The inaugural event of the ligeti center “Artists and Scientists in Residence” program and christening of their brand new spatial audio system was the 4 April 2024 world premiere of Fredrik Mathias Josefson’s spatial audio composition “Above a Sea of Fog,” an immersive electroacoustic environment that employs recording, Kyma synthesis, and “negative space” to weave a spatial soundscape. Josefson also provided insights into his creative processes and spatial audio methodologies and discussed his two-month residency at the ligeti center.
Bringing together expertise from the realms of art, science, and technology, the “Production Lab” at the heart of the ligeti center serves as a presentation venue and an open production space for creative exploration. From immersive spatial audio to haptics, from cyber instruments to music therapy, and beyond, it is designed as a hub for interaction, collaboration, and critical discourse. As a fully equipped studio space, “Production Lab” provides creators with a range of options for immersive sound production and performance, including motion capture technologies, VR/XR solutions, and a free space for creative thinking and experimentation.
Sound designers, electronic/computer musicians and researchers are invited to join us in Busan South Korea 29 August through 1 September 2019 for the 11th annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2019) — four days and nights of hands-on workshops, live electronic music performances, and research presentations on the theme: Resonance (공명).
“Resonanceâ€, from the Latin words resonare (re-sound) and resonantia (echo), can be the result of an actual physical reflection, of an electronic feedback loop (as in an analog filter), or even the result of “bouncing†ideas off each other during a collaboration. When we say that an idea “resonatesâ€, it suggests that we may even think of our minds as physical systems that can vibrate in sympathy to familiar concepts or ideas.
Photo by Belinda J Carr
At KISS2019, the concept of resonance will be explored through an opening concert dedicated to “ecosystemic†electronics (live performances in which all sounds are derived from the natural resonances of the concert hall interacting with the electronic resonances of speaker-microphone loops), through paper sessions dedicated to modal synthesis and the implementation of virtual analog filters in Kyma, through live music performances based on gravity waves, sympathetic brain waves, the resonances of found objects, the resonance of the Earth excited by an earthquake, and in a final rooftop concert for massive corrugaphone orchestra processed through Kyma, where the entire audience will get to perform together by swinging resonant tubes around their heads to experience collective resonance. Sounds of Busan — two hands-on workshops open to all participants — focus on the sounds and datasets of the host city: Busan, South Korea. In part one, participants will take time series data from Busan Metropolitan City (for example, barometric pressure and sea level changes) and map those data into sound in order to answer the question: can we use our ears (as well as our eyes) to help discover patterns in data? In part two, participants will learn how to record, process, and manipulate 3d audio field recordings of Busan for virtual and augmented reality applications.
Several live performances also focus on the host city: a piece celebrating the impact of shipping containers on the international economy and on the port city of Busan; a piece inspired by Samul nori, traditional Korean folk music, in which four performers will play a large gong fitted with contact mics to create feedback loops; and a live performance of variations on the Korean folk song: Milyang Arirang, using hidden Markov models.
Hands-on Practice-based Workshops
In addition to a daily program of technical presentations and nightly concerts (https://kiss2019.symbolicsound.com/program-overview/), afternoons at KISS2019 are devoted to palindromic concerts (where composer/performers share technical tips immediately following the performance) and hands-on workshops open to all participants, including:
• Sounds of Busan I: DATA SONIFICATION
What do the past 10 years of meteorological data sound like? In this hands-on session, we will take time series data related to the city of Busan and map the data to sound. Can we hear patterns in data that we might not otherwise detect?
Photo by Belinda J Carr
• The Shape Atlas: MATHS FOR CONTROLLING SOUND
How can you control the way sound parameters evolve over time? Participants will work together to compile a dictionary associating control signal shapes with mathematical functions of time for controlling sound parameters.
• Sounds of Busan II: 3D SOUND TECHNIQUES
Starting with a collection of 3D ambisonic recordings from various locations in and around Busan, we will learn how to process, spatialize, mix down for interactive binaural presentation for games and VR.
Photo by Belinda J Carr
Networking Opportunities
Participants can engage with presenters and fellow symposiasts during informal discussions after presentations, workshops, and concerts over coffee, tea, lunches and dinners (all included with registration). After the symposium, participants can join their new-found professional contacts and friends on a tour of Busan (as a special benefit for people who register before July 1).
Sponsors and Organizers
Daedong College Department of New Music (http://eng.daedong.ac.kr/main.do)
Dankook University Department of New Music (http://www.dankook.ac.kr/en/web/international)
Symbolic Sound Corporation (https://kyma.symbolicsound.com/)
Busan Metropolitan City (http://english.busan.go.kr/index)
The Arts Division at the University of California Santa Cruz and Symbolic Sound invite proposals for talks, live performances and workshops for the 6-9 September 2018 Kyma International Sound Symposium — KISS2018: Altered States (and Ecosystems).
Altered States
State spaces, state of mind, state of the art, deep state, state machines, state of the nation, state variable filters, topological state, head of state, solid state physics, state of grace, state transitions, spin states, state of the union — whatever your definition of state, one thing is for certain: Sound and music can alter states.
