Research Catalogue

The project "Orchestrating Space by Icosahedral Loudspeaker" (OSIL) aimed at increasing the practical and theoretical understanding of electroacoustic sound phenomena that are defined by their sculptural-choreographic nature, i.e., exhibiting localization, motion, and extent. Such auditory objects are new means of expression and as such they have already been subject of artistic research in the project "The Choreography of Sounds" (CoS), PEEK AR 41. In particular, the project focused on the icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO) constructed at IEM in order to project auditory objects into rooms, a feature that has already been successfully employed in various sonic art works that have been performed in concerts and installations in different halls and listening situations. Within OSIL artists and scientists were working closely together trying to understand the field of 3D audio better with an multi-perspective approach to foster and extend aesthetical practices in this field.

“Semaphor” is a spatial sound-composition for two pioneering instruments, which are explored both practically and theoretically by the artists Susanne Fröhlich and Gerriet K. Sharma: Helder Tenor recorder and the Icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO). If one understands both instruments as sound projectors, sound textures in sculpturally entangled states, spatially demarcated sound layers and scenographies can be composed and perceived in a way, scarcely producible in this ensemble constellation until now. The piece attempts to discover the shared perceptual spectrum of both instruments in dialogue and thus to expand the aesthetic possibilities of spatial composition in the present.

Building-Sound Compositions in (half-)public places: Starting from Graz, six vacant buildings in different European cities were researched as aural architectures and understood and experienced as an integral part of building-sound compositions. Techniques and strategies ​​were developed how sound art can react systematically to site-specific architectual conditions or how these environmental acoustic characteristics can become part of a previously non-existent composition.

Working space and forum of the - Special Interest Group 2.

Sound as a Mediatized Production of Space — Studies, Research, and Strategies in X-Realities. The course explores forms, architectures, conditions, modes, and transfers of acoustic perception in medial spaces by focusing on the developments in the production of spaces and perceptual worlds through innovation in art, design, and VR technologies.

Virtual reality and spatial audio technologies bring about a new paradigm in the fields of architecture and music. Works developed in these media produce experiences beyond what is perceivable in the physical world, extending therefore our capacities to design/compose as well as our sensibilities for spatial and temporal perception. By operating in the spatiotemporal domain, these new media, question our disciplinary understandings of space and time as well as their aesthetics, requiring an altogether new post-disciplinary conception of design/composition and experience. "Beyond the Visual" is a research curriculum for the investigation of spatiotemporal aesthetics, in the interface between architecture and music, in regard to perception and creativity and design/composition. This exposition is part of the research agenda of the Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group (SIG): Spatial Aesthetics and Artificial Environments.