Prospect - Present and future

Auditory objects are extensively discussed and pursued in the recent artistic research in computer music thus it was not surprising that the IKO was one of various research objects in CoS (Choreography of Sound/PEEK AR 41). Although CoS considered a more general scope of spatialization systems, the pioneering results of CoS and the above-mentioned compositions grrawe and firniss lay the foundations of OSIL. When beginning to work, it was unclear how to create, shape, and orchestrate auditory objects traversing space by using the IKO. The creation of the targeted auditory impressions could be approached by iterative artistic and scientific work of refining the composition, refining the spatial arrangement, and refining the algorithms of the IKO. Desired auditory objects are only obtained by carefully arranging the product of all of these three factors. In the first pieces, this meant getting to know the instrument’s effect on perception, i.e., its acoustic properties and its potential in each room situation. Nevertheless, a method of how to combine the above-mentioned factors is not yet defined, and clearly lacks research. Many remarkably diverse effects were discovered in the pieces grrawe and firniss by intuition and not any other method or theory. 

Psychoacoustically, the auditory effects created by the IKO are not easy to explain. Matthias Frank worked on auditory objects created by amplitude panning on multiple loudspeakers in his PhD thesis [Fra13a]. In particular, for more than three active loudspeakers, their direction of localization, width, and sound coloration were also hard to predict before. His successful methods, listening experiments, and models are a starting point to understanding and discovering the principles behind auditory objects created with the IKO.

These auditory objects leave us with a universe of questions:
Can the electroacoustic auditory objects of the IKO be reproduced in a composition? Which parts of these auditory objects only develop in the (acoustic) imagination of the composer, and which are transparent to the audience – are they to be seen more as metaphorical and programmatic settings that serve the composer primarily as aids in dealing with the technical equipment? How can one stage the auditory objects and make them tangible for an audience? What spatial conditions are required to do so? How can one describe and verbalize these objects for intra- and interdisciplinary exchange? In the case of many musical effects that emerge and which are being reinforced by the IKO, the question remains: why and how?

Pierre Boulez’ remark «Le haut-parleur anonymise la source réelle» inspired research in musical acoustics and electroacoustics [Wei04] by stating that loudspeakers alienate natural sources by modifying how their sound is radiated into the room. There is plenty of evidence on how the radiation characteristics influence sound in rooms [DKS93, OR04, RW12], and it is most plausible when motion of the musician is involved. Equipped with background knowledge about sound radiation [Zot12], the powerful prototype of the IEM IKO [Zot09], expertise in psychoacoustic evaluation and modeling of spatial sound [Fra13a], and pioneering experience in music written for the IKO as a new musical instrument [SZre, Ple11, Arr12], we postulate a slight variation of the above as the artistic research hypothesis of OSIL: Loudspeakers of adjustable radiation naturalize alien sounds by embedding them in the natural spatiality of the room, cf. also conclusion 2 in [Har83].