Pedro Rebelo

Immersive audio experiences position the listener at the centre of a sound field created by loudspeakers or head-phones often attempting to achieve a sense of belonging and embodiment. The focus on placing the listener amongst multiple sound sources with individual localisa-tion and propagation patterns goes somewhat towards recreating everyday like listening experiences, which typically involve hundreds if not thousands of sources in complex acoustics perceived differently by each listener based on movement and head rotation not to mention individual hearing profiles. This paper focuses on the, as of yet, largely unexplored listening space which sits between headphone and loudspeaker reproduction. This unexplored space affords multiple approaches when it comes to creating ambiguous listening situations in which there is a deliberate attempt to blur, augment or even contradict the relationship between headphone and loudspeaker sound fields. We propose a set of strategies which can be deployed in the development of Auditory Virtual Environments (AVE) aimed at creating spaces in between. The paper combines technical, design and creative approaches based on recent artworks, to illustrate ways in which to explore the notion of ambiguity in im-mersive audio experiences.

ABSTRACT This article outlines the ongoing development of a locative smartphone app for iPhone and Android phones entitled The Belfast Soundwalks Project. Drawing upon a method known as soundwalking, the aim of this app is to engage the public in sonic art through the creation of up to ten soundwalks within the city of Belfast. This paper discusses the use of GPS enabled mobile devices in the creation of soundwalks in other cities. The authors identify various strategies for articulating an experience of listening in place as mediated by mobile technologies. The project aims to provide a platform for multiple artists to develop site-specific sound works which highlight the relationship between sound, place and community. The development of the app and the app interface are discussed, as are the methods employed to test and evaluate the project.

Pedro Rebelo Born in 1972 - Portugal Pedro is a composer/digital artist working in electroacoustic music, digital media and installation. His approach to music making is informed by the use of improvisation and interdisciplinary structures. He has been involved in several ...

... Email: f.schroeder@qub.ac.uk www.lautnet.net www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~fschroeder Pedro Rebelo Sonic Arts Research Centre Queen's University Belfast BT7 1NN Tel. ... “Disparate Bodies v.1” byPedro Rebelo is a piece that was specifically conceived for playing in the network [26]. ...

Disparate Bodies is a performance for musicians in three geographically separate locations. The work addresses network performance as a new type of performance practice and investigates musical implications arising from the notion of displacement and dispersed presence. The ...

Debate over the role of the computer in music has mostly been dominated by technologists and practitioners. It suggests little investigation into the cultural implications of new technologies that become ubiquitous at an increasingly fast rate. A cultural understanding of technologies ...

1. INTRODUCTION As part of the FIX 07 Festival [12] an audiovisual installation featuring a prepared (hacked) radio set and accompanying visuals was created. The objective of the piece was to engage users in a musical system where they felt they had a degree of control in its ...

Sonic Constructs is an interactive sound installation that uses Lego Mindstorms™ semi-automata musical robots. In Sonic Constructs, two robotic devices move and interact while performing trajectories that produce sound as a by-product of the movement itself. ...

... as Compositional Subject Matter: View-points from Music Theory and Mod-ern Psychology''; Timothy Day, Gwendolyn Tietze, and Hannah Vlcek: ''Histories in ... 110 (2002); Martin Bédard Check-point (partie 1) (2003); Li-Chi Hsieh Dear Falling Angels; Nicolas Bernier Tous les ...

The history of sonic arts is charged with transgressive practices that seek to expose the social, aural and cultural thresholds across various listening experiences, posing new questions in terms of the dialogue between listener and place. Recent work in sonic art exposes the need for an experiential understanding of listening that foregrounds the use of new personal technologies, environmental philosophy and the subject–object relationship. This paper aims to create a vocabulary that better contextualises recent installations and performances produced within the context of everyday life, by researchers and artists at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.

