By using synthesis, algorithms, and effects processing to present the boundaries between source abstraction and the simulation of guitaristic reference points, Obsession is an example of how recent acousmatic pieces can demonstrate new ways of thinking about liveness that surpass the live vs. recorded binary and are unique to digital music practices. Since many electroacoustic composers write pieces that involve improvisation with new sensor-based instruments or applying sound effects processing to concert instruments during a performance, suggesting liveness as a feature of music for loudspeaker playback might seem like a difficult proposition. At the same time, the causal links between physical gestures and resultant audio playback in live electronic/interactive music are sometimes obscured by the complexity of sonic results. For example, instrument design research from Amsterdam's STEIM electronic music center describe difficulties in the placement of a laptop in proximity to an electronically augmented cello instrument, mentioning that a lack of clarity about the purpose of the laptop in the instrumental assemblage might create a sense of distraction that prevents the listener from fully engaging in the music (Andersen and Gibson 2017: 52).
As an artistic research project, Obsession argues that liveness in electroacoustic music, as the presentation of living presence in actuality or through references to instrumental playing techniques, especially those that have become cultural tropes associated with virtuosity and/or heavy music genres. Such references are often designed in computer music software environments, so liveness is not only assumed through apparent connections to a live performance in the recorded fragments of actual guitar playing but also achieved in a process-oriented manner through automation of the effects and physical models. For example, low-frequency oscillators, a tool commonly used for affecting gradual swells of volume on synthesizers, are used during Section 3 to play with the idea of guitar tremolo techniques. They automate to create the impression of a duet of tremolo guitar playing, while simultaneously revealing the presence of the technology, by adjusting the spatial locations of the sounds in a way that would not be physically possible.
Scholarship on liveness in mediatized artworks emphasizes the agency of the listener in terms of asserting a sense of presence in a sound work – regardless of its medium. Philip Auslander writes that live music as a distinct category was influenced by the development of sound recording technologies. Still, Auslander's argument for digital liveness as residing not in a technological artifact but 'from our engagement with it and our willingness to bring it into full presence for ourselves' opens room for perceptions of the virtual as live (2012: 8). Composer Simon Emmerson connects the ideas of listener agency and liveness in electroacoustic music. Emmerson writes that the 'frames we have discussed for live music are based on real ones; there really is a performer, on a stage, in an arena, somewhere in a landscape. But of course, any recording transforms this into the imaginary. So conversely, we also listen to acousmatic sound and try to guess the frame within which it might be set' (2007: 110). Dugal McKinnon comments on how the loudspeaker in the playback of fixed media acousmatic music draws the interpretation of somatic presence in the music towards the listener, its visual-physical presence 'undermines the very audial-immaterial experiences it creates' (McKinnon 2016: 269).
Musicologist Paul Sanden's categorizations of liveness in modern music provide additional support for interpretations that are not limited to a synchronous performance with the performer and audience being present in a single space. These include the suggestion of corporeal liveness, which relies on a 'perceptible connection to an acoustic sounding body' (2012: 34). His virtual liveness category describes the extent to which virtuality (opposite of actual) makes itself known in the mix of actual and virtual. With Obsession, the points of intersection where the recorded guitar as actual source material is presented in a less abstracted fashion act as references that help the listener discern the use of FM synthesis guitar approximations, the comparatively believable use of physical models, and the replication of timbre produced by the AI-based RAVE encoder. By using software to move between earlier approaches to instrument synthesis that afford the composer with leftover electronic artifacts to incorporate in their music, the piece points to Sanden's virtual liveness. The hypermediacy of the audibly electronic remnants in such sounds makes the virtual known. This kind of instability in the source bonding of actual and virtual sounds also links to the above-mentioned ideas about digital liveness as dependent on listener perception.
The exploration of hybridization and ambiguity of actual and virtual guitar timbre during Section 2 and the algorithmic realization of characteristic guitar tropes during Section 3 create allusions to virtuosity that also connect to corporeal liveness. Beyond computer-generated references to difficult performance techniques, this piece considers the possibility that an emerging definition of virtuosity in digital music goes beyond demonstrating physical mastery of an instrument with speed and dexterity. This is especially present in Section 2, where the distinction between the acoustic properties of computer-generated and actual recorded sounds becomes untraceable due to the continuous exchange of their acoustic properties via technologies such as IRCAM's RAVE. This reflects on what the music technologist Thor Magnusson describes as a parallel definition of virtuosity that emerged in the 20th century – one which shifted towards an investigation of the instrument itself 'as a found object which is to be investigated and explored through skills that derive from a deep understanding of both musical history and instrumental acoustics' (2019: 7).
In using software to plunder the acoustic possibilities of the guitar's sounding body while discovering the thresholds between guitaristic and computer-generated sound, the entire range of sounds used in this composition exposes the listener to a more expansive interpretation of liveness. The deterritorialization of the guitar from its physical body syncs with ideas of meta-modeling from Félix Guattari, who discusses the 'rendering of lines of formation, starting from no one model in particular, actively taking into account the plurality of models vying for fulfillment' (Manning and Massumi 2014: 115). The way in which the piece recombines different iterations of instrument sounds of different origins points to the way that these sources can assert presence both in and in excess of the moment.
An example of the way in which digital and seemingly acoustic sounds drag each other to assume an overall greater sense of presence can be heard from 3:52-5:04 in the main recording. This is where the music is focused on continuous bursts of gliding gestures made by applying heavy delay and pitch shifting effects to recordings of the strings being plucked close to the tuning pegs. Due to the tension of the strings for this part of the guitar, such an extended technique produces a high-pitched, brittle sound that gives a fair amount of extraneous plectrum noise. As individual sonic events, the recordings of actual plucked sounds and the noisy artifacts from the RAVE plugin are quite distinct in the virtual vs. actual binary, though the gradual coalescence of the many plucked sounds into a dense texture of gliding effects gives the more rhythmic/gestural use of older STK physical models and simulation of tapping/inharmonic guitar sounds in RAVE a greater feeling of performativity in that they become more of a motivic than a textural device at this point. In Obsession, the expression of liveness through digital instrumentality is not only a matter of hearing performative gestures as they occur, but also in the way that simulated sounds continuously converse with authentic recordings to become more-than present.
