Listening Room 1
Fixed Media | Program Overview
Comfortable Distance
Giovanni Crovetto
Disappearing
Matteo Tomasetti, Francesco Casanova, Andrea Veneri, Vili Pääkkö and Andrea Strata
Hokkaido Snow Soundscape
Ziwei Yang
Impulse Impromptu III
Tolga Yayalar
4-body Interactions (7’34’’)
Leonidas Spiliopoulos
Architecture éphémère
Nicola Giannini
Concerto for Piano and Loudspeaker Orchestra
Neal Farwell
Corium II
Mathieu Lacroix
Gott
Rikhardur H. Fridriksson
Matters 10
Daniel Mayer
OBSess
Allison Ogden
Oscillation of Life
Jan Jacob Hofmann
NoType, algorithmic 3D audio processing
Vilbjørg Broch Phe
Sonic Fragmentation – a fixed media multichannel piece
Daniel Gomes
Calling in “Raumforderungen” 8-channel diffusion work
Aleksandar Zecevic and Kiran Bhumber
Fluidante. A quadrophonic recording from the Latent Russando framework
Martin Heinze
Odradek
Cristian Gabriele Argento
About the pieces & artists
Giovanni Crovetto: Comfortable Distance
Comfortable Distance is an electronic music work for fixed media that investigates the relationship between dramaturgy, timbral transformation, and perceived spatial depth. The musical discourse is articulated through processes of sound transformation rather than linear narration, allowing form to arise from the internal behavior of the materials. The piece unfolds through a continuous play of tension and release, shaped by the dramatic deployment of the full acoustic spectrum and by shifts between moments of expectation and rupture. Sudden impacts alternate with suspended sonic states, while veiled, distant sound masses contrast with intimate, close-up details. These oppositions generate a form grounded in instability, oscillating between predictability and unpredictability, and between accumulation and sudden resolution. Conceived for octophonic spatialization, the work uses multichannel space to support its formal dramaturgy. Spatial depth emerges through perceptual shifts between contraction and expansion, as well as through abrupt transitions between proximity and distance, constraint and release.
About the artist
Giovanni Crovetto (Milan, 1991) is a composer and educator working in electronic and electroacoustic music, with a focus on dramaturgy, perception, and spatial listening. He studied Composition and Music Theory at the Kunstuniversität Graz and later earned a degree in Musicology from the University of Milan. He is currently completing a Master’s degree in Composition at the Conservatory of Milan and is enrolled in a PhD program in Composition and Musical Performance at the Conservatories of Ferrara, Pescara, Trieste, and Udine. His research explores listening processes and sound transformation across fixed-media and multichannel contexts, integrating compositional practice with educational work.
Matteo Tomasetti, Francesco Casanova, Andrea Veneri, Vili Pääkkö and Andrea Strata: Disappearing
Disappearing is a five-minds spatial composition created during an artistic residency at Laidi Palace, a historic palace in Latvia. The architecture, the atmosphere, and the sense of time suspended within its walls inspired us to imagine a space where presence and absence constantly shift. The piece explores the idea of appearing and disappearing; sounds, gestures, and trajectories emerging briefly before dissolving again into the environment. As we worked within the palace, the building itself became an active presence: rooms, corridors, and reverberant spaces shaped the work as much as our intentions did. The piece reflects this dialogue with the place, blurring the boundaries between visibility and invisibility. Disappearing is an attempt to capture a fragile state of being, where moments surface, fade, and leave only traces behind.
About the artists
Matteo Tomasetti is a sound artist, live performer, and researcher working with spatial audio, gesture-based interfaces, and immersive musical experiences. He holds a PhD in Music Technology from the University of Trento and works across electroacoustic music, sound art, and audiovisual performance. He currently teaches electronic music at the Music Conservatory of Pescara (Italy).
Francesco Casanova is a sound artist based in Graz (Austria), active in music software development. His research focuses on sound design, human–computer interaction, multichannel audio, and sound installations. He is currently studying Computer Music at the IEM in Graz.
Andrea Veneri is an electronic music composer working with audiovisual performance, live electronics, and real-time audio systems. His practice centers on sound design and interactive tools developed in Max/MSP. He currently teaches electronic music at the Music Conservatory of Pescara (Italy).
