MUSIC & HACKING

INTERNATIONAL

MUSIC & HACKING INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

CONFERENCE
INSTRUMENTS, COMMUNITIES, VALUES

MUSIQUE & HACKING

INSTRUMENTS, COMMUNAUTÉS, ÉTHIQUES

Paris, Wednesday 8 – Thursday 9 November 2017

MUSIQUE & HACKING

Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, salle de cinéma

Wednesday 8 – Thursday 9

http://hacking2017.ircam.fr
November 2017
Paris,
Organized by IRCAM-STMS (Analysis of Musical Practices Research Group) and
the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, with the support of LabEx CAP
(Laboratoire d’excellence Création Arts Patrimoines), the “Music & Hacking:
Instruments, Communities, Values” conference brings together musicians and
researchers interested in musical hacking activities.
Since the turn of the last century, computer coding and digital instruments con-
tinue to transform the aesthetic, ergonomic, communicational, and ethical dimen-
sions of musical practices. These shifts are taking place in part under the banner
of hacking, a notion which is primarily associated with the IT world. However, it has
progressively infiltrated and structured a number of other fields, such as that of
artistic creation. Hacker values include re-appropriation of mass-produced tech-
nical products and a focus on freely accessible communal know-how, as well as
the pleasure of serendipity, subversion, and manipulation. In sum, hacking is the
foundation of a disparate, discreet form of social protest: a reaction to a normal-
ized, globalized commercial and industrial culture.
The present conference will focus on three general themes: the material dimen-
sions of musical hacking, the creation and federation of musical communities
through hacking, and the influence of hacker ethics on musical practices.
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
■ Baptiste Bacot – EHESS/IRCAM-STMS
■ Clément Canonne – CNRS/IRCAM-STMS
■ Anna Gianotti Laban – Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
■ Frédéric Keck – Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
■ Guillaume Pellerin – IRCAM-STMS

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
■ Sébastien Broca – CEMTI/Université Paris 8
■ Nicolas Collins – School of the Art Institute of Chicago
■ Joanna Demers – Thorton School of Music/University of Southern California
■ Nicolas Donin – IRCAM-STMS
■ Christine Guillebaud – CREM/Université Paris Ouest Nanterre
■ Michel Lallement – LISE/CNAM
■ Paul Lamere – Spotify
■ Camille Paloque-Bergès – HT2S/CNAM
■ Norbert Schnell – IRCAM-STMS

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WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER

9:30 - 10:00 14:00 - 16:00

Registration – Coffee Listening and sonification
Chair: Nicolas Donin

David Christoffel
10:00 - 10:30 Qu’est-ce qu’une play-liste pirate?
Plenary Welcome Emmanuel Ferrand and Harold Schellinx
unPublic: Theory and Practice of Musical, Cultural
and Social Hacking Outside the Manufactured
10:30 - 12:30 Normalcy Field
Communities and Networks J no.e Parker
Chair: Guillaume Pellerin Composing [De]Composition: Hacking Compost for
Eamonn Bell a Better Sounding Tomorrow
Hacking Music, Matter, and Mind in Jeff Minter’s Alejandra Perez
Virtual Light Machine Hacking Antarctica
Kurt Werner
All About That Bass (Drum): The TR-808 & the
Past/Future of Analog Bass Drum Circuitry 16:00 - 16:30  Coffee break
Peter Sinclair
Locus Stream Open Microphone Project
Marilou Polymeropoulou 16:30 - 18:30
Knowledge of Limitations: Hacking Practices Round-table discussion
in Chip Music Contemporary Practices of Hacking
Chair: François Ribac
With Laurence Allard, Yves Citton, Nicolas Nova
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch and Rayna Stamboliyska

