Semaphor
A Spatial Composition
for two pioneering instruments
Helder Tenor Recorder & Icosahedral Loudspeaker
INSTRUMENTALITY
For the sheer playback or reproduction approach it is a TOOL, maybe an advanced one, fullling a simple purpose to reproduce what was formerly developed, composed, recorded somewhere else. But dierent motivations in the approach towards spatiality and space in music and sonic art show that the mindset has changed. If we take art as a highly liable sensor for current streams of societal issues and trends [79] we can assume that we are here at the brink of what will be aesthetically daily business in our lives may it be in concert halls, shopping malls, augmented or virtual realities.
For the works of present and contemporary utilization of these entities it seems to be crucial being able to understand and therefore use loudspeaker arrays as musical instruments if composers of spatialized electronic music want to make artistic use of the contingencies of such systems.
Therefore we need to and can approach these objects on multiple levels of instrumentality as described above. That does not mean to lose traditional aspects of instrumentality, on the contrary, we have to examine virtuosity, interaction or liveness in the light of a more and more mediated environment to nd meaningful categories for orientation.
Furthermore we could enter a sphere of spatial composition that works media-specic, actually building spaces according to ongoing discourses and not only lling them. That would actually redeem the claim of sound sculpting and 3D objects. For engineers working in the related elds it is fundamental to anticipate artistic perception-based research|may it be art, entertainment or marketing and PR as cultural practices in every day live.
COMPACT LOUDSPEAKER ARRAYS, such as the IKO (icosahedron, 20 loudspeakers) that use beamforming were introduced for composition of electro-acoustic music with intentionally intense room excitation and interaction. It might be more intuitive labeling such compact arrays as musical instruments than typical multichannel loudspeaker domes, which often are referred to as technical tools within the compositional process.
IN THIS PAPER we would like to discuss the dierent artistic and technical approaches and practices that come along with sparse knowledge about listening habits and abilities of audiences in the current performance environments, when using dierent loudspeaker arrays. By this we nd criteria for the so called 'shared perceptual space' (SPS). This shall be the artistic-scientic eld that conjuncts con icting strategies to eectively guide future research eorts.
Are Loudspeaker Arrays Musical Instruments? by Gerriet K. Sharma1, Frank Schultz
1 Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
2 Audio Communication Group, TU Berlin
e-mail: sharma@iem.at, frank.schultz@tu-berlin.de