Vili Pääkkö (Vili Aarre) is a Finnish sound artist working in contemporary performing arts, music, installations, and video. He holds degrees in sound design from the University of the Arts Helsinki and has worked internationally with theaters and art institutions.
Andrea Strata is an Italian multimedia artist and creative coder based in Berlin. With a background in computer music, he is currently a PhD researcher at the Conservatory of Vicenza, focusing on human–computer interaction, movement analysis, and real-time sound generation.
Ziwei Yang: Hokkaido Snow Soundscape
Hokkaido Snow Soundscape is a fixed-media work based on the winter soundscapes of Hokkaido, presented through an 8.1ch spatial audio design. All sound materials were recorded on location, including the pedestrian area in front of Sapporo Station, a snow-covered park in late-night Otaru, and the walking trails of Mount Hakodate. These sites form a multi-layered sonic map of how snow exists and transforms across different environments. During field recording, various methods were used to explore the acoustic expressiveness of snow: rubbing and compressing snow by hand, footsteps with different shoe materials on icy ground, and contact sounds created with shovels, gloves, and other tools. These approaches extend the expressive range of natural sound material and reveal the diverse timbres and physical “life” of snow. The 8.1ch spatial sound design allows precise placement and movement of sounds, creating an immersive auditory field where the listener can perceive the flow, depth, and ephemerality of snow. The movement, reflection, and fading of sound in space are framed as part of winter’s natural cycle—an auditory expression of transience. As both a document of Hokkaido’s winter and a response to the disappearing sounds of nature, the work preserves these fragile sonic moments in the face of global warming. Hokkaido Snow Soundscape invites listeners to rediscover the purity, delicacy, and fleeting presence of winter through sound.
About the artist
Yang Ziwei (b.1999, Hunan, China) graduated from the Music Technology Department of Xinghai Conservatory of Music in 2021 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Music and Sound Design at Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, Japan. He has studied composition and electronic music with Yoshihiro Nakagawa, Takeyoshi Mori, and Chang Lin. His works have been selected for events such as MUSICACOUSTICA-HANGZHOU 2024, IEMC2024, ICMC2025, and CCMC2025. His research focuses on urban soundscapes and soundscape composition. His creative work investigates methods of recording, processing, and spatially reconstructing environmental sounds, exploring sonic memory, cultural symbolism, and cross-cultural perspectives within contemporary soundscape practice.
Tolga Yayalar: Impulse Impromptu III
Impulse Impromptu III (2025) is an electroacoustic work based entirely on the sounds of two mechanical musical boxes. The piece investigates the musical box as both instrument and object, focusing on its dual identity as a nostalgic sound source and a fragile mechanical system. Rather than treating the musical box solely as a melodic device, the work explores its full sonic spectrum, including pitched material, mechanical noise, creaks, clicks, and friction sounds. The compositional process is rooted in improvisation and unfolds in two distinct stages. The first stage consists of extensive acoustic improvisations with the musical boxes, employing both conventional and unconventional techniques such as winding, tapping, scraping, and manual interference with the mechanisms. These recordings function simultaneously as documentary material and as a sonic reservoir. In the second stage, selected recordings are transformed through sampling and electronic processing to create custom virtual instruments, enabling a further layer of improvisation within an electroacoustic context. Through this process, the musical box is recontextualized as an immersive sonic environment rather than a fixed sound object. The piece aims to evoke the perceptual sensation of being “inside” the instrument itself, as if the listener were miniaturized and placed within its inner workings. This perspective highlights the intimacy, precision, and instability of the mechanism, revealing an eerie and delicate sound world that oscillates between familiarity and estrangement. Beyond its material exploration, the work engages with themes of memory, fragility, and nostalgia. The musical box functions as a metaphor for recollection: precise yet vulnerable, repetitive yet prone to degradation. By magnifying its internal sounds and spatializing them in the electroacoustic domain, the piece reflects on the tenuous relationship between mechanical repetition and the emotional resonance often associated with remembered sound.
