Through the Looking Glass: Reflectivity vs Transparency; and the embedding of Place through Sound.

Presenting electroacoustic music has traditionally involved large spaces and high quality listening environments set up in (very often) architecturally imposing spaces. Recent works of mine involve the development of smaller-scale multichannel environments using affordable speakers and DIY construction techniques. While retaining the capacity for spatial interest and precision in sound localisation, this accommodates much more intimate listening conditions for audiences along, importantly, with portability, which in turn allows the presentation of rich multichannel sound worlds in settings far removed from the normal concert situation. Such environments encourage consideration of how sound materials appropriated from life might be experienced when, after creative/compositional intervention, they are reinserted back into life (the real world). This in turn invites exploration of ‘rhythm[s] between transparency and reflectivity’ (Bolter and Grom (2004)) of the artistic ‘interface', where the boundary between real and unreal sound environments become ambiguous, and consideration of how musical space might be reconceived in terms of its relationship with place.