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THURSDAY 9 NOVEMBER

10:00 - 11:15  14:30 - 16:00

Keynote Address Making and DIY (i)
Nicolas Collins Chair: Christine Guillebaud
What to Ware? A Guide to Today’s Technological
Clément Canonne
Wardrobe
Valeurs du hacking et pratiques de l’improvisation
libre. De quelques improvisateurs-luthiers
Sarah Benhaïm
11:15 - 11:45 Coffee break Détourner, créer et personnaliser son dispositif
de jeu dans la musique noise au travers du hacking
et du DIY
11:45 - 12:45 Baptiste Bacot
Critique and Ethic Soft hacking. Créations et appropriations
Chair: Alexandre Robert organologiques dans les pratiques de la musique
Guillaume Loizillon électronique
Lofi et subversion: de la construction des systèmes
audio comme formes critiques
Romuald Jamet 16:00 - 16:30 Coffee break
DIY, accommodement et dilemmes éthico-pratiques
des musiciens des scènes contre-culturelles
contemporaines parisiennes et berlinoises face 16:30 - 17:30
aux technologies musicales Making and DIY (ii) 
Chair: Nicolas Collins

Andrew Watts
12:45 - 14:30 Lunch A Dialogue, In Absentia – Composition Applications
of Bluetooth Implanted Trombones
Patricia Alessandrini
Parlour Sounds: Transforming Household Devices
into Electronic Instruments

17:30 - 18:30
Round-table discussion
Siestes électroniques in the Museum
Chair: Baptiste Bacot
With Samuel Aubert, Renaud Brizard, Low Jack
and Sam Tiba

18:30 - 20:30 Wine reception

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Communities and Networks

Hacking Music, Matter, and Mind in Jeff Minter’s

Virtual Light Machine
Eamonn Bell (Columbia University)
The Virtual Light Machine (VLM) was an audio visualizer that shipped in 1995 bundled
with the Atari Jaguar CD, a compact-disc playing add-on for Atari’s moderately successful
Jaguar games console. Programmed in part by the virtuosic independent game designer
Jeff Minter, it used an implementation of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to drive a suite
of on-screen animations, which changed dynamically in response to the input signal. The
VLM adumbrated many of the same visualization strategies that would appear in visual-
izer plugins for more commercially successful software media players, such as Winamp
and iTunes. In March 1996, Minter (alias YaK) posted “YaK’s Quick Intro to VLM Hacking”
to the rec.games.video.atari newsgroup, describing a “backdoor [...] which allows the user
to get at the edit mode that was used to create the banks of VLM effects.” By showing
users how to access a hidden graphical user interface, Minter equipped users with a way
to temporarily customize the VLM presets in order to create their own, personalized bank
of visualizations and invited illicit creative play with his creation, hacking together intricate
multimedia musical experiences using off-the shelf software.
In this presentation, I begin with a technical overview of this digital artifact–the VLM code–
and work outwards from there to consider increasingly more general aspects of its historical
context. Here I follow Matthew Kirschenbaum in his 2008 monograph Mechanisms, who,
resisting a tendency to consider electronically stored data as intangible and ephemeral,
believes that the reward of a forensic attitude toward digital artifacts is a more detailed
account of their circulation and reception. I detail how the VLM and the subsequent revela-
tion of the “VLM hack” was received by the users of the rec.games.video.atari group, and
how this knowledge circulated amongst Jaguar fans in mailing lists and user group publi-
cations. Then, by situating the VLM in the continuity provided by a family of related music
visualizers that Minter developed before and after the release of the Jaguar CD, I explain
how the VLM fulfills Minter’s enduring aspirations to design a music visualization that valor-
izes active listening by centering interactivity, not only on the part of end users but also by
those Jaguar aficionados who had learned about this concealed software feature. Finally,
I tease out the implications of the broadest conditions of possibility for the VLM, juxta-
posing early applications of real-time FFT algorithms in Cold War seismological research
against Minter’s (enduring) stature as a figurehead of a psychedelic video-game counter-
culture. This context to the creation and reception of the VLM (the “backdoor” included)
suggests that the creation and use of the VLM itself might also be profitably considered
a “hack”: the playful appropriation of high technology to enrich the video-game player’s
experience of art, a goal consistent with the subversive aspect of the hacker ethos.

Eamonn Bell is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Theory at Columbia University. His doctoral
dissertation will chronicle and contextualize early computer use by music researchers
and composers. His interests include computational and mathematical music theory,
the methodology of music analysis, and computer applications in music studies.