About the artist
Tolga Yayalar (b. 1973) is a composer whose works have been performed by ensembles such as Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Alarm Will Sound, and the Orchestre National de Lorraine, and presented at festivals including MaerzMusik Berlin, Ars Electronica, and Acht Brücken Köln. He has received numerous composition awards and collaborated with choreographer Korhan Başaran on interdisciplinary projects. Yayalar holds degrees from Berklee and Istanbul Technical University, earned a Ph.D. from Harvard, and teaches composition at Bilkent University.
Leonidas Spiliopoulos: 4-body Interactions (7’34’’)
A generative composition exploring the infinite possible interactions between four bodies entangled according to Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Each movement (or possibility) presents how four bodies can interact sonically and spatially in significantly different ways. Each body is represented as a different instrument orbiting in three-dimensional space embedded in an ambisonic sound field, with the audience placed at the center of mass of the whole system. The coordinates and velocities of the bodies simultaneously modulate key parameters of the synthesized instruments, such as amplitude, pitch, filtering, frequency modulation, etc. The system of equations of the four bodies permits a wide range of diverse dynamics, ranging from periodic, cyclical behavior to aperiodic and chaotic behavior, which is highly dependent on the initial conditions of the system. The system for four bodies cannot be solved analytically, but must be approximated instead, leading to uncertainty from the perspective of the observer despite the underlying deterministic structure. Small errors compound over time leading to a significant divergence between our predictions and reality, revealing our uncertainty about the future and the inherent limits of our roles as observer. The interactions of the four bodies in this composition reveal qualitatively different relationships between them, representing the multitude and diversity of human interactions and patterns of participation generated by our attractions and proclivities to each other. In Movement/Possibility 1 all four bodies interact loosely as a single group with evolving fidelities revealing the complex interactions between human relationships. In Movement/Possibility 2, three of the four bodies form an interaction group closely orbiting each other. One body has a unique trajectory, initially moving away from the group, gradually reversing course and even briefly interacting with the group, but then temporarily escaping their pull to return on a solitary path. In Movement/Possibility 3, the four bodies interact closely in two pairs. Within each pair the bodies exhibit tight coupling, but the two pairs are on divergent solitary paths becoming increasingly estranged and polarised.
About the artist
Leonidas Spiliopoulos is an academic researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development specialising in mathematical models of individual and strategic decision making and learning. His research is grounded in the inter-disciplinary insights afforded by the fields of economics, game theory, cognitive psychology/neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. He is a keen explorer of the intersection of science and art, particularly electroacoustic and generative music.
Nicola Giannini: Architecture éphémère
Architecture éphémère is a fixed-media work that creates an immersive experience in which listeners can lose themselves in the time and space of the music. The title refers to the idea that spatial music can generate an ephemeral, constantly evolving architecture that overlays the physical environment. Drawing on philosopher Gernot Böhme, my practice explores how the diffusion of sound shapes the atmosphere of the spaces we inhabit. The piece explores tensions between opposing spatial sensations—proximity and distance, intimacy and immensity—and the depth of field of the sonic space. Most of the materials are generated through sound synthesis, which I use to create sounds with different shapes, sizes, and densities. Architecture éphémère unfolds as a journey through distinct atmospheres, shifting from explosive, detailed passages, where trajectories can be pinpointed, to soft, diffuse, hypnotic spaces that verge on disorientation. The opening section presents a frontal sound mass that slowly advances, suggesting immensity and inexorability, before bursting into aggressive gestures that travel along multiple trajectories, as if caught in an explosion. Wide-range glissandi, projected into a rich ambisonic reverberation, reinforce the sense of motion and tension, immersing the audience in a deep and articulated sound field. A second phase is inspired by the image of a vast snowy expanse whose boundaries remain invisible. Here, slowly evolving sine waves, often difficult to localise, create an ambiguous, enveloping atmosphere. Moving on circular trajectories at slightly different speeds, they intersect to form chords, clusters, and beating patterns, some in very low registers that engage the body as much as the ear. Occasional sharp editing cuts introduce subtle spatio-temporal breaks, further intensifying the hypnotic effect. In the final section, perception seems to fragment gradually. Different sound materials are spectrally split and rotated in space at slightly offset speeds, a technique inspired by Robert Normandeau, enveloping the listener in a hypnotic conclusion. Architecture éphémère was initially composed during the workshop series Composing Fixed-media Multichannel Music on a Hybrid Loudspeaker Array led by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (2022–2023) at the Multimedia Room of CIRMMT in Montreal, and reworked in 2025.
