Pauline Oliveros

Acoustic and Virtual Space as a Dynamic Element of Music

The author provides an overview of her background as a performer and composer interested in acoustics and technology. Her discussion ranges from a description of her practice of “deep listening” to her work developing the Expanded Instrument System—which allows the performer greater control over acoustic space—to her collaborations with other composers and instrument builders.

Electro/Acoustic Improvisation and Deeply Listening Machines

In this paper we discuss our approach to designing improvising music systems whose intelligence is centred around careful listening, particularly to qualities related to timbre and texture. Our interest lies in systems that can make contextual decisions based on the overall character of the sound field, as well as the specific shape and contour created by each player. We describe the history and paradigm of ‘expanded instrument’ systems, which has led to one instrumental system (GREIS) focused on manual sculpting of sound with machine assistance, and one improvising system (FILTER) which introduces the ability to listen, recognize and transform a performer’s sound in a contextually relevant fashion. We describe the different modules of these improvising performance systems, as well as specific musical performances as examples of their use. We also describe our free improvisation trio, in order to describe the musical context that situates and informs our research.

Sound texture recognition through dynamical systems modeling of empirical mode decomposition

This paper describes a system for modeling, recognizing, and classifying sound textures. The described system translates contemporary approaches from video texture analysis, creating a unique approach in the realm of audio and music. The signal is first represented as a set of mode functions by way of the Empirical Mode Decomposition technique for time/frequency analysis, before expressing the dynamics of these modes as a linear dynamical system (LDS). Both linear and nonlinear techniques are utilized in order to learn the system dynamics, which leads to a successful distinction between unique classes of textures. Five classes of sounds comprised a data set, consisting of crackling fire, typewriter action, rainstorms, carbonated beverages, and crowd applause, drawing on a variety of source recordings. Based on this data set the system achieved a classification accuracy of 90%, which outperformed both a Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient based LDS-modeling approach from the literature, as well as one based on a standard Gaussian Mixture Model classifier.

Dynamic spaces

This project explores the relationships within an acoustic and electronic performing ensemble for improvised music in virtual environments with deliberately varying characteristics. Variations in acoustics provide a new dynamic parameter of music in addition to harmony, melody, and rhythm. The performance is enhanced by dynamic visual elements with interwoven artistic images and views of the performers in a shared virtual space.

A Performer-Controlled Live Sound-Processing System: New Developments and Implementations of the Expanded Instrument System

The Expanded Instrument System (EIS) is a performer-controlled delay-based network of digital sound-processing devices designed to be an improvising environment for acoustic musicians. The EIS emerged from Pauline Oliveros’s work dating back to the 1950s. In the last 5 years David Gamper has been developing and expanding the capabilities of the EIS; he describes in this article how performance experience has led to recent technical developments and relates how the current configuration of the EIS has been used in composition, performance and teaching activities. He also discusses why seemingly outdated analog technologies have been retained in the EIS after adaptation to allow computer control. The core concept of the current configuration has proved to be flexible and adaptable to many demands, several of which are described.

Handle: Engineering Artificial Musical Creativity at the “Trickery” Level

We embrace a “middle-standard” view of creativity in AI, according to which the driving goal is to engineer computational systems able to “trick” humans into regarding them to be human-level creative. We then report upon three versions of our system of this type in the realm of music: Handle. One of the important hallmarks of our engineering is a commitment to exploiting the power of formal computational logic within the highly intuitive domain of music; accordingly, coverage of the still-incomplete but fast-maturing music calculus \(\fancyscript{M}\) is included.

Telehaptic interfaces for interpersonal communication within a music ensemble

Visual communication is an important aspect of music performance, for example, to pick up temporal cues and find the right entries. Visual cues can also be instrumental to negotiate the solo order in improvized music or enable social exchange, for example, by signaling someone that her solo was well received. The problem with visual communication is that one has to catch someone else’s attention, and visual cues outside someone’s visual field cannot be detected, even more so if the addressee is busy reading a music score or closing his eyes in a Free Music session. Acoustic communication does not encounter these challenges, but of course someone does not want to disturb the music with other acoustic signals. The haptic modality has the advantage that it does not necessarily interfere with the acoustic signal and does not require attention. However, it allows interpersonal communication if both parties are within close proximity. Using telematic interfaces solves the problem of proximity by allowing partic...

Creativity and conducting: handle in the CAIRA project

After providing some context via (i) earlier work on literary creativity carried out by Bringsjord et al., and (ii) an account of creativity espoused by Cope, which stands in rather direct opposition to Bringsjords account, we summarize our nascent attempt to engineer an artificial conductor: Handle. Handle is a microcosmic version of part of a larger, much more ambitious system: CAIRA. Both are under development courtesy of a three-year CreativeIT grant from the National Science Foundation (PI Braasch, Co-PIs Oliveros & Bringsjord).

Pauline Oliveros: The World Wide Tuning Meditation

Score for a Hole in the Ground is an indeterminate musical composition of unknown duration set in a permanent installation. In the heart of a forest in Kent, water dripping into a deep underground chamber strikes both tuned percussion and a pool at its bottom, the sounds rising up through a giant horn, standing 7 m above the ground (Fig. 1). In a sense this piece can be viewed as the flip side to an earlier composition, Longplayer, and while both engage with time over long durations, Score for a Hole in the Ground seeks to exist independently of any human upkeep, depending on neither the longevity of any energy source nor technology, only on the ongoing existence of the planet and its weather systems. In contrast Longplayer, a 1,000-year-long composition that started its life as a computer program, demands attention in terms of energy and maintenance and, in seeking out forms for its survival, outside of the digital domain. In the forest, among the trees, the horn’s shape resembles the trumpet of an old gramophone or a giant lily, oxidized autumnal orange brown. The upright pipe is indistinguishable, from a distance, from the trunks of the surrounding beech trees. The sounds too blend with the forest, until the ear discerns something out of place and the eye resolves the horn as the sonic source. Weather changes the music. In a torrential downpour it reaches a crescendo, while drought renders it silent, save for the effects of the breeze gently brushing the instruments as it eddies around the chamber. It becomes one with the climatic forces of the forest. The chaotic nature of dripping water gives rise to complex variations in the composition, ranging from near silence to intricate shifting patterns running in and out of phase. This recording was made on 2 May 2008, in the rain, and one hears both sounds rising up from under the ground and the drumming of rain drops on the steel cover. Score for a Hole in the Ground was the recipient of the P.R.S.F. New Music Award in 2005 and was made in collaboration with Stour Valley Arts. It is located in Kingswood, near Challock, Kent, England.

Networked Music: Low and High Tech

This article gathers some performances and research efforts that are devoted to networked music. Brief descriptions are used to present the ideas and opportunities that are continually arising and intriguing many musicians even though the prospect itself is difficult because of infrastructural needs and politics. There are more and more intrepid travelers willing to suffer the ‘head banging’ and communication difficulties that are part of this emerging field.