I decided to record the performance with the help of my friend Martin Janda by field recorder as well as binaural recording in Ableton Live using Envelope4Live 4D sound Max For Live plugins. Unfortunately, binaural recording failed during the performance process, therefore I was left with the field recording only.

In both performances, Brno and Ostrava, I have used two rubber sensors, crown with an IMU sensor and one Arduino glove.

During the first performance in Brno, I have encountered technical issues with one of the knee sensors. I found myself needing to engage with the laptop to level up certain effect, which somewhat undermined the initial intent of exclusively using bodily movements to control the sound. Nevertheless, I’ve come to understand that the issue at hand is primarily an engineering challenge. By modifying the assembly method of the conductive rubber, I should be able to prevent malfunctions in the future.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pJnEyY8OSx1JGoNOESh9QmsGVUmJhLTq/view?usp=sharing

The task we got during the class was to position bluetooth speaker somewhere in the space of LCC, play some sound and observe people’s reactions. We had to make sure that sound is not causing any distress.

Baria have chosen sound of the glass being broken on the loop. We have positioned the speaker firstly on the glass table in the main gallery of the first floor. The sound certainly drawn some attention and I noticed one person being diverted from their previous trajectory. After that we pot the speaker in the middle of the corridor just next to the art work which was made of glass. This also drawn attention and people at first couldn’t figure out where the sound is coming from. Some people told us later that they thought it might be the part of the art piece itself. This means that we could temporarily completely change the perception of the art piece and also drawn more attention to it than it would get under normal ‘no sound involved’ circumstances. I noticed some people even started dancing to the song of breaking glass.

Overall reaction was somewhere between amusement, curiosity to just getting a mild attention. This made me think about the context of this particular sound being present inside of the art school. The sound of glass could be normally considered distressing or dangerous situation happening near by. My assumption is that reaction and emotional response would be probably different if the sound was positioned in for example shopping centre or train station. Considering we were playing sound inside of the art school and next to the art piece made of glass reactions were mild. The third location we chose was a narrow glass window with no art work around but reactions were still mild. My theory is that people inside of the art school are somehow cognitively desensitised to normally to ‘weird’ or ‘uncommon’ events of sound which under other circumstances would trigger different and more acute response. It is predictable to expect that anything ‘weird’ occurring will be more likely some sort of art work rather than dangerous event happening. Of course the amplitude played the role as well. I believe that if we put the speaker louder the response could be also different.

Neil Harbisson (born 27th July 1982) is a Catalan-raised British-Irish-American cyborg artist and activist for transpecies rights. He was born with a rare condition, achromatic vision – total colour blindness. When he grew older he recognised that lack of ability to sense colour was giving him a lot of disadvantages because surrounding society is inherently designed for people able to perceive the colours. In 2003, him and Adam Montandon, started to develop antenna which would allow him to hear colours as musical notes generated by simple sine waves. Antenna over the time evolved from connection to headphones and 5 kg backpack worn on his back into a small chip eventually implanted into his skull conducting the sound into ears via bone conduction in 2004.

The surgery was performed by an anonymous surgeon since the bio-ethical committee didn’t approve the surgery considering it non-ethical. Neil Harbisson got into another legal obstacles since he had to convince British offices to allow him appearing with the antenna on the passport. At first they denied his request as unacceptable since it is not allowed to appear on passport with electronic devices but after many months he convinced them that the antenna isn’t a device but a new organ and he cannot simply remove it. He is also in touch Swedish offices claiming Swedish citizenship since the antennas parts were made in Sweden. According to Swedish law, one can become Swedish after living in Sweden at least 5 years. Neil Harbisson argue his claim by the fact the part of Sweden has been living in him way much longer than 5 years.

Neil Harbisson described the process of becoming a cyborg more as psychological. Firstly, he memorised notes as colours, then later they became perception as he didn’t need to think about them and the information of “sound-colour” became automatic. When he started to have dreams in colours, Neil realised, that he truly became a cyborg as his consciousness merged with the software on a deeper level.

Antenna can perceive colours beyond the range of human perception. It can sense infra-red and ultra-violet colours. It can be also connected to internet and sense colours being send from another parts of the world, even from deep space when connected to satellites. From this point of view Neil consider himself ‘a sensetronaut’ as he can explore outer space with his newly obtained sense whist physically remaining on this planet.

Neil consider himself as a cyborg artist. He enjoys to create sound portraits of human faces or dressing himself in a way which not necessarily ‘looks good’ but according to if it ‘sounds good’. In 2010, him and Moon Ribas, another cyborg artist, Cyborg Foundation. It is an institution helping to people to become cyborgs. They believe that extending humans perception by creating new sense new forms of intelligence and wisdom and often has very ecological aspect to it. Neil Harbisson for example said that if everyone had a night vision, cities wouldn’t need to consume vast amounts of electric energy at night, which would be beneficial for the environment.

Acousmatic music is conceptual genre which stands mainly for the sound being separated from its origins. The source of the sound should ideally not be possible to identify by listener – both, in recorded and produced pieces as well as during performances.

The composition is often based on several prominent elements. It usually has long forms and contains so called “gestures” and “textures”. Gestures are usually very prominent sounds standing more upfront. To me they reminded forms of glitches. Textures are usually ambiences, something which we could commonly call “pads”, although they aren’t necessarily melodic but it could be. Sound objects within composition also changes their pitch. Compositions are often interrupted by dramatic hits or booms following quieter or silent parts bringing to it the element of negative space.

After listening to several examples found particularly interesting the element of separation. Separation is not only achieved by concealing the sound source but also from my observation acousmatic music appears to be somehow separated from its creator to especially in comparison to commonly listened music. Like in performances, thus in recordings, there is often kept the focus on the artist. There is an inherent element of artist’s ego in the most of the music. Acousmatic music is usually very abstract and my mental and emotional processes remained quite different in comparison to listening of “usual” music. I kept myself being intellectually stimulated by its abstraction and sort of mathematical precision in the apparent chaos which was in fact sophistically constructed order rather then being entertained or emotionally drifted away, however this doesn’t mean that acousmatic music does not or cannot contain an emotional aspect. The significant abstraction of the acousmatic music led me as a listener to the thoughts about the artist or composer being rather lacking or non-existent creating another level of the separation from the source – even from the artist themselves.

The piece called ‘Klang’ was little bit confusing because the source of the sound is quite obvious considering even the cover of the piece. It almost feels like a game at this point since we still cannot say for sure if the sound source is the clang of the pot or something else. This suggest another important characteristic of the acousmatic music which is creative freedom. Considering the certain boundaries which makes music being acousmatic, there is not many other limits how to compose or perform.

Acousmatic piece of Berk Yagli and the other example like Murmures by Robert Normandeau reminded me my very favourite experimental electronic music composer Roly Porter. Roly Porter’s music probably isn’t inherently acousmatic but to me it seems that it overlaps and carries a lot of its elements.