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 All About That Bass (Drum): The TR-808 & the Past/
Future of Analog Bass Drum Circuitry
Kurt James Werner (Sonic Arts Research Centre,
Queen’s University Belfast)
This paper traces the conceptual antecedents and legacy of the Bass Drum voice cir-
cuit from an analog drum machine of immense importance: the Roland TR-808 Rhythm
Composer. By drawing out precursors to the circuitry of “the 808,” situating the instru-
ment as an important element of hacking and circuit-bending traditions, and examining
its musical and cultural footprint, I explain the intent behind its design and frame it
within a history of sonic mimicry—how the instrument imitates earlier acoustic percus-
sion and has been imitated in turn by other electronic drum machines and mathematical
models. Throughout, I highlight the under-recognized contributions of amateur and DIY
electronics periodicals, audio circuit hackers (and circuit benders), and circuit theorists, all
of whom greatly added to the rich story of analog bass drums. 
Since its release in 1980, the TR-808 has been crucial in the development of rap, hip hop,
techno, and electronic dance music. Today its sound is ubiquitous across many genres.
As the gold standard of analog drum synthesis, the 808 proved to be the culmination of
all drum machines that came before it, just as all analog drum machines since have been
measured against it. The 808’s Bass Drum in particular defines its sound, its iconic punch
so immediately recognizable that the name of the instrument has itself become a frequent
subject of rap lyrics: “Just a snare and an 808,” “We got the beat, that 808, that boom
boom in your town,” “Do I make your heart beat like an 808 drum?” etc.
The TR-808 and other analog drum machines produce sounds (including bass drums),
through the operation of analog electronic circuits (its “voice circuits”). Although the 808
and other iconic music technologies are often viewed through the lens of their positive
reception history and in relation to the musicians who made them famous (in the case of
the 808: Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, Marvin Gaye, the Beastie Boys, etc.),
I argue that the voice circuits themselves are the key to recovering a holistic history of
analog drum synthesis. 
While some aspects of the TR-808’s voice circuits are unremarkable, others are utterly
novel and betray fascinating histories. Technical aspects of the TR-808’s design can be
seen in the engineering literature as early as the 1930s; the development of the sonic
philosophies and modes of listening embodied in its circuits are much older and take often
convoluted paths through musical instrument design in the 20th century. Differentiating
these characteristics highlights the true value of certain conceptual and technical devel-
opments. Moreover, the popular story of the 808’s provenance erases the contributions
of key players and musical communities from the narrative. Here we reclaim these lost
contributions, with a specific focus on 1970s synthesizer amateur and do-it-yourself com-
munities, earlier developments in “citizen scientist” magazines, publications in the world
of academic electrical engineering, and the ancestors and descendants of the 808 in other
commercial and homemade drum machines.

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Dr. Kurt James Werner is a Lecturer in Audio at the Sonic Arts Research Centre
(SARC) of Queen’s University Belfast, where he joined the faculty of Arts, Humanities
and Social Sciences in early 2017. As a researcher, he studies theoretical aspects of
Wave Digital Filters and other virtual analog topics, computer modeling of circuit-bent
instruments, and the history of music technology. As part of his Ph.D. in Computer-
Based Music Theory and Acoustics from Stanford University’s Center for Computer
Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), he wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled
“Virtual Analog Modeling of Audio Circuitry Using Wave Digital Filters.” This proposed a
number of new techniques for modeling audio circuitry, greatly expanding the class of
circuits that can be modeled using the Wave Digital Filter approach to include circuits
with complicated topologies and multiple nonlinear electrical elements. As a composer
of electro-acoustic/acousmatic music, his music references elements of chiptunes,
musique concrète, circuit bending, algorithmic/generative