About the artist
Nicola Giannini is an artist-researcher who creates immersive sound experiences. His practice lies at the intersection of experimental music, sound art, collaborative practices, and creation in public space. He designs sound spaces as ephemeral architectures where intensity and lightness, the real and the surreal, the natural and the synthetic intertwine. His works have been presented in North and South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. He holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Montreal and is a postdoctoral fellow funded by the FRQSC at UQAM and McGill.
Neal Farwell: Concerto for Piano and Loudspeaker Orchestra
I had the opportunity to write a concerto for a remarkable soloist; and, with it, came the idea of writing for loudspeaker orchestra. A simple pivot in the word ‘orchestra’, from the usual concerto accompaniment, it opens up the possibility of sound spatialisation, the challenge of melding that to a stage-bound piano, and a fluid conception of the orchestral sound-world. In principle, computer music can contain and mediate any kind of sound material — but in practice we seem to draw lines, for instance between soundscape; acousmatic music; algorithmic composition; and the digital instrumentation of media composers. I wanted to move fluidly between these, and to have fun, while still writing a ‘serious’ piece. My soloist is an enchanter, drawing energies between varied worlds. The original programme mentions that ‘the orchestra of loudspeakers gives the piano the possibility to take wing; and the orchestra in the loudspeakers lets it dance.’ The most literal sense of the piano taking wing is in the form of peeling bells in an imagined townscape, a point of arrival after the journey from a naturalistic (but also constructed) woodland dawn. Not-quite-real instruments sing, dance, and morph. The programmatic element is worn on the concerto’s sleeve; but it is only one part of a musical argument involving sonic and material transformation. The piano is purely acoustic. Its pitch world is an innovative constructed tonality. It treats 19 semitones as its interval of equivalence (the interval from fundamental to third harmonic) and downplays octave chroma. It gives systematic possibilities akin to common practice harmony, but able to sound very different while still suiting the keyboard. Computer models helped develop the material. The electronic materials are cast in 7.0.4 surround (i.e. 7.0 plus 4 height). They comprise multiple sound cues that overlap, segue, interrupt, etc.; and a custom performance environment built in Max. All the material is pre-composed, made in a studio with physical surround monitoring, but reshaped within the performance tool. There is particular attention to performance adaptability. Some passages are ‘placed’, with the soloist leading. In others, the computer performer must conduct, interpreting animated cues from the software UI to ensure sounding ensemble. There is an extended duet in which the computer performer plays ‘tablature’ patterns on MIDI keyboard, via a layer of anticipatory score following (using Ircam antescofo), to interpolate multiple elements of the rhythmic dialogue in flexible tempo. These shifting strategies reflect the relationship of soloist and conductor in a work with live orchestra. The full Concerto plays in a single span: Part 1: — I. Invocation — II. Circles — III. Image — IV. Incantation: cadenza — V. Flight Part 2: — VI. Arc — VII. Nocturne — VIII. Envoi To meet duration constraints for ICMC, Part 1 is proposed as a stand-alone performance, with a shortened cadenza and a short alternate ending. We gave the first concert performances in 2024. The submitted version is a demo with a digital realisation of the piano part. Binaurally rendered, for a hint of the spatialisation.
About the artist
Neal Farwell composes acoustic, acousmatic, and mixed electroacoustic music. He gained his PhD in composition from the University of East Anglia, studying with Simon Waters. In 1998 Neal moved to the USA as a Knox Fellow at Harvard University, and continued his studies with Bernard Rands, Mario Davidovsky and David Rakowski. Since January 2002, Neal has taught at the University of Bristol, UK, where he is Professor of Composition. Neal is active also as a performer, regularly conducting the University Symphony Orchestra, working with outside ensembles, and presenting the electroacoustic concert series Sonic Voyages.
