This paper examines how aesthetics are constructed in technology-mediated musical practice, focusing on the interplay between cultural expectations of AI-generated sounds and the technical structures determining the behaviour of AI algorithms. Through a reconstruction of events in the Surfing Hyperparameters project, we capture how the sonic aesthetics of the system were constructed by negotiating between our sonic expectations (informed by cultural narratives of ghosts in machines) and the sound produced by the system. We argue that the aesthetics of AI-generated sound are often inspired rather than directly caused by the technology itself. While existing research has identified how tools embed ‘paths of least resistance’ towards certain sonic aesthetics, our work reveals a complementary force: how aesthetic expectations rooted in cultural narratives – from science fiction’s stories of autonomous machines to sonic hauntology’s spectral presences – actively shape design decisions and sonic outcomes. Through a radically transparent approach to documenting mismatches between expectation and reality, we show that the stories practitioners tell while building and making music with technology are performative, constructing rather than merely describing aesthetic realities. Addressing these interplays between imagination, expectation and material reality constitutes an important step towards addressing the complex sociotechnical assemblages in which technology-mediated musical practices come into being.

This article examines the virtual synthesiser as a prescriptive element in contemporary music-making, arguing that compositional tendencies emerge through concrete instrumental configurations. From a digital-organological perspective, it distinguishes analytically between synthesis method, technical implementation and interface prioritisation, and examines how their interaction foregrounds particular modes of control, listening and temporal articulation. The discussion addresses three contrasting configurations, illustrated through u-he Diva as a panel-centric subtractive instrument, two modulation-matrix wavetable instruments (Xfer Serum 2 and Vital), and Korg Modwave Native as a motion-system configuration. It focuses on how control infrastructures, DSP policies and interface organisation shape sound-design practice under comparable working conditions. Sonic fidelity is treated as an aesthetic regime enacted through design choices, encompassing process authenticity, spectral hygiene and curated digital imperfection. Combining technical analysis with two controlled practice-based vignettes, the article examines how instrument-internal control resources support the emergence of musical form under explicitly defined constraints and proposes a transferable framework for relating virtual instrument design to compositional practice within contemporary electroacoustic and studio-based music.

This article addresses sonic experimentalism in Latin America from a critical perspective based on a review of artistic projects that have been active in recent years in different countries of the region. Its main objective is to discuss whether there are features that can be conceived as characteristic of Latin American sonic experimentalism, whether it is relevant to define issues that affect the people and communities that practice it in a cross-cutting manner, and, if so, whether it is feasible to talk about strategies that bring together people and groups who, although they work in different countries and conditions, consider themselves as part of the same community. Through the three axes chosen to structure this article (sonority, technology, and collaborative platforms), several aspects will be addressed that link a significant number of sound and experimental music artists in different locations within the territory in question. This will lead to a discussion about identity expressed in sound practices, using a cultural studies approach. By foregrounding voices that “ruin the algorithm” of coloniality, this research enriches Latin American sound studies debates and seeks to contribute to the study of experimentalism in the Global South.

Our research set out to determine how the distinctive social ethos and tactile appeal of physical modular synthesisers could be transferred into extended reality contexts. Employing a ‘netnographic’ approach, the research examined content drawn from social media platforms including YouTube, Discord and Reddit. Particular attention was given to an analysis of ‘PatchWorld’ as the most prominent commercially available virtual modular synthesis tool. Additionally, ‘OpenSoundLab’, an open-source mixed-reality modular sound laboratory that was developed in earlier research, was adapted to allow multi-user sessions in mixed reality (MR), both locally co-located or remotely. Commercial standalone headsets were handed out to three artists in order to observe how they translate their patch and performance practices into extended realities. Distributing both the headsets and software functioned as a form of ‘cultural probe’, enabling the collection of detailed user experiences and acting as a prompt for informed conversations. Through this process, the evaluation yielded evidence that some of the most valued aspects of using physical modular systems can be translated to virtual modular systems, especially since these share a similar – if not greater – potential for creative and social immersion in a spatial instrument.

