In this chapter, we describe a series of studies related to our research on using gestural sonic objects in music analysis. These include developing a method for annotating the qualities of gestural sonic objects on multimodal recordings; ranking which features in a multimodal dataset are good predictors of basic qualities of gestural sonic objects using the Random Forests algorithm; and a supervised learning method for automated spotting designed to assist human annotators. The subject of our analyses is a performance of Fragmente2, a choreomusical composition based on the Japanese composer Makoto Shinohara’s solo piece for tenor recorder Fragmente (1968). To obtain the dataset, we carried out a multimodal recording of a full performance of the piece and obtained synchronised audio, video, motion, and electromyogram (EMG) data describing the body movements of the performers. We then added annotations on gestural sonic objects through dedicated qualitative analysis sessions. The task of annotating gestural sonic objects on the recordings of this performance has led to a meticulous examination of related theoretical concepts to establish a method applicable beyond this case study. This process of gestural sonic object annotation—like other qualitative approaches involving manual labelling of data—has proven to be very time-consuming. This motivated the exploration of data-driven, automated approaches to assist expert annotators.

Gaman að kynnast þér // Pleased to meet you! 

An encounter between two performers of the Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect playing baroque instruments, two members of the Vietnamese group The Six Tones playing traditional Vietnamese instruments, and two musicians from the Intelligent Instruments Lab at University of Iceland. Each musician brings their individual instrumental skills and the performance practice of their instrument, and their cultural resonances, to a production based on the attentive listening characteristic of free improvisation, and the explorative approaches characteristic of experimentation with electronic media. The production was produced by Nordic Affect,  in collaboration with the ERC-funded Intelligent Instruments Lab. The concert was produced with funding from The Icelandic Ministry of Culture’s Music Fund and Reykjavík City. 

This portrait CD presents an opportunity to examine almost the full span of Isaksson’s career as a composer, through works composed between 1998 and 2022. The album features the guitarist Stefan Östersjö in three works, including Far (2011) for alto guitar and electronics, as well as Infiltrations (2022) for pipe organ, electric guitar and chamber ensemble. The earliest of these works is Fibres (2004), the creation of which became the beginning of the collaboration between Isaksson and Östersjö. This collaboration has entailed explorations of multi-stringed instruments like the 10-string guitar (in Fibres) and the 11-string alto guitar (in Far), as well as the timbral and dynamic range of the electric guitar in Infiltrations. 

This portrait album with compositions by Madeleine Isaksson is released on CD but is also available in Dolby Atmos as a digital download. 

This paper discusses the development of artistic collaboration during the global lockdown, related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The art work under study involves the author’s practices of ecological sound art and intercultural collaboration in collaboration with Canadian composer and improviser John Oliver. A primary outcome of this work was the album Isolation Journal, released in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. One feature of Isolation Journal was how it revisited site-specific recordings made in Vietnam, on the countryside north of Hanoi, for an installation made by Östersjö in collaboration with Nguyễn Thanh Thủy and Matthew Sansom [Östersjö, Stefan, and Thanh Thủy Nguyễn. 2016. “The Sounds of Hanoi and the After-Image of the Homeland.” Journal of Sonic Studies 12. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/246523/246546]. Through remote interactions, and by building a complex sampler instrument using Östersjö's recordings of Aeolian đàn đáy, a traditional Vietnamese lute, as well as field recordings from the site, Oliver and Östersjö created the album Isolation Journal through remote interaction. This in turn became a fundamental building block when the author's Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones took the initiative to develop a scene for telematic performance at Manzi Art Space in Hanoi. This series started out with a concert with John Oliver, The Six Tones and guest performers from Hanoi in July 2020. Building on audio and video documentation, as well as on qualitative interviews with the participating co-performers, an analysis of the emergence of discursive voice [Gorton, David, and Stefan Östersjö. 2019. “Austerity Measures I: Performing the Discursive Voice.” In Voices, Bodies, Practices: Performing Musical Subjectivities, edited by Catherine Laws, William Brooks, David Gorton, Nguyễn Thanh Thủy, Stefan Östersjö, and Jeremy J. Wells, 29–79. Orpheus Institute Series. Leuven: Leuven University Press] is drawn from these two internally linked artistic projects. The paper develops the analytical framework of tele-copresence, a synthesis of the contrasting concepts of telepresence and copresence, as a means for analysing the virtual presence which emerges through such remote musical interaction. 

Interwoven Sound Spaces is an interdisciplinary project which brought together telematic music performance, interactive textiles, interaction design, and artistic research. A team of researchers collaborated with two professional contemporary music ensembles based in Berlin, Germany, and Piteå, Sweden, and four composers, with the aim of creating a telematic distributed concert taking place simultaneously in two concert halls and online. Central to the project was the development of interactive textiles capable of sensing the musicians’ movements while playing acoustic instruments, and generating data the composers used in their works. Musicians, instruments, textiles, sounds, halls, and data formed a network of entities and agencies that was reconfigured for each piece, showing how networked music practice enables distinctive musicking techniques. We describe each part of the project and report on a research interview conducted with one of the composers for the purpose of analysing the creative approaches she adopted for composing her piece.