Kaleidoscope: Cycle (multichannel electroacoustic compositions, 2013)

Fissure (2006) [completed prior to REF period; submitted for RAE 2008] Nebula (2012) Pulse (2013) Fuse (2013)

This series continues my exploration of spatialisation strategies in the composition of multichannel acousmatic music, presenting immersive sound fields that are spatially and musically coherent irrespective of audience position/orientation. It employs strategies of spatial deployment that involve peripheral, rotational, oppositional and envelopment activities and relationships (in contrast to left/right and back/front) such that listeners receive similar subjective weightings (relative levels) of front, sides and rear wherever they are situated (even if the positions/trajectories of spatial gestures are perceived uniquely by each).

Collectively the works explore the idea of elemental cyclicity, pursuing a narrative from fragmentation (Fissure), through fragment deployment across particulate structures and periodicity (Nebula, Pulse), to reconstitution (Fuse). Through this narrative, the works deal with well-established concerns of acousmatic compositional practice, enhanced by the above spatialisation strategies. For example, each piece focuses on one of four stages along an articulation continuum identified by Smalley: Fissure on predominantly attack characteristics and discrete events, Pulse on impulse and iteration, Nebula on granularity, and Fuse on effluvium. Spectromorphological characteristics relevant to a work’s position on the continuum are enhanced by their spatial deployment. Issues of aural/mimetic discourse (Emmerson) are also explored: poetic implications of each title play out through the chosen source materials and their treatment, and the works frequently transition between recognition and non-recognition, often allying anecdotal materials alluding to physical processes or states with musical equivalents (e.g. openness and closure, anacrusis and cadence). The ability to fabricate sound landscapes such that ‘the walls disappear’ within a concert environment is facilitated by the spatialisation techniques applied to the materials, facilitating the transformation of and transition between these landscapes.