Locus Stream Open Microphone Project

Peter Sinclair (École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence,
Locus Sonus Research Unity)
Locus Sonus is a research unity specialized in audio Art and whose main research area is
the study of « new auditoriums » or ways of sharing audio spaces through emerging tech-
nologies with the aim of investigating and developing the artistic potential they offer. Locus
Stream open mike project is one of the units longest running creative research initiatives. It
consists of a worldwide network of open microphones, installed and maintained by volun-
teers that permanently stream local soundscapes via a dedicated server.
The initial aim was to provide the research group with a resource for research into remote
listening and interconnected sound spaces. However when it was opened to other users it
rapidly evolved into an open-source, shared and international project used by many musi-
cians, artists and researchers for a variety of projects. Today, more than a decade later
these include, installations, concerts, performances, web radios but also ecological studies
and bioacoustics.
The Locus Stream project gives new meaning to Murray Schafer’s idiom “schizophonia” as
the permanence and ubiquity of these audio fluxes open up different forms of audio aware-
ness and compositional practice through media.
Perhaps the best-known manifestation of the project is the LocusStream Soundmap
(http://locusonus.org/soundmap/051/), online since 2006 and which, to our knowledge is
the first initiative of its kind. It offers a simple interface (Google map) to access the avail-
able open microphones and opens the possibility for users to invent their own listening
practices. Other initiatives developed by Locus Sonus include Locustream Promenade and
Locustream Tuner.
I will describe the evolution of the project focusing in particular on its collective organology,
the articulation and interdependency between the evolution of the project and the dif-
ferent musical and artistic uses that have been made of it over the years.

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After discussing more general issues concerning some of the theoretical ideas as well as
the practical functionality of this kind of open-ended project, I will describe some of the
specific devices, programs and other features that we have developed to nourish the ven-
ture. These include custom developed OS for mini computers, binaural, microphones, pre-
amplifiers and web interfaces as well as geo-located Apps for smart phones, all designed to
enable users to participate easily in the project.
I will present some interesting projects developed by composers and artists including:
SoundCamp Reveil (initiated by London based artists Grant Smith and Maria Papadomanolaki)
– an annual twenty four hour event that follows the sunrise around the globe (now in its
fourth edition) mixing the sound of the dawn choruses from the microphones closest to the
latitude where day is breaking; Droniphonia networked performance by recently deceased
American composer Pauline Oliveros, Sourced Cities by Belfast composer Robin Renwick;
Blank Memory & Live Akousma by DJ and improviser ErikM; World Soundscape project with
Eric Leonardson and others…
Finally, I will describe some of the perspectives as our network of streamers continues
to evolve including shared research projects with Cyber Forest: department of Natural
Environmental studies, University of Tokyo and SABIOD bioacoustics analysis (University
of Toulon).

Peter Sinclair is a Sound Artist and Researcher. He is director of Locus Sonus a crea-
tive research unit specialized in audio art, maintained by the art academy of Aix-En-
Provence and the French Ministry for Culture. He started his career as a builder of
autonomous musical machines and sound installations presented both in performances
and exhibitions. Beyond his individual work he has continually collaborated with other
artists and musicians in various collective projects. His work today focuses on the soni-
fication of real time data, mobile audio and the artistic development of new auditoria.
He has exhibited and performed frequently in Europe and the USA in such venues
Exploratorium San Francisco, MAC de Lyon (Musiques en scène), Postmasters Gallery
New York, Festival Interférences Belfort, Eyebeam - Beta Launch – New York, Festival de
Cinéma et de Nouveaux Media Split, ISEA Nagoya, STEIM Amsterdam, La Gaîté Lyrique
Paris, etc.

Knowledge of Limitations:
Hacking practices in Chipmusic
Marilou Polymeropoulou (University of Oxford,
e-Research Centre)
This paper examines hacking practices in chipmusic, a kind of electronic music charac-
teristic of 1980s computer sound aesthetics. Chipmusic is related to the demoscene, the
hobbyist computer subculture of the 1980s; certain demosceners centred on the musical
aspect of demos and this practice is often considered to be the predecessor of chipmusic-