Mathieu Lacroix: Corium II
Corium is a material that is created from a nuclear meltdown accident, such as during the Chernobyl accident. Its texture looks similar to molten lava and it may be heated up to 2 500 degrees Celsius. The radiation is so intense that even decades later it can distort photographies and instantly kill. This is the second and final piece in this series. The piece attempts to combine aesthetic aspects of extreme drone metal with the harmonic subtleties of contemporary music. The sound sources are mainly from a Warr guitar (a touchstyle instrument similar to Chapman stick).
About the artist
Mathieu Lacroix is a French-Canadian composer and music producer working in Norway. He has studied and/or worked with composers such as Hans Tutschku, Kaija Saariaho, Jaime Reis, Ståle Kleiberg, Trond Engum, Michael Obst, Markus Reuter, and Annette vande Gorne. He completed his studies at NTNU in Norway, IRCAM in France, and Musiques & recherches in Belgium. He has been invited to festivals such as Mixtur, Meta.Morf and Manifeste. His music is performed in over fifteen countries. He is a member of the Electric Audio Unit with Natasha Barrett and Ernst van der Loo. In 2021 he completed a PhD thesis on synchronization strategies in mixed music. He also plays Chapman Stick, and works as a producer and sound engineer. He is an associate professor in composition and music production at University of Inland, Norway.
Rikhardur H. Fridriksson: Gott
Gott (2022) is a drawn-out rendering of one spoken sentence saying that my old hometown is a good place to live in. This was a famous quote from a former major of the town. When that same town, many years later, commissioned a piece from me, I thought of this sentence. Of course as a way of flattering my benefactors, but also as a way af expressing my fond memories of growing up there. The drawing-out of the sentence is far from being plain time stretch. I use the opportunity to play freely with variously big bits of words and letters.
About the artist
Rikhardur H. Fridriksson (b. 1960) studied composition in Reykjavik, New York, Siena and The Hague. His music falls into two general categories; he either makes pure electro-acoustic music, working with natural sounds and their movement in space, or he does live improvisations, playing electric guitar, processed with live electronics, either alone or with the Icelandic Sound Company. He teaches composition and electronic music at Kopavogur Music School. In his spare time he plays punk rock.
Daniel Mayer: Matters 10
Matters, a series of electro-acoustic multichannel pieces, started in 2017. It reflects my practice-driven research, where I’m artistically exploring various sound synthesis and spatialization variants. Matters 10 uses buffer rewriting, the simultaneous reading from and writing to the same buffer with varying speeds. The result of this procedure is highly unpredictable. However, algorithmic control of the various parameters is employed to contain the output and produce the formal structure and spatial distribution. Simultaneous writing to and reading from an audio buffer is a simple though widely unknown and undocumented idea, which can lead to a wide range of surprising results. It continues the tradition of non-standard synthesis, and there are only scattered hints at individual approaches. When buffer writing and reading to a buffer are performed under “ideal” conditions – equal rates, writing before reading – the procedure results in a simple delay line. Things become interesting if rates are unequal or modulated. Then, the delay is disturbed, and the sounding result might include alias-like effects and glitches. Rate modulation can lead to audible sidebands, thus mixing the concepts of buffer rewriting and buffer modulation, which, on its own, is also an easy, effective, and underestimated processing technique. Feedback or overdubbing instead of plain rewriting are further possible extensions of the procedure; playing with the bounds of the buffer section is another one. Short impulses as input can lead to compelling resonance effects. As any input signal can be a source for buffer rewriting – and no-input variants with feedback are equally possible – it becomes clear that the variance of results is large.
About the artist
Daniel Mayer (*1967) works in the area of sound synthesis and generative computer algorithms. Performances at numerous festivals of electronic and contemporary music, Giga-Hertz production prize 2007 at ZKM Karlsruhe. Completed studies of pure mathematics, philosophy and composition (Gerd Kühr) in Graz. Postgraduate study at ES Basel with Hanspeter Kyburz. Visiting professor for electro-acoustic composition at IEM Graz. Edgard-Varèse guest professor of DAAD at TU Berlin in the winter 2022/23.
