This article presents the different tools for assessing soundscapes within urban public spaces and develops in particular the use of the sonic mind map. We will successively define the notions of sonic perception and representation, and sonic and spatial evaluation; we will approach the concept of soundscape and finally give details about the sonic mind-map tool. Through this tool, the soundscape of urban public spaces can be understood, not through speech analysis, but through spatial representations of memorised sonic ambiances.

Investigation results based among other things on sonic mind-map analyses explain the significance of sonic spatialisation and of the sound source distance in urban soundscape assessment. Using the sonic mind map to analyse the sonic representations associated with certain urban spaces seems to be relevant for researchers in space sciences or even for urban planners.

This article proposes that real-time composition can be considered a new performance ecosystem. Rather than an extension of electroacoustic instruments that are used within improvisatory environments, real-time composition systems are produced by composers interested in gestural interactions between musical agents, with or without real-time control. They are a subclass of interactive systems, specifically a genre of interactive composition systems that share compositional control between composer and system. Designing the complexity of interactions between agents is a compositional act, and its outcomes are realised during performance – more so than most interactive systems, the new performance ecosystem is compositional in nature.

Environmental sounds give information to individuals who have learned to interpret them as members of their acoustic communities. Those living within a soundscape not only receive the acoustic information passively, but also construct their surroundings by their activities.

A lot of acoustic information escapes our conscious attention partly for perceptual psychological reasons, partly because of the amount of acoustic information. A method called sound/listening walk has been applied to enhance these everyday meanings connected to sounds and to emphasise the cultural and historical layers related to them.

The article introduces earlier research and methodology on the subject, applies the recording of acoustic environments to sound/listening walks and then proposes a preliminary method called recorded listening walk for acoustic communication research and soundscape education. The article draws theoretically on acoustic communication and acoustemology.

Inspired by Denis Smalley's theoretical ideas on spectromorphology and Albert Bregman's (1990) auditory scene analysis, I began an investigation into the formation and segregation of timescales1 in electroacoustic music. This research inevitably led me to an exploration of the factors that shape our perception of time passing and estimation of durations, where spectromorphological issues intermingle with extra-musical associations, autobiographical experiences, emotional responses, and the surrounding environment at the time of listening. Ultimately, time perception affects the structural balance of a composition. This paper, which is part of my ongoing research, examines how the perception of time is affected by the semantic meaning and the spectromorphological characteristics of sound events.

This article presents recent developments in actuated musical instruments created by the authors, who also describe an ecosystemic model of actuated performance activities that blur traditional boundaries between the physical and virtual elements of musical interfaces. Actuated musical instruments are physical instruments that have been endowed with virtual qualities controlled by a computer in real-time but which are nevertheless tangible. These instruments provide intuitive and engaging new forms of interaction. They are different from traditional (acoustic) and fully automated (robotic) instruments in that they produce sound via vibrating element(s) that are co-manipulated by humans and electromechanical systems. We examine the possibilities that arise when such instruments are played in different performative environments and music-making scenarios, and we postulate that such designs may give rise to new methods of musical performance. The Haptic Drum, the Feedback Resonance Guitar, the Electromagnetically Prepared Piano, the Overtone Fiddle and Teleoperation with Robothands are described, along with musical examples and reflections on the emergent properties of the performance ecologies that these instruments enable. We look at some of the conceptual and perceptual issues introduced by actuated musical instruments, and finally we propose some directions in which such research may be headed in the future.

Drawing on field research carried out in the abandoned villages of the Ara Valley, this article seeks to readdress notions of acoustic community and communication in terms of a ‘haptic aurality’ in which listening, as a mode of touch, approximates a figure of spacing, fragmentation and withdrawal in contrast to more conventional communicational models of intimacy, presence and exchange. Arguing that soundscape compositions present an ‘acoustic ontology’, the article explores a form of belonging and being that is, following Jean-Luc Nancy, singular plural in which sound signals ‘unwork’ collectivities through the processes of ‘sharing’ and ‘splitting’ (partage) characteristic of listening and recording. Referring to the work of writer W.G. Sebald (1944–2001), whose hybrid ‘literary ethnography’ was the impetus for my own soundwalks and fieldwork, and considering the role of soundscape composition within the discipline of Trauma Studies, the article scopes out to consider the possibilities of soundscape composition as a form of testimony in light of Agamben's (1999) insistence that testimony is necessarily incomplete. As a form of ‘myopic witnessing’ (Jenckes 2010), the sonic memories of ruined soundscapes are presented as spacings and absences, fragments and lacunae, that are themselves characteristic of both the ontology of ruins and those of testimony.