Join us in the state of California as we explore the multifaceted concept of Altered States through talks, workshops, and live musical performances at KISS2018, 6-9 September 2018 on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Ecosystems
Atop a forested hill overlooking the Pacific ocean and Monterey Bay, on the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and North American plates (aka the San Andreas Fault), accessible from the San Jose or San Francisco Airports, Santa Cruz is shaped by the economic/technology ecosystems of Silicon Valley, the biological ecosystems of the Pacific ocean and the Santa Cruz mountains, and a continuation of the counterculture lifestyle and political protest movements of the 1960s — hence the sub-theme of the conference: Ecosystems. Whether “Ecosystems†inspires ideas for environmental music & field recording, ecosystemic feedback control systems, the human microbiota, or more abstract political/economic/social ecosystems, we welcome proposals involving “complex networks or interconnected systems†of sound and music.
Important Dates
26 March: Deadline for submissions 15 April: Notification of acceptance & start of early registration
Music 507 Design Patterns for Sound and Music. The art of sound design is vast, but there are certain patterns that seem to come up over and over again. Once you start to recognize those patterns, you can immediately apply them in new situations and start combining them to create your own sound design and live performance environments. We will look at design patterns that show up in audio synthesis and processing, parameter control logic, and live performance environments, all in the context of the Kyma sound design environment.
Registration open starting November 2017 (course starts in January 2018)
Music 507 Spring 2018
Mondays, 7:00 – 8:50 pm
Music Building 4th floor, Experimental Music Studios
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
So-called new music is an aesthetic of resistance, of irritation, and self-reflection. In contrast to the visual arts, in which abstract and contextual works have long been accepted as a matter of course, the analogous musical experience continues to be difficult. So Schoenberg’s prognosis that his works would be understood 50 years down the road has remained illusory.
Bruno Liberda is a composer, promoter and performer. His lecture UNERHÖRT! 3000 (0) years new music is a tour de force through the history of sound systems, instrument developments and notation, and leads us to a new focus on hearing.
Text and Lecture: Bruno Liberda
Idea, development and scenic means: Fanny Brunner
What would happen if you sat the designers of Reaktor, the LinnStrument, Ableton Live, and Kyma down together on a couch and asked them to talk about how music influences technology, how technology influences music, and what exactly is a musical instrument anyway? That’s what happened at the 2015 Loop Summit. Dennis DeSantis (author of Making Music and moderator of the discussion) wrote this summary with video clips.
Composer/sound designer Silvia Matheus is one of the presenters on the scientific program of the 12th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR2016) in São Paulo, Brazil on 05-08 July 2016. Matheus’ talk, State of Art in Sound Design, Production and Synthesis will include an opportunity for conference attendees to learn more about how Silvia uses Kyma in her sound design and composition work and to interact directly with her Kyma 7/Pacarana system.
Composer/performer, Steven Ricks invited Carla Scaletti to Brigham Young University for the week of March 7 to work with his students, present lectures, and participate in two concerts. Here’s the full schedule:
Tuesday, March 8
Barlow Lecture: “Data-drivenâ€
3PM at BYU (E400 Harris Fine Arts Center, 50-minute lecture)
When PhD candidate Madison Heying discovered there was a Kyma system at the University of California at Santa Cruz and that Kristin Erickson, Technical Coordinator of the Digital Arts & New Media center also had a personal Kyma system, they decided to organize the Kyma Klub — an informal group of students and staff members who meet weekly to read through Kyma X Revealed and teach themselves Kyma. The first public performance by club members was AQULAQUTAQU — a sci-fi operetta by Madison Heying & Kristin Erickson (voice & Kyma) with Matthew Galvin (voice & video), David Kant (voice), and Maya Galvin (narrator) — that they premiered at KISS2015 in Bozeman Montana (home of first contact).
In early February 2016, UCSC faculty composer Larry Polansky invited Kyma creators Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel to UC Santa Cruz where Carla presented a graduate colloquium on data sonification and a seminar on sound design in Kyma 7.
Here, Madison and Kristin are presenting some of the generative algorithms they implemented in Kyma for AQULAQUTAQU:
After the seminar, the Kyma Klub invited Kurt and Carla to Kristin’s studio where David Kant interviewed Kurt,
and Kristin Erickson interviewed Carla, while Matthew Galvin filmed their responses in front of a green screen for an as-yet-undisclosed proposal the Kyma Klub members have in mind to make for KISS2016.
Note the special blacklight Kyma Klub T-shirts (with matching event posters) designed and printed by Kristin and Madison for the visit.
Wiener Klangwerkstatt’s Tonsalon, the Viennese sound workshop founded in 2007, is now open to the public! You are invited to attend three Tonsalon events at Elektro Gönner in Vienna on the 2nd Tuesday of each month:
8 March 2016
12 April 2016
10 May 2016
In June, they yield to the soccer season and will resume again in the fall.
The program for the first Tonsalon on 8 March 2016 will be:
20:00: “No random random notes”, a lecture by Bruno Liberda
Composer/sound designer Silvia Matheus is one of the presenters on the scientific program of the 