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making. Chipmusic has been originally composed on 1980s computers and videogame
consoles such as the Atari ST, Commodore 64, and the Nintendo Game Boy, among others.
These platforms were repurposed to function as music-making devices that the composer
could then use to create chiptunes. Repurposing occurred by means of a) physical hacking,
also called ‘modding’, using various techniques including, but not limited to, circuit-bending,
and b) re-appropriation, transforming, for example, a handheld gaming console to a port-
able musical instrument by developing appropriate software that allowed this. The core of
chipmusic sound is the soundchip of the original platforms that was responsible for what is
commonly called in the chipscene ‘bleepy’ timbre.
The focus of the proposed paper is the people – chipmusicians – and their online and trans-
national network, the chipscene. The aim is to demonstrate what knowledge one gains
from the chipscene network with regards to limitations. Limitations are central in chip-
music: firstly, one of the reasons for composing chiptunes is to manipulate technological
constraints. Secondly, the chipscene is not geographically limited, but it is spread over
a global network of more than 50 countries. Thirdly, performances are both staged and
screened, meaning they can be events organised in specific places but also online events
where participants are not within the proximity of the performer. My presentation looks
at the knowledge of limitations and will also discuss certain outputs, as for example, the
various discourses of creative ideologies on chipmusic-making as shaped by technological
constraints as well as copyright implications that have emerged in the chipscene.
The knowledge of limitations in the chipscene is produced by employing a mixed methods
approach that combines ethnography and social network analysis. I examine the relational
nature of the chipscene network to yield an anthropological understanding of chipmusic.

Marilou Polymeropoulou completed a doctorate entitled ‘Networked Creativity:

Ethnographic Perspectives on Chipmusic and the Chipscene’ at the University of Oxford
in which she examined the concept of creativity in the realms of the chipscene. She is
currently a tutor and a postdoctoral researcher, teaching anthropology modules at the
University of Oxford and anthropology and epistemology at secondary schools, and
conducting research related to design ethnography. In addition, she composes music
as ‘Christabel Etheriel’ and writes anecdotes from the daily lives of ‘dead things’, that is
street rubbish that has been left behind, abandoned, or lost.

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Listening and Sonification

Qu’est-ce qu’une playlist pirate ?

David Christoffel (Radio Télévision Suisse)
Une radio est définie comme « pirate » quand elle émet sur une longueur d’onde qui ne lui a
pas été attribuée (Lesueur, 2011). Une autre acception désigne comme « pirate » une radio-
amateur qui diffuse d’autres éléments que son immatriculation, sa position géographique
ou toute information concernant la qualité de la transmission (cf. Union internationale des
télécommunications). Sur la base de la variable de contenu dans la définition du piratage
en matière radiophonique, notre intervention cherchera à viser comment la mise en playlist
de tel ou tel répertoire musical peut se trouver variablement «pirate» selon les modalités
de diffusion que lui donne un programme radiophonique sur Internet. En tentant d’établir
une typologie des webradios musicales « de playlist » à partir de la production actuelle (de
Radio Mozart à Phaune Radio en passant par Radio Michel ou les webradios musicales de
Radio France), nous relèverons par leur comparaison, la force de performativité éditoriale
des partis pris de diffusion. Puis, à partir des définitions du hacking données par McKenzie
Wark dans Un manifeste hacker, nous entrerons en dialogue avec les acteurs de la plate-
forme PI-node, pour chercher à baliser comment la production de playlists pour le web
peut faire intervenir la notion de «piratage» à des niveaux différents, de la confection du
contenu (éditorialisation) aux stratégies de mise en ligne (diffusion). Nous pourrons ainsi
détailler comment un contenu musical neutre peut devenir pirate et, réciproquement, dans
quelle mesure un flux audio hacker peut se résoudre à des modes propriétaires (ou des
logiques de marque).

David Christoffel est compositeur d’opéras parlés qui peuvent prendre la forme de
mélodrames mixtes, comme la pièce La Voix de Foucault créée à l’Ircam en 2014. En
évoluant entre musique et poésie, ses publications sont aussi bien des disques (telle
la série d’albums Radio Toutlemonde) que des livres de poésie (avec la reparution
cette année du recueil Argus du cannibalisme). Docteur en musicologie de l’EHESS, il
a publié en 2017, Ouvrez la tête (ma thèse sur Satie) aux éditions MF. Auteur de nom-
breuses créations radiophoniques pour France Musique, France Culture, Espace 2, ainsi
que des radios associatives, il prolonge son travail sur la parole avec des institutions
d’enseignement supérieur comme le CNSMDP, le CNAM et différentes universités
(Tours, Nantes, Paris-7, Bordeaux, Nice).