Allison Ogden: OBSess
OBSess Program Notes: The origins and title of this piece were entirely unintentional. While brainstorming ideas for a different composition, I began experimenting with oboe samples, applying various filters to them. I named the patch “OBSess” (Oboe + Session) without much thought. However, I found myself repeatedly returning to this patch, going down the well-trod computer music rabbit hole of “What if I…?”. It wasn’t until I had accumulated several minutes of material that I noticed the double meaning of “OBSess,” and it felt fitting. The piece is constructed by filtering and deconstructing oboe samples, exploring a cycle of reconstruction and re-deconstruction. My initial curiosity was to see if I could sonically rebuild a “giant oboe” from its fragmented sounds in an immersive 8-channel setup, simply because it seemed like a fun challenge. The process then evolved into further deconstructing the sound, leading to a playful exploration of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. Ultimately, this piece is about the joy of creation and experimentation—it was genuinely a lot of fun to make. OBSess was composed in the spring and summer of 2024.
About the artist
Dr. Allison Ogden is a composer, teacher and author who currently works as an Assistant Professor at The University of Louisville. She received her BM from The Eastman School of Music and her PhD from The University of Chicago. She now considers herself and “re-emerging composer”, as she took time away from composition to be a mother to her two children, and now seeks to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by those in the creative fields who need to step away due to child care, elder care, health concerns or other reasons, issues faced more commonly, though not exclusively, by women. Allison’s music has demonstrated a connection to the natural environment, with astronomy, nocturnal experiences and light pollution in particular being of prime focus. Working in both acoustic and electroacoustic realms, her music focuses on subtle textural shifts, sonic soundscapes, meditative and immersive acoustic spaces. As a Professor, Allison has worked to expand music course offerings at the University of Louisville and to make the music studied more inclusive and reflective of a modern, global society. A longtime fan of Hip Hop, she created the very popular Hip Hop: Music and Culture course at UofL and has lectured at Universities and Colleges in the United States and Europe on the intersection of Hip Hop and social justice movements. In August 2025 her college-level textbook, entitled Come Correct: A Comprehensive History of Hip Hop Music, was published.
Jan Jacob Hofmann: Oscillation of Life
This is an electroacoustic work in 7th order Ambisonics, fixed media. For this venue a 3rd order decode for has been provided. The piece is about the generating forces of nature. About the idea of an underlying universal power that gives shape and energy to all living beings. What if there was a yet undiscovered oscillating energy beyond acoustic and electromagnetic oscillation, that gave shape, energy and interconnection to all living beings? That enabled/guided/facilitated the organisation of molecules and cells to higher organisms, beyond genetic chemical reactions and metabolism, opposed to the common increase of entropy? That creates shape like symmetry up to far more complex mathematical order, beauty out of chaos by transmitting harmonic information? What would that oscillation sound like, if we could perceive it? Would we listen? Would we be able to tune in? The piece is spatially encoded in 7th order Ambisonic. The sounds and the spatial design were created with the sound synthesis program “Csound”. Other programs were “Cmask” and “Blue”.
About the artist
Jan Jacob Hofmann. Born 1966 at Duesseldorf, Germany. Diploma in architecture 1995. Entered the class of Peter Cook and Enric Miralles at the Staedelschule Art School Frankfurt am Main in 1995, a postgraduate class of conceptual design. Diploma in 1997. Works as a composer, photographer and architect since. Since 1986 dealing with composition and electronic music. Since 1999: Work on spatialisation of sound. Several international performances since. Own research on Ambisonic and other spatialisation techniques.
Vilbjørg Broch Phe: NoType, algorithmic 3D audio processing
An immersive audio work for computer processed voice. Spatialization and other audio processes take place through a gigantic audio effect wave guide mesh structured after the 8D hypercube. The text fragments are cutups from present scientific publications on genetics and computational biology.
About the artist
Vilbjørg Broch Phe. Born in 1967 in Denmark. Lived in The Netherlands for several decades but I am now based in Denmark. Studies include dance and improvisation at the SNDO Amsterdam and voice with coloratura soprano Marianne Blok. Worked with multi media and improvisational projects of all sorts and sizes the past 30 years. Projects include interpretations of a wide variety of text sources. I work with computer music for a bit more than 20 years. The development of this has been parallel with a self study of pure mathematics aimed at algorithmic composition and DSP. The work in spatial audio has developed thanks to working periods and residencies in places such as CCRMA Stanford, IEM Graz, ICST Zurich, EMS Stockholm and NOTAM Oslo.