The parasitical relationship between the grand piano and the myriad objects used in its preparation as pioneered by John Cage in the late 1940’s is here discussed from a perspective of free improvisation practice. Preparations can be defined as the use of a “non-instrument” object (screws, bolts, rubbers etc…) to alter or modify the behaviour of an instrument or part of an instrument. Although also present in instrumental practices based on the electric guitar or the drum kit, the piano provides a privileged space of exploration given its large-scale resonant body. It also highlights the transgressive aspect of preparation (the piano to be prepared often belongs to a venue rather than to the pianist herself, hence highlighting relationships of trust, care and respect). Since 2007 I have used a guitar-object (a small wooden board with strings and pick ups) connected to a small amplifier to prepare the grand piano in my free improvisation practice. This paper addresses the different relationships afforded by this type preparation which is characterised by the fact that the object for preparation is in itself an instrument (albeit a simplified one), and the preparation is ephemeral and intrinsic to the performance. The paper also reflects on the process of designing an interface from and for a particular practice and in collaboration with a guitar luthier.

This paper addresses the relationship between local and distributed strategies with reference to two recent participatory sound art projects in Belfast and Rio de Janeiro. The local concern for site and place is discussed and juxtaposed with distributed practices, which, by definition question and extend the very notion of site or locale. I refer to examples from ethnomusicology, anthropology and education in which participative horizontal research methodologies lead to a dynamic articulation of local conditions and allow for a reflection on how technology impacts on social interaction and relationships with place. The works of Samuel Araújo, Georgina Born and Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire provide a framework of reference in this context.

"This paper outlines the ongoing development of a locative
smartphone app for iPhone and Android phones entitled The
Belfast Soundwalks Project. Drawing upon a method known as
soundwalking, the aim of this app is to engage the public in sonic
art through the creation of up to ten soundwalks within the city of
Belfast. This paper discusses the use of GPS enabled mobile
devices in the creation of soundwalks in other cities. We identify
various strategies for articulating an experience of listening in
place as mediated by mobile technologies. The project aims to
provide a platform for multiple artists to develop site-specific
sound works which highlight the relationship between sound, place
and community. The development of the app and the app interface
also discussed as are the methods employed to test and evaluate
the project."

Notation can be seen to sit comfortably between theory and practice as it symbolizes practice, generates and implements theory, and produces practice. Historically, its presence changes in significance across the development of activities such as music or architecture. From design tool to canonic text, notational artefacts both solidify and formalize practice, as will be expanded below. How, then, does the role and function of notation change with specific contemporary practices, which are by definition ill-defined and feed off fluidity and change? What is the nature of notation in distributed and collaborative practices such as improvised music or network music performance?

The history of sonic arts is charged with transgressive practices that seek to expose the social, aural and cultural thresholds across various listening experiences, posing new questions in terms of the dialogue between listener and place. Recent work in sonic art exposes the need for an experiential understanding of listening that foregrounds the use of new personal technologies, environmental philosophy and the subject–object relationship. This paper aims to create a vocabulary that better contextualises recent installations and performances produced within the context of everyday life, by researchers and artists at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast.

In this paper we reflect on the performer–instrument relationship by turning towards the thinking practices of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961). Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological idea of the body as being at the centre of the world highlights an embodied position in the ...

This article addresses challenges and opportunities posed by the design and production of network performance from the point of view of collaborative creative work. It examines strategies that, while referring to the network as a new medium for performance, make use of concepts from dramaturgy to better understand the relationships between artists, audiences and media. The author characterises three distinct models for dramaturgy, particularly from the point of view of collaboration, authorship, presence and environment.

The development of high-speed networks provides a medium, which is becoming increasingly usable for real time media applications. The development of network music performance (NMP) and composition systems presents challenges with technical and cultural ...

Modernist tradition, as represented by the artistic output of the first half of the twentieth century, preoccupies itself with structure. Much of the music, architecture and visual art produced in the 1940s and 1950s relies on the identification and categorization of ...