. It is part of the series of 6
works that summarize the artistic
research on “Sculptural Sound
Phenomena in Computer Music”
from the composer’s doctoral project.
The composition blends the three

basic sculptural categories kernel
plastic, spatial plastic, and kernel–
shell principle, all deduced from
theories of sculpture and translated
into spatial sound composition in the
loudspeaker domain.

The Mirage project is not meant as

a collection of experimental prac-
tices nor as yet another spatial
composition—it aims for an aesthetic
practice that composes space, using
space as a plastic, sonic material. IL
project aims to find a poetic approach
to using complex environments in
contemporary media art for creating
self-evident and unique experiences
that make a strong difference to ordi-
nary setups as in cinema, television,
or home 5.1 surround sound, and that
invite the listener to share an ex-
tended ontology of sonic spatial arts.

Production Notes

17 novembre 2016, 8 PM

IKO Cologne Concert, at Karl-
Sch ¨ussler Hall, Technische
Hochschule K ¨oln (TH K ¨oln –
University of Applied Sciences)

Binaural recording and editing: Neu-
mann KU100 (#01316) (positioned
approximately in the middle of the
room), 1.2 m ear height -> RME
Babyface (48 V, +30 dB) -> Mac

Book Pro -> Reaper (24-bit, 44.1
kHz) -> +10 dB -> NoiseShaping ->
Rendering WAV 16-bit, 44.1 kHz.

Recording engineer: Frank Schultz
(Sonible).

Room characteristics: average
reverberation time RT60 = 1.35 sec,
bass ratio BR = 1.05.

Gerriet K. Sharma (www.gksh.net)
is a composer and sound artist. Lui
studied Media Art at the Academy of
Media Arts Cologne and Composition
and Computer Music (KUG) at the
University of Music and Performing
Arts Graz. In October 2016 he com-
pleted his doctorate at the KUG with
a dissertation on “Composing Sculp-
tural Sound Phenomena in Computer
Music.” Gerriet K. Sharma lives in
Cologne, Luzern, and Graz. Nel
last ten years he was deeply involved
in spatialization of electroacoustic
compositions in Ambisonics and
wave-field synthesis and in transfor-
mation into 3-D sound sculptures.
From 2009 A 2015 he was curator
of the Signale Graz concert series for
electroacoustic music, algorithmic
composition, radio art, and perfor-
mance at the MUMUTH Graz. His
works were presented at the SPARK
Festival of Electronic Music and Art,
Minneapolis, 2006; the New York
City Electroacoustic Music Festival
2009 E 2016; the DAFx-10 Inter-
national Conference, Graz, 2010; IL
International Conference for Spatial
Audio (ICSA), Detmold, 2011; IL
International Conference on New
Interfaces for Musical Expression
(NIME), Oslo, 2011; the ELIA-Art
Schools NEU/NOW Festival, Vilnius,
2009 E 2011; the Darmstadt Inter-
national Summer Course for New
Music 2014; the Music Biennale
Zagreb 2015; and the Sound and
Music Conference (SMC) 2016. He re-
ceived numerous awards and grants.
He was scholarship holder of the

112

Computer Music Journal

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German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD) In 2007 E 2009. In 2008 he
was awarded the German Sound Art
Award. In 2007 E 2010 he was Artist
in Residence at Pact Zollverein Essen,
working on his concept of sculptural

sound projection and formation. Dur-
ing his 2011–2013 residency at the In-
stitute of Musicology in Wuerzburg,
Germany, he conceived and estab-
lished the Atelier for Sound Research.
In spring 2014 he was composer in res-

idence at ZKM Karlsruhe. Currently,
he is senior researcher and composer
within the three-year artistic research
project “Orchestrating Space by Icosa-
hedral Loudspeaker” (OSIL) funded
by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).