Daniel Gomes: Sonic Fragmentation – a fixed media multichannel piece
The piece explores the relationship between human and machine in artistic creation, focusing on human decision-making in performance, synthesis, and media isomorphism. It suggests that technology and artistic performance are best unified through perceptual understanding, balancing automated processes with human interaction. Glass and tile shards were chosen as sound objects. Though not naturally resonant, these materials enabled exploration through vibration and human manipulation, bridging physical objects with digital sound. Performance and improvisation were crucial in shaping the piece’s structure, with tonality and gesture determined by performer’s choices and technique. Controlled sound events combine live performance with partial automation. Two key algorithms shaped the digital soundscape: Chebyshev’s Polynomials for filter design, optimizing frequency selectivity and ripple control, and the Sieve of Eratosthenes for prime sample intervals, enhancing sound fidelity. Spatial reference was essential for distinguishing individual synthesis streams. The glass shard motif served as the primary interaction model, with tile fragments helping define sound event morphology. The concept of linearity guided the overall form, using sampling as an isomorphic representation. This framework allows various media to be projected through vector matrices across different spectra while preserving their essential characteristics and artistic integrity.
About the artist
Daniel Gomes is a Lisbon-based web developer, fusing his passions for programming and digital art. His current focus lies in exploring computer music, with a particular emphasis on real-time paradigms in digital media, using sound as the primary medium for music synthesis. He holds a Master’s degree in Sonic Arts from the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. While engaged in his work and creative pursuits, he also served as a peer reviewer for the ICMC panel. His musical works have been showcased in diverse locations, ranging from Portugal to Paris (INA/GRM) and from Germany (ZKM in Karlsruhe) to international events such as ICMC 2018 in Daegu, Korea, and NYCEMF. Recently, he has been delving deeper into the realms of digital arts and the aesthetics of music.
Aleksandar Zecevic and Kiran Bhumber: Calling in “Raumforderungen” 8-channel diffusion work
German experimental musician Sascha Stadlmeier, founder of the Emerge label, recorded various physical interactions and ambient room tones inside the massive gas tank at Gaswerk in Augsburg, Germany. With his permission, I used these recordings as source material to create a musique concrète composition titled Calling in Raumforderungen. The term Raumforderung—German for “space-occupying lesion”—is used here in a non-medical, metaphorical sense. It refers to instances in which something occupies or asserts its presence within a given space, whether physical, conceptual, or acoustic. In this composition, that “something” is sound. Guided by a leitmotif of call-and-response, the work explores how sound waves interact with and are shaped by the gas tank’s vast, reverberant interior. The piece invites listeners to consider not just the sound itself, but the space it inhabits—and how that space responds.
About the artists
Aleksandar Zecevic is a sound artist, audio designer, electroacoustic composer, interactive audio specialist, and researcher. In his interactive and linear audio works, he uses a variety of spatial audio techniques to extend sonic narratives and temporal experiences. Upon completing a music conservatory and a technical college in 1986, he began working at Radio Television Belgrade, Studio B, Radio Belgrade Studio for Electronic Music, and the Belgrade National Theatre. Under the mentorship of the Belgrade University Professor of Sound Design and Radiophonic Art, Zoran Jerković, he continued his education in the theory and praxis of sound design, recording, and electroacoustic art until his departure to Canada in 1992. In Canada, he has been working as a freelance Sound Engineer, Audio Designer, Sound Artist, Spatial audio specialist and Electroacoustic Composer on film, television, multimedia, and performance projects. Aleksandar held the following positions: 1998 – 2018: Artistic and Technical Senior Sound Artist and Audio Director for Interactive Audio at Electronic Arts Canada. 2020 -2024 -Audio Director at Archiact inc Presently, he is the Audio Director at Lakshya Digital His works have been presented at Phonurgia Nova, MUTEK ( SAT ), Gran Prix Nova, EPICENTROOM, PAYSAGES | COMPOSÉS, FESTIVAL ECOS URBANOS, Radiophrenia, and Radio Belgrade 3.