Praat AudioTools is an open-source library of over 300 scripts that transforms the phonetic analysis software Praat (Boersma and Weenink) into an offline, object-centric laboratory for electroacoustic composition. While Praat is the standard tool for linguistic analysis, its potential for musical creation has remained largely untapped due to its interface design. We propose a workflow in which phonetic analysis objects – specifically PitchTiers (frequency curves), FormantGrids (resonance tracks) and TextGrids (temporal segmentation) – function as editable musical scores. Unlike real-time performance environments (e.g., Max/MSP, SuperCollider), which prioritise low-latency interaction, this toolkit emphasises ‘compositional deep time’, embedding analysis within an iterative edit–render–listen loop. Small modifications to analysis data produce structural consequences in timbre, gesture and form, enabling a research-creation practice rooted in the acousmatic tradition and spectromorphological thinking. By treating phonetic measurement as compositional material, AudioTools bridges phonetics and poetics. We contextualise this framework within the lineage of speech synthesis in electroacoustic music and demonstrate, through case studies, how it enables compositional strategies grounded in analysis as composition. The toolkit integrates neural network processing while maintaining interpretability, positioning it critically against black-box neural synthesis and arguing for transparent, parametric control in research-creation practice.

This article proposes queernotation as a lens to understanding existing works and as a way forward for composers and musicians who find themselves limited by traditional forms of music notation. Applying queer ways of knowing and creating, I investigate the inherent boundaries in notation and how queer theory can guide us to break out of them. Queernotation connects score types to three key areas of queer theory: queer erotics, queer temporalities and queer futurity. Extending these theoretical approaches to their musical possibilities, I identify three modes of queering notation. These approaches are demonstrated in this article through existing historical and recent works and practically applied in a chamber opera that tests concepts of queernotation in directing improvisers to perform conceptual ideas on the stage. Notation for electronic instruments and with digital mediums demonstrates how technology facilitates new approaches that can queer music notation.

This article examines the use of neural networks in electromechanical sound art and music, where sound is materially enacted through physical means such as motors, solenoids, and physical resonators. It begins with a survey of documented works, outlining a range of current strategies and discussing how technical, material, and performative factors influence their design. Identifying natural language processing as underexplored in this domain, a practice-based case study, Seven Studies for Electric Motors, develops one such language-based approach. The project embeds a small language model for real-time sentence generation, extracts syntax structures, and translates these into patterns of motor-driven sound. Taken together, the survey and case study offer a picture of how machine learning has been integrated into electromechanical practices over the past decade and point to possible directions for further work.

This article presents the recent production and institutional trajectory of Studio PANaroma, one of the leading centres for research and creation in electroacoustic music in Latin America. Over the course of three decades, PANaroma has functioned not only as a multichannel electroacoustic music studio, but also as a pedagogical hub – nurturing new generations of composers through a coherent artistic vision embedded within Brazil’s public university system. This article discusses the studio’s aesthetic orientation and artistic values, as well as the collaborative research strategies currently being developed within SOMNIUM, its newly established research group. Two case studies are presented. The first stems from a recently concluded six-year Thematic Project entitled Harmonicity and Inharmonicity in Instruments of the Percussion/Resonance Family in Interaction with Electronics (2019–2025). This research investigated how the harmonic and inharmonic spectra of percussion instruments can inform both compositional strategies and analytical methodologies. The second case outlines a new line of inquiry still in its early stages, currently in the process of project design and preliminary research. This investigation introduces the concept of Sonoclisis – a neologism coined to describe the acoustic phenomena resulting from the physical coupling of sounding bodies – exploring its implications for both sound-based composition and analysis.

This article explores the role of Chilean electroacoustic music as a medium for articulating cultural memory, particularly in response to significant historical events and unresolved traumas of the past 50 years. It examines five relevant works by Iván Pequeño (*1945), Leni Alexander (1924–2005), Federico Schumacher (*1963), José Miguel Candela (*1968) and Rodrigo Cádiz (*1972), analysing their engagement with voice, historical memory, trauma and political testimony through the lenses of acousmatic theory, sonic phenomenology and trauma studies. The article argues that Chilean electroacoustic music serves not only as a record of historical violence but also as a performative space where memory can be inhabited, archived, transformed and made audible again. It highlights the use of human voice recordings as vehicles of memory, the integration of radio art and testimonial narratives and the concept of ‘acousmatic storytelling’ to engage listeners in a multi-valent listening experience that blurs the lines between abstract sound and historical index. Ultimately, the article demonstrates how Chilean electroacoustic music functions as ‘embodied historiography’, using sound to write history and engaging listeners’ imagination, cognition and empathy to embrace through sound experiences of memory, political statements and justice.

