Spatial Audio Workshop
Friday 9 + Wednesday 14 + Thursday 15 December
Three-day workshop for the graduate students in SoundTeam. As the multichannel loudspeaker rig is now up and running (24 out of 25 speakers, in three ‘rings’ with different elevations), we’ll be setting up, taking down, setting up etc to practise with various speaker configurations, listening spatial music, testing 2D and 3D configurations of different HOA order, and working the softwares – Dante/Max/Pd/Logic/Reaper/Panoramix/… – for the students’ spatial soundwork projects (field recordings, experiments, music composition etc).
Thursday 15
Pieces and in-progress sonic experiments for the 24-channel hemispheric rig (+2 subs).
In-house Concert – Listening Session, 5pm
Program
AK KAN :: Frogs
(2019, 3 min.)
Chen YANG :: Wood
(2022, 6 min.) How do we live with a tree? Nothing is in a static state, we follow the flow to perceive an environment. In the flow of the wind, it makes contact with the tree and creatures it touches. The wind flows in this invisible space, while constantly shaping the shape of this space. Broken wood lie quietly on the ground, tapping it can still get its response. The last song does not mean the end, but another new beginning
that mingling with the surrounding creatures in another role. We live in symbiosis with plants, we use it as a decoration and we trim them. But would they really want to be in an environment full of human life, would they rather listen to music written by humans?
Giuseppe PISANO :: Come la fine del mondo o il mal di pancia di un dugongo
(2022, 13 min.) Time is a texture, a rhizomatic crumble of chaotic micro events, all with their own logical reason and consequences composing a self-regulated, hyper-accelerated stasis, countless things moving at different speeds. In this we imagine a linear vector, an overall organic – almost biological – Acceleration > Evolution >> Development >>> Growth!!! To be fair, in this polar inertia everything moves but nothing really changes. All I wanted was a safe niche, a little shelter where to store all my little treasures. I wanted to slow down, to pull the brake, to seek the comfort of a friend, to do something silly. So, I took the work sirens, the impulses of urgency, and made them into a velvety sweet marmalade of sound, warm and wet and sticky like my mother’s womb (or the intestines of a dugong): a numbing yummy jelly in which I can swim, love, stretch and sleep.
GUI Ren Gooey :: Last Day
(2022, 12 min.)
LUK Long-man :: Tsim Sha Tsui promenade
Ambisonic field recording [and video] (07:00). Does soundscape play a role in an ideal public space? Tsim Sha Tsui promenade offers a moment of reimagination through the juxtaposition of the daytime cityscape and midnight soundscape. Date: Nov 22, 2022 04:30 am, Nov 27, 2022 15:30 pm. Audio Recorded with Zylia ZM-1, Video with Ricoh Theta Z1 (reframed).
Manni CHEN :: A Reverberated Monk (fragments)
(2022, 2 min.)
Natasha BARRETT :: Sensory sleep (4:23) & Dream awake (3:45)
Many years ago, excited and overwhelmed with what was possible with computers and composition, I jumped into using sources that appeared musically new. Of course, after listening and learning, I found other composers had got there before me! I left some of these sounds in the ‘possibly interesting’ archive, and water droplets were amongst them. But now in 2022 it was time to revisit the ideas I left behind with new ears, new knowledge, new tools and new dreams. The result is a two-part work composed in higher-order Ambisonics: ‘Dream Awake’ and ‘Sensory Sleep’. The titles reflect my mental state before and after long studio sessions during the quiet hours of dawn.
PerMagnus LINDBORG :: Graviton Dance
(2019, 8 min.) Graviton Dance is a spatial electroacoustic piece, a ‘theatre of music’ conceived as a journey into the building blocks of matter, reaching the tiniest conceivable specks: vibrating one-dimensional units of energy expressed as strings. Through a purely generative process, “Graviton Dance” is a kaleïdoscopic sound mobile, driven by a small number of cyclical processes for low-level generation of values for synthesis parameters, creating locally unpredictable musical output and spatialisation. It can be heard as a ballet choreographed for unobservable, mysterious sound objects wrapping themselves in six curled-up dimensions of imperial clothing while traveling four limitless dimensions of space, their dance somehow enabled by the innards of time.
YUE Ran :: 休憩处 [Sitting-out area]
(2022, 10:16)
Wednesday 14
- Development of pieces, composition, spatial configurations
- Ambisonics 1st order, HOA 3rd order,
- IRCAM spat in Max
- Panoramix
- Reaper with IEM plugins
OAT Experiment
In parallel with the workshop, the Open Ambisonics Toolkit [OAT] team consisting of Giuseppe Pisano (RA), PerMagnus Lindborg (PI), and Cyrus Leung (helper) has been working. Giuseppe is running perceptual experiments of three spatial configurations in ACIM MoCap Lab. All are 8-channel setups using the DIY OAT rig: Circle, Skewed Cube, and Five-Three Hemispheric. With a subwoofer on ch1 crossover.
Friday 9
- Workshop plan
- Safety first
- CityU/ACIM laboratory complience
- Personal protection (gloves, torch, occasionally helmet)
- General safety, access & emergency escape, first aid, responder training, important telephone numbers (999 for HK, CityU-FMO 3442-8888 security hotline)
- Lights – emergency floodlights
- SoundLab rules
- gloves
- Keeping things tidy
- Cabinets, equipment
- Truss demo!
- Access (who, when…), schedule & bookings
- Lab work
- Organising events
- Website
- Loudspeaker configurations
- Ring 1
- Floor markings, measurement, cabling
- Ring 2 and Ring 3
- Truss operation (Hong)
- Ring 1
- Software (AK)
- Local network
- Dante AES67
- SoundLab iMac
- your own computer
- Max, Logic, Pd…
- external networking, TCP/IP, firewalls
- Local network