ENACTIV is a project that addresses, explores and offers solutions for converting a performer/composer's expressive sonic and kinetic patterns into continuous variables for driving sound synthesis and processing in real-time interactive composition. The investigation is inspired by the achievements in cognitive science, in particular Umberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's Santiago Theory (1980, 1987), in which the authors explain how the process of cognition arises through ‘structural coupling’ – a mutual influence among living beings, and living beings (humans in particular) and the environment, and how this process stipulates certain patterns of organisation driving the individual's behaviour.

The project investigates how a composer/performer's cognitive archetypes, which have been developed via his or her ‘structural coupling’ with the social and natural environment and expressed through voice and unwitting hand gestures, can be associated with or ‘mapped’ onto sound synthesis and processing parameters in such a way that the system will play an active role and act reciprocally, involving a certain degree of variation and unpredictability at its output. The aim of the project is to develop a creative tool which will allow professional musicians, multi-media artists and non-expert participants to engage with multi-modal improvisation in an intuitive way.

This article adopts an ecological view of digital musical interactions, considering first the relationship between performers and digital systems, and then spectators’ perception of these interactions. We provide evidence that the relationships between performers and digital music systems are not necessarily instrumental in the same was as they are with acoustic systems, and nor should they always strive to be. Furthermore, we report results of a study indicating that spectators may not perceive such interactions in the same way as performances with acoustic musical instruments. We present implications for the design of digital musical interactions, suggesting that designers should embrace the reality that digital systems are malleable and dynamic, and may engage performers and spectators in different modalities, sometimes simultaneously.

In this paper, the authors describe and discuss UrbanRemix, a platform consisting of mobile-device applications and web-based tools to facilitate collaborative field recording, sound exploration, and soundscape creation. Reflecting on its use at workshops, festivals and community events, they evaluate the project in terms of its ability to enable participants to engage with their aural environments and to uncover their own creativity in the process.

In this article, I argue that the relationship between performers, audience members, electronic technologies and the wider, physical context of the performance environment may be redefined by developing the ‘concert’ model of electroacoustic performance. I propose that managing proximity between audience members and performers plays a catalytic role in a process through which the human voice may emerge from its status as an ‘instrument’ for the delivery of notated musical ideas to, simply, ‘voice’. To illustrate, I refer to As I Have Now Memoyre, my 2008 installation-performance on the relationship between music, memory and the passing of time. Accordingly, I investigate the way in which a performer is able to assert her ontological reciprocity with the total performance environment by ‘embodying’ the electronic processing, asserting continuity between the electronically mediated performance and the performance rendered by her own unaided body.

Researching the inside story of music performance, the core of the performative act, is a journey of infinite discovery of self- and musical connection. Establishing the discourse for such an investigation can, indeed, present its challenges. Do we focus on fundamental research methodologies, strive to fit within empirical investigations, or search for new forms of articulation as we choose what to observe and share, and decide what meanings, presences, dialogues or ‘folding in of new substances’ (Schroeder and Rebelo 2009: 137) we wish to pursue in the quest for new understanding? In this paper I will focus on performance for flute with electronics, the influence of voice, and the play with Maskenfreiheit,1 as I investigate performative layers as they have emerged in my own performances of selected notated works. The influence of the electronics is integral to these encounters with extended acoustic instrument, the place of the performer's voice and the ambiguities of projection, through narrative and reflection.

In this paper, I will focus on the musical work as a self-organising entity within a systemic framework. In particular, two significant and inter-related systemic concepts will be mentioned: self-organisation and open system. Firstly, I shall explain the two concepts within the context of systems thinking with reference to a graphical model of second-order cybernetics. This section will conclude with a discussion of the difference between natural and artificial self-organising systems. I will then extend the systemic perspective, describing what I call self-organising music, and discussing my algorithmic composition Ephemeron as a case study.