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unPublic – Theory and Practice of Musical,

Cultural & Social Hacking Outside the Manufactured
Normalcy Field
Emmanuel Ferrand (UPMC, La Générale)
and Harold Schellinx (IESEA Studio)
‘unPublic’ is the name of an on-going series of documented non-concerts that serendipi-
tously found its origin in a performance without audience on October 18th 2013 on the occa-
sion of the simultaneous passage in Paris of Vietnamese composer and producer Doan Tri
Minh and Japanese pianist and improviser Yoko Miura, in a small pottery in Paris.
The series, which at the time of this writing counts 42 editions, has since brought together,
in small factions of differing sizes, a total of 98 artists, non-artists, virtuoso, other and
non-musicians, from 25 different countries, always in a unique combination at a time and
in a place determined by nothing but the on-the-go seizing of an opportunity to gather and
un-publicly perform then and there: in and around Paris, in Brussels, in Belgrade, in Berlin,
on the beach of the South-Korean island of Daebu, next to a cowshed in the Swiss alps, in
Montreal, in Kaohsiung, in an independent sound art studio in Tainan City, in the cellar of
a small alternative record store in Taipei, in a near to abandoned village in the Macedonian
mountains…
The documentary digital live audio recordings subsequently were published, in a some-
times more, sometimes less or not at all edited form, and are all available as freely down-
loadable digital albums (http://unpublic.bandcamp.net). Besides being a more than merely
tongue-in-cheek critique of the idea of ‘the concert’, which in many of the musical/artistic
practices that we are interested and involved in to a large extent is based on a myth, over
the past few years the unPublic series has given us the means to draw and investigate the
open-ended topography of the vast and continuously expanding terrain vague that con-
nects – in equally vague terms – on the one side the worlds of academic and institutional
culture, on the other those of mainstream commercial and pop(ular) culture, a wasteland
claimed and occupied since the mid-1960s by a network of varying geometry knit by a
worldwide anarchic community of artists choosing to work, part-time or full-time, within
what in an earlier paper we identified as being basically a DIY tradition of folkloristic appro-
priation of ideas, methods and achievements of post-WWII avant-garde art and (academic,
experimental, electronic) music.
It is a community and network that over the past half century has continued to grow
and flourish without support or recognition from the established cultural institutions and
without any but incidental ad hoc financial funding.
Generalized collage and h[ij]acking, boosted by the advent of digitalization and the internet,
are this tradition’s core and beating heart. It has given birth to of a large number of deriva-
tive techniques and their various combinations, in cut-up, noise, instrument building and
design, circuit bending, turntablism, sampling, glitch, frippertronics (live-looping)… , all
unthinkable without the continuous appropriation, de-construction and détournement (in
a Lettrist and Situationist sense) of works and tools of culture and technology (new as well
as obsolete), as an end in itself as well as in their subsequent re-construction for other than
their intended usage.

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We will present a history and overview of the unPublic series and explain by means of a
detailed analysis of a number of audio-examples how a great many of the above techniques
of h[ij]acking in varying combinations were applied by artists in their unPublic encounters
with instrumentalists in a more traditional sense.

Emmanuel Ferrand is an engineer and mathematician with a deep interest in the inter-
face of arts and science. He has been active in the global alternative music and arts
scene since 1998. Practices include the sharing of ideas, methods and projects in circuit
bending (musical hacking of everyday life consumer electronics), analogue circuitry
instrument building workshops, currently in the context of La Générale (2007-2017), an
independent art space in Paris, which has hosted the sound art exhibitions of the 5 last
editions of the Sonic Protest Festival, all featuring divers hacking techniques applied
to musical instruments (Sarah Kenchington, Lucas Abela, Nicolas Collins, Testsuya
Umeda, Jean-François Laporte, Thierry Madiot, ...)