Kiran Bhumber
Martin Heinze: Fluidante. A quadrophonic recording from the Latent Russando framework
“Latent Russando” is a semi-generative compositional framework written in Pure Data dedicated to exploring musical qualities in working with generative neural nets for audio, conceived both as hybrid instruments and as autonomous actors. Practices from generative music and algorithmic composition are used as mediators between human performer and the generative abilities of the neural nets, displacing and circumventing concepts of authorship and genius by empowering multiple independent agents in an improvisation-driven, co-creative process. The work is based on “Russando. Serenade for six German Sirens, op. 43” by Hallgrímur Vilhjálmsson, a heteronym of conceptual artist Georg Joachim Schmitt. The original piece was composed in 2008 and premiered in the context of the (also fictional) art exhibition “cologne contemporary — international art biennale 08” at Asbach-Uralt Werke in Rüdesheim. It is a three-part composition of approx. 33 minutes in length, in which six German emergency and police sirens are alternately sounded together or alone. In consultation with the creator, I trained neural audio models based on two architectures (RAVE, vschaos2, both courtesy of IRCAM, Paris) on the original piece. For the ICMC 2026 Music Track, I configured the “Latent Russando” framework into a quadrophonic version employing 8 model instances (each 4 RAVE and vschaos2) with their outputs distributed over all channels. My application contains the piece “Fluidante” that stands exemplary for a potentially infinite number of musical works that can be generated with this framework; it is the output of a joint creative act of human and artificial agents. With this, both the conceptual genesis of Russando with its distributed or fictionalized authorship is reflected as well as the interplay of control and autonomy in a process that deflects claims of unique authorship and concepts of solitary genius.
About the artist
Martin Heinze is a sound artist, composer and musician working in the field of experimental electronic music with a focus on algorithmic composition and generative neural audio synthesis. Part of his work revolves around injecting concepts of generative music and algorithmic composition into deterministically driven electronic music genres. Another practical research interest of his is integrating generative AI into creative processes in electronic music production holistically.
Cristian Gabriele Argento: Odradek
Odradek is a reflection on growth as transformation through mutation. The piece is composed exclusively from a single sonic organism: Valse Sideral (1962) by Jorge Antunes. This source was subjected to extreme AI-based cleaning processes, not to clarify the signal, but to harvest what was left behind: the residual noises, the erased interference, the discarded fragments. From this paradoxical gesture—a search in the margins—emerges a timbral proliferation: unstable, shifting, where the material fragments and regenerates into constantly changing forms. Like a living being adapting to survive, the sound grows not by accumulation, but through distortion, error, and adaptation. Far from a linear model of development, Odradek enacts dysfunctional growth: glitch like persistence, a rhythm that emerges and dissolves, an identity that loses itself to become something else. The title refers to Kafka ’s enigmatic creature—an unclassifiable entity with no clear function and no end—a metaphor for a sonic lifeform that resists categorization and complete intelligibility. Ecologically, Odradek offers a sonic metaphor for biodiversity. From a single source, it generates an ecosystem of micro-events—competing, overlapping, coexisting. It is not a representation of biodiversity, but its enactment: through the multiplication of differences, through tension between form and disintegration. In a time when growth is often misunderstood as unchecked expansion, Odradek explores a model of growth rooted in ambiguity, instability, and crisis. It grows not by colonizing space, but by making it fertile for new perception. A sound that thrives by becoming less legible, more complex—an auditory organism evolving through entropy.
About the artist
Cristian Gabriele Argento, Italy, Electroacoustic composer. Born in Catania in 1998, Cristian started to make music as a self-taught at the age of 14. His interest in new technologies applied to music was born in high school, studying subjects such as electronic and computer science; during this period he did some extra school courses about new technologies and electronic music. After his high school studies he decided to make of electronic music his future so he decided to enroll at the conservatory of Palermo. Currently he attends the second year of the Master course of electronic music at the conservatory of Palermo in the class of Giuseppe Rapisarda.