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Welcome to follow the Space, Place and Sound Symposium on 27-28 November

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Location

Helsinki Music Centre, Black Box concert hall

About

This is a two-day symposium, with workshops in curated study groups, joint plenary sessions, framed by two electroacoustic concerts. In this research symposium, musicians as researchers and practitioners investigate and exchange ideas and experiences about the concepts of space and place. These ideas are the foundation for different types of music and listening practices. With technological mediations in electroacoustic and electronic music, possibilities of simulating spatial sound have become very common. However, the meanings and impacts of spatially organized sound remain mostly undefined and poorly understood. With this research meeting, the organisers intend to foster the development of discourse and understanding.

Schedule

Thursday 27.11 (all in Black Box)

  • 14:00 – 14:15 Welcome (15 min)
  • 14:15 – 15:45 Research workshop 1, groups (90 min)
  • 16:00 – 17:00 Research session 1, plenary (60 min)
    – Break
  • 19:00 – 20:00 Memories of Space: Electroacoustic Concert 1 (60 min).

Composers/performers (alphabetically): Therese Næss Diesen, Henrik Frisk, Andrea Mancianti, Alejandro Montes de Oca, Louisa Palmi

Friday 28.11

  • 09:30 – 11:00 Research workshop 2, groups (90 min)
  • 11:15 – 12:15 Research session 2, plenary (60 min)

– Lunch break

  • 13:30 – 15:00 Research workshop 3, groups (90 min)
  • 15:15 – 16:00 Research session 3, plenary (30 min)
  • 16:00 – 16:30 Closing, plenary (30 min)
    – Break
  • 19:00 – 20:00 Dancing Exoplanets: electroacoustic concert 2 (60 min)

Composers/performers (alphabetically): Hakosalo–Tuohino, Otto Iivari, Hans-Gunter Lock, Alejandro Olarte, James Welburn, Marcus Wrangö

10:00 – 16:00 Listening room (more information on-site):
Composers (alphabetically): Platons Buravickis, Katrin Enni, Erik Peters, Jekaterina Viltšenko

Topics and issues

The approaches to understanding space as a fundamental contributing factor to music experience, and therefore direct engagement, are underdeveloped and fixated on the technical rather than the experiential dimensions. Beyond terms like envelopment and Cartesian terminology of geometric space, little vocabulary is in use to address the experience of spatiality in music. How we think, conceive, and imagine space has a huge impact on how we experience space. Critical examination of popular references of spatialisation is needed to expand our conceptions of space in the musical and sonic domains.

Does a shift away from operations of identifying, describing, classifying, and systematizing environmental elements, towards the perceptual, situational, and experiential dimensions of space in sound present a valid way forward to a more informed understanding and creation of spatial musics?

Are the often-cited relations to architecture and other conceptions of space such as modalities and concepts from anthropology, sociology, natural sciences and other arts disciplines fruitful for a deeper understanding of spatiality in music and sound?

Perspectives and questions

Issues up for discussion:

  • Strategies in the praxis of artistic work with spatiality in music and sound.
  • The conditions and constraints that inform artistic realizations of spatiality through sound and music.
  • The experiential dimensions of space in sound, of sound in space, and of the listener’s relation to created and performed sonic environments and pieces.
  • The role of sites, given architectures and superposition, and simulation and abstractions in creating and perceiving spatiality in music.
  • Exploring alternative taxonomic approaches, descriptions of physics phenomena in acoustics or architectural spaces, and beyond.
  • Speculative approaches and imagination-fueled scenarios as a method for exploring spatialisation for a community of practices.
  • Modes of articulation and communication of the fundamentals present in sonic artis-tic works that makes use of spatial dimensions and perceptions.

Organizers

This symposium is collaboratively organized by Prof. Jan Schacher and Dr. Alejandro Olarte of the Centre for Music and Technology, CM&T at the Sibelius Academy, Uniarts, Helsinki and Prof. Henrik Frisk of the Department for Composition, Conducting and Music Theory of the Royal College of Music, KMH, Stockholm. It is held in the context of CM&T’s biannual Spatial Audio Week.

More information

Producer Anna Huuskonen-Kuhlefelt
anna.huuskonen-kuhlefelt@uniarts.fi