Abstract
Noise has become integral to electroacoustic music aesthetics. In this paper, we define noise as sound that is high in auditory roughness, and examine its effect on cross-modal mapping between sound and visual shape in participants. In order to preserve the ecological validity of contemporary music aesthetics, we developed Rama, a novel interface, for presenting experimentally controlled blocks of electronically generated sounds that varied systematically in roughness, and actively collected data from audience interaction. These sounds were then embedded as musical drones within the overall sound design of a multimedia performance with live musicians, Audience members listened to these sounds, and collectively voted to create the shape of a visual graphic, presented as part of the audio–visual performance. The results of the concert setting were replicated in a controlled laboratory environment to corroborate the findings. Results show a consistent effect of auditory roughness on shape design, with rougher sounds corresponding to spikier shapes. We discuss the implications, as well as evaluate the audience interface.
Highlights
At the turn of the 20th Century, the Italian futurist composer Luigi Russolo proposed that with the advent of noisy machinery, audiences in contemporary European societies had begun to lose their sensitivity to music
This paper focuses on the perceptual effects of noise as an element of sound design in the context of a live electroacoustic concert, using dynamic, audience-based responses to cross-modal stimuli as a probe
We describe Rama, an interactive musical interface for testing audience responses to noise in a musical context, in multimedia performance environments, via collaborative audience shape-design
Summary
At the turn of the 20th Century, the Italian futurist composer Luigi Russolo proposed that with the advent of noisy machinery, audiences in contemporary European societies had begun to lose their sensitivity to music. A century later, noise has entrenched its place in the world of contemporary art and music, working its way into a wide range of music from experimental composers (e.g., Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis), to pop musicians (e.g., The Beatles) and audio–visual artists. Some fields of electroacoustic music actively manipulate sounds generally thought of as ‘noisy’ as structural elements of their audio design. Such uses of art-noise make it difficult to support such binary distinctions between noise and music. This paper focuses on the perceptual effects of noise as an element of sound design in the context of a live electroacoustic concert, using dynamic, audience-based responses to cross-modal stimuli as a probe
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