The Laboratorio Digital de Música (LADIM), or Digital Music Laboratory, is located at the heart of Universidad Simón Bolívar as part of several other experimental laboratories (e.g., computational mechanics, cellular biology or nuclear physics). It has played a leading role in the curation and performance of electroacoustic and technology-mediated music at the most prestigious international festivals of contemporary music held in Venezuela (such as the Latin American Music Festival 2004–2016, and Atempo 2006). Furthermore, it has organised independent concerts and events, trained composers and musicians, produced a discreet body of literature and collaborated with institutions like the Society of Electroacoustic Music in Sweden (SEAMS) and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA, Stanford). Throughout its 21-year history, LADIM has been a central figure shaping the contemporary music landscape of Venezuela’s 21st-century scene. Despite its repertoire amounting to 75 electroacoustic works, encompassing acousmatic, mixed, video and live-electronics pieces, the laboratory has not yet established a formal archive. This article represents the first effort to reconstruct its historical milestones, while identifying the repertoire collection linked to it for the purpose of a future systematic study.

Biological rhythms exhibit harmonic relations that can be operationalised for art–science creation. We introduce a neurophenomenological framework that treats the harmonic architecture of brain–body oscillations (HABBOs) as a compositional medium and guiding signal for real-time feedback. Methodologically, we compute the harmonicity of spectral peaks from electrophysiological time series (e.g., brain, heart), derive adaptive microtonal tunings via timbre–tuning alignment and dissonance-curve analysis, and render evolving tension–resolution trajectories through a sonification method we call harmonic audification. Building on these tools, we prototype creative brain–computer interfaces (cBCIs) that align auditory feedback with a participant’s harmonic landscape, enabling embodied exploration of attention, affect and creativity through closed-loop interaction. To broaden access, we release the Biotuner Engine, a web application that transforms oscillatory data into MIDI tunings and chord progressions alongside the companion open-source toolbox for research pipelines. Our contributions are as follows: (1) formalisation of HABBOs for creative biofeedback; (2) algorithms for extracting and tracking bioharmonic structure and transitional harmony; (3) cBCI design principles coupling neural dynamics to adaptive sound; and (4) accessible software for artists and scientists. We argue that modelling harmony in biosignals offers a rigorous bridge between musical form and neural dynamics, opening transdisciplinary pathways for performance, sonification and empirical study.

This paper re-evaluates the significance of José Vicente Asuar (1933–2017), a pioneering figure in Latin American computer music, shifting the focus from the hardware construction of his COMDASUAR system to the innovative software he developed for algorithmic composition. While Asuar’s hybrid digital-analog computer is noteworthy, the true core of his contribution lies in his original machine language programs designed for the Intel 8080 microprocessor. This study examines how Asuar thought about and designed algorithms specifically created for generating musical structures, processing symbolic data in real-time, and enabling interactive performance. By analyzing newly discovered handwritten notebooks containing his meticulous code documentation, we uncover Asuar’s deep engagement with low-level programming to express complex musical ideas. His approach, focused on the computer as an “amplifier of the imagination,” prioritized the development of software to facilitate generative composition and real-time manipulation of musical parameters. This paper argues that Asuar’s legacy rests not solely on the COMDASUAR hardware but primarily on his visionary software architecture, which transformed the computer into a dynamic compositional partner. In doing so, he anticipated later developments in interactive music systems, demonstrating a pioneering approach to computer music that placed software innovation at its center.

This article examines the most renowned electroacoustic music festival in Chile so far, from its first edition in 2001 to 2012, when its continuity was interrupted. It focuses on two aspects that appeared relevant and took place consistently during the period under study: (1) the generation of networks, circulations and aesthetic crossovers that were favoured by the festival; and (2) the perspective of the electroacoustic concert as a space for research and experimentation in devices and formats deemed appropriate for a particular experience of music. To this end, primary and archival sources of the article’s author as well as other direct participants in the festival’s organisation were reviewed. Based on this, the relevance of these types of activities in the dissemination of these art forms is determined, as well as the need for proper management to grow and consolidate these spaces.

This article explores an initiative aimed at fostering a culture of electronic music and sound arts in Peru, focusing on the Open Science project, Circuito Abierto (2022–2024). It explores how Circuito Abierto, an annual artistic residency rooted in Open Science culture and organised by the Laboratorio de Música Electroacústica y Arte Sonoro at the Universidad Nacional de Música (UNM, formerly the Conservatorio Nacional de Música), challenged traditional and conservative educational structures within Peru’s academic landscape. The project promoted an open, collaborative approach to music creation, aimed at bridging the gap between academic and popular music scenes in the education of electronic music. Circuito Abierto may serve as a case study for addressing broader historical challenges in Peruvian music education, particularly with regard to music technology and experimental electronic sound art practices.