Harold Schellinx was one of the initiators of the Dutch ULTRA movement, which
provided a common denominator as well as an infrastructure (closely linked to the
Amsterdam squatting scene) for the large group of artists and musician that together
formed the Dutch brand of experimental post-punk pop music in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, and a long time promoter of the world-wide DIY music and cassette culture
scene. He studied formal music and computer-aided composition at the Utrecht Institute
of Sonology, and mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. His more recent endeav-
ours include dada-ist music/art iPhone-apps produced under the monikers of Stduio
and ookoi, the Found Tapes Exhibition (exploring and mapping magnetic audio tape
litter found in the streets since 2002) and a large number speculative (‘experimental’)
improvised music collaborations, often involving obsolete and/or vintage technologies.
He has been living and working in Paris since 1991.

Composing [De]Composition: Hacking Compost

for a Better Sounding Tomorrow
J no.e Parker (University of California Riverside’s
Outpost Foundry Studios, Semi-Permanent Autonomous
Zone Collective, San Francisco Bay Area USA)
“The instrumentalization of science and technology for economic gain and military needs has
to be met to with creative and imaginative uses... that answer the urgent needs of society [at-
large]” Media artist/theorist Armin Medosch (2014)

At an environmentally crucial point in time, abstraction of the concept of “climate” and size of
the problem of global warming enables people to disengage personally from forming sustain-
able solutions. To date, many media artists choose to address climate change and its causes in

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their artworks. One example is Thomas Köner, who uses low frequency ranged sonic mate-
rials and field recordings to produce soundscape compositions described as “an exhorta-
tion on the dangers of global warming”2 for his Novaya Zemlya (2012) – bringing greater
attention to a Russian Arctic island (of the same name) that was a nuclear test site between
1954-1990. This paper discusses Composing [De]Composition, a data sonification project
that addresses Medosch’s above call and the idea of sustainable sonic arts by reframing
household compost as a rich site for expression and exploration while introducing maker
ethics into galleries, museums, concert halls and schools.
Hacking into compost to collect and sonify its temperature data expresses ethics rooted
in DIY/making, as well as my role in the public sphere as an artist/educator/global citizen
living in an age of dwindling natural resources. My discussion of C[D]C begins by briefly
defining key concepts. The driving force behind C[D]C is the living material of compost.
The main parameter driving C[D]C is incalescence—the increasing heat generated by the
decomposing biota. The incalescent nature of decomposition is a process simultaneously
supporting a myriad of organisms consuming the rotting vegetable matter—also enabling
the bioavailability of macronutrients to the soil. This “heating up” is actually diverting CO2
from the atmosphere and returning stable carbon to the earth. Sonification using custom-
designed tools to transform and translate the microbial-generated heat into real-time sound-
scapes and standalone musical works brings this inaudible activity into the range of human
hearing—enabling listeners to better perceive the complex ecology of the heterogeneous
biota.
The term data sonification is used as a container for the various techniques and processes
of generating sound from data. In the context of this talk, sonification also refers to the
translation and playback of an entire dataset into digital audio; audification refers to real
time data rendered directly into sound; while musification deals with the process of quan-
tizing and adapting a dataset so it can be interpreted using acoustic instruments. C[D]C
adapts each of these approaches to present sonification in different settings. In gallery/
museum, a custom built interface called a data audio display senses, reads and audifies the
biota’s real-time temperature data in situ. The pile’s temperature profile is measured (in ˚F)
by 4-8 sensors depending on its size. Each sensor’s data is directly translated into Hertz
and amplified by the audio display via its own dedicated speaker. The resulting soundscape
is a dynamic, low-frequency, sub-rhythmic, visceral, and immersive live experience.
Sonification of an entire dataset affords perception of it as a time-based entity. C[D]C
sonifies datasets using a microtonal MIDI instrument parameter mapping and time com-
pression, condensing an extended real-time study (ranging 4-30 days) into a spatialized
exploration of the data in one Data Listening Session. In a DLS, listeners hear how a single
dataset renders strikingly different results with different parