This article proposes a conception of sound as the material of artistic experimentation. It centres on a discussion of the nature of sound’s ontological status and aims to contribute to a new understanding of the role of materiality in artistic practices. A central point of discussion is Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of the sound object, which is critically examined. The phenomenological perspective that underlies the concept of the sound object depicts sound as an ideal unity constituted by a subject’s intentionality. Thus, it can barely grasp the physicality of sounds and their production or their reality beyond individual perception. This article aims to challenge the notion of the sound object as a purely perceptual phenomenon while trying to rethink experimentation as a practical form of thought that takes place through interacting with sonorous material. Against the background of recent object-oriented and materialist philosophical theories and by drawing on the Heideggerian concept of the thing and Gilbert Simondon’s theories of perception and individuation, this article strives to outline a conception of sound as a non-symbolic otherness. The proposed idea of thingness revolves around a morphogenetic conception of the becoming of sonorous forms that links their perception to their physicality.

Sonification presents some challenges in communicating information, particularly because of the large difference between possible data to sound mappings and cognitively valid mappings. It is an information transmission process which can be described through the Shannon-Weaver Theory of Mathematical Communication. Musical borrowing is proposed as a method in sonification which can aid the information transmission process as the composer’s and listener’s shared musical knowledge is used. This article describes the compositional process of Wasgiischwashäsch (2017) which uses Rossini’s William Tell Overture (1829) to sonify datasets relating to climate change in Switzerland. It concludes that the familiarity of audiences with the original piece, and the humorous effect produced by the distortion of a well-known piece, contribute to a more effective transmission process.

This article reflects on a number of issues surrounding the appropriation of culturally identifiable sound material for artistic purposes – both overall or broader concerns and those that may arise particularly in conjunction with electroacoustic musical composition. More specifically, we explore questions potentially raised by three electroacoustic compositions recently commissioned by the Instruments INDIA project, a unique cultural partnership between Liverpool Hope University (represented by Dr Manuella Blackburn) and Milapfest (represented by Alok Nayak). Those three compositions were created exclusively with materials from an extensive library of Indian music performances, curated and recorded by Blackburn specifically for Instruments INDIA, and premiered in concert in Liverpool, UK, 20 January 2017. Following the broader discussion of relevant concerns, we briefly review some perspectives offered by the three composers (one of whom is the author), as they relate to cultural appropriation in general, and working with the Instruments INDIA sound library in particular.

This article specifically addresses electroacoustic music compositions that borrow from existing musical and sound resources. Investigating works that borrow and thrive upon existing sound sources presents an array of issues regarding terminology, authorship and creativity. Embedding borrowed elements into new electroacoustic music goes beyond the simplicity of ‘cut and paste’ as composers approach this practice with new and novel techniques. Musical borrowings have been widely studied in fields of popular and classical music, from cover songs to quotations and from pastiches to theme and variations; however, borrowings that take place within the field of electroacoustic music can be less clear or defined, and demand a closer look. Because the components and building blocks of electroacoustic music are often recorded sound, the categories of borrowing become vast; thus incidences of borrowing, in some shape or form, can appear inevitable or unavoidable when composing. The author takes on this issue and proposes a new framework for categorising borrowings as a helpful aid for others looking to sample in new compositional work, as well as for further musicological study. The article will consider the compositional process of integration and reworking of borrowed material, using a repertoire study to showcase the variety of techniques in play when sound materials change hands, composer to composer. Terminology already in use by others to describe sound borrowing in electroacoustic music will be investigated in an effort to show the multitude of considerations and components in action when borrowing takes place. Motivations for borrowing, borrowing types, borrowing durations, copying as imitation, and composers’ reflections upon borrowing will all be considered within the article, along with discussions on programmatic development and embedding techniques. At the heart of this article, the author aims to show how widespread and pervasive borrowing is within the electroacoustic repertoire by drawing attention to varieties of sound transplants, all considered as acts of borrowing.

In discourse on the topic, the question of what constitutes a musical ‘borrowing’, if raised at all, is usually restricted in scope and framed as one of terminology – that is, of determining the right term to characterise a particular borrowing act. In this way has arisen a welter of terms that, however expressive of nuance, have precluded evaluation of the phenomenon as such. This is in part a consequence of general disregard for the fact that to conceive of musical borrowing entails correlative concepts, all of which precondition it, yet none self-evidently. Further preclusive of clarity, the musico-analytic lens of borrowing is typically invoked only in counterpoint to a quintessentially Western aesthetic category of composition ex nihilo. As a consequence, the fundamental role played by borrowing in musical domains situated at the periphery of the Western art music tradition, specifically pre-modern polyphony and twentieth-century musique concrète, has been overlooked. This article seeks to bridge such lacunae in our understanding of musical borrowing via phenomenological investigation into its conceptual and historical foundations. A more comprehensive evaluation of musical borrowing, one capable of accounting for its diverse instantiations while simultaneously disclosing what makes all of them ‘borrowings’ in the first place, is thereby attainable.

Current automatic deception detection approaches tend to rely on cues that are based either on specific lexical items or on linguistically abstract features that are not necessarily motivated by the psychology of deception. Notably, while approaches relying on such features can do well when the content domain is similar for training and testing, they suffer when content changes occur. We investigate new linguistically defined features that aim to capture specific details, a psychologically motivated aspect of truthful versus deceptive language that may be diagnostic across content domains. To ascertain the potential utility of these features, we evaluate them on data sets representing a broad sample of deceptive language, including hotel reviews, opinions about emotionally charged topics, and answers to job interview questions. We additionally evaluate these features as part of a deception detection classifier. We find that these linguistically defined specific detail features are most useful for cross-domain deception detection when the training data differ significantly in content from the test data, and particularly benefit classification accuracy on deceptive documents. We discuss implications of our results for general-purpose approaches to deception detection.

In this article, based on four decades of experience of using samples in diverse ways in experimental, particularly electroacoustic compositions, the author investigates the world of what he calls ‘sample-based sound-based music’ and suggests that there is a relative lack of scholarship in this important area. The article’s contextual sections focus on briefly delineating this world of sonic creativity and placing it within today’s sampling culture as well as dealing with two political aspects of sampling, a musician’s attitude towards the reuse of sonic materials and the legality of sampled sounds, including musical passages, in the discussion of which current legislation related to sampling is challenged. Following this, a number of categories are presented in terms of the types of sampling material that is being used as well as how sample-based works are presented. The subsequent section is perhaps the most poignant in the article, namely the opening up of this form of innovative composition from a more traditional ‘artist creates work’ mode of operation to a more collaborative one which is essentially already part of most other forms of sampling culture. The objective here is to suggest that such collaborative approaches will enable sample-based sound-based music to become part of the lives of a much broader group than those currently involved with it.