This essay explores how the musical practices of four contemporary Latin American sound artists – Mar Alzamora, Pablo Bas, Ana Rodriguez and Eufrasio Prates – engage with ecological crises and socio-environmental issues. Focusing on the region’s biodiversity and colonial histories, we combined a critical literature review with the analysis of works involving soundwalks, electroacoustic compositions, free improvisation and real-time synthesis. These practices incorporate environmental sound, oral memory and situated listening to construct eco-sonic narratives critical of colonial legacies. Rather than aiming to highlight artistic innovation, the essay investigates how these works contribute to an expanded understanding of Latin American sound/landscapes within environmental sound art. Through the examination of aesthetic, technological and political strategies, we identified principles such as relational listening, spatial immersion and collective creation as central to these practices. Our findings contribute to discussions on art as a mode of knowledge, showing how sonic approaches can question dominant narratives, reshape perceptions of place and foster ecological awareness.

Mimesis is a foundational concept that has influenced aesthetics and arts scholarship for centuries. Originating with Plato, in whose work it primarily described artistic referentiality, the term was later popularized in acousmatic music during the 1990s as a framework for many composers. This article highlights an alternative interpretation emerging in performative studies: mimesis as an assimilation of incidents. Through this reinterpretation, I underscore the properties of evolution, adaptation, multiplicity, self-determination, and emergence as key characteristics of performative mimesis. The article concludes by suggesting potential similarities with the concept of complex systems – an emerging theory in the natural sciences – which may prove useful for future research.

Drawing on Umberto Eco’s epistemological metaphor of the open work, this paper explores the intersection of two open forms of notation, inherent scores and text scores, with generative AI. Building on the notion of inherent scores, in which the interface merges with the notation, we introduce embodied sketching, a notational approach that streamlines composition and performance with real-time neural audio synthesis (NAS). We then examine text scores in text-to-audio NAS, presenting Mouja+, a work combining real-time NAS with embodied sketches and AI-generated audio from Fluxus scores. Based on the experience of composing and performing Mouja+, we show how AI’s statistical processing of language introduces interpretative gaps between the human understanding of the scores and the model’s output and propose prompting strategies to streamline the use of text scores with text-to-audio generative AI. We continue by discussing how NAS adds to the open work through algorithmic processes that coalesce into an elusive and deferring sense of presence. Through Derrida’s notion of hauntology, we thus extend the open work into what we term the ‘haunted work’, an epistemological metaphor encompassing a growing corpus of works engaging with the tension between presence and absence as a source of openness.

Bayu Nokturnal II is an electroacoustic soundscape composition commissioned by the Borneo Ensemble in 2024, developed as a reimagining of Seed of Life 4: Rest and Shelters, a binaural fixed-media work composed in 2021. Rooted in the ecological and cultural identity of Gua Tempurung, a limestone cave in Perak, Malaysia, the piece explores how the interplay of acoustic instruments and environmental field recordings evokes a sense of place, space and belonging. Inspired by Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma, the work expands from fixed media into a live, spatialised dialogue with geophonic and biophonic elements. This paper positions Bayu Nokturnal II within the evolving discourse of ecocomposition, a practice shaped by environmental awareness and sonic interactivity. It draws on Matthew Burtner’s Syntax of Snow and Hildegard Westerkamp’s Fantasie for Horns II. These works foreground the role of soundscape as an active compositional agent. Bayu Nokturnal II employs an aural-feedback score using grid-cell timing, Scientific Pitch Notation and gesture-based instructions to foster real-time responsiveness to the soundscape. This strategy replaces conventional metre with listening-driven interaction. The result is a Malaysian site-specific composition contributing to global dialogues in acoustic ecology, environmental music and performative listening.

This paper examines Summermood (1981), an electroacoustic work composed by Antonio Russek for bass flute and live electronics, situating it within the Mexican electroacoustic scene of the 1980s and in dialogue with international developments in live electronic performance. A pivotal work in both Russek’s career and flutist Marielena Arizpe’s repertoire, Summermood, stands among the earliest Mexican compositions for electronically modified acoustic instruments. It has not been able to be studied or performed due to the absence of published documentation, its dependence on the obsolete DeltaLab DL-4 digital delay unit, and its original association with Arizpe, who retired early following an accident-related injury. Drawing on archival documents, interviews, recordings and the graphic score and Russek’s notes, this paper analyses the work’s aesthetic conception, its integration of extended flute timbres with electronic processing, its graphic notation and the collaborative practices that informed its creation, arguing for its significance in the historiography of Mexican electroacoustic music. While briefly acknowledging the preservation challenges posed by obsolete technologies, the central aim of this paper is to reassemble Summermood as a case study that illuminates Mexico’s underexplored contribution to the global avant-garde of the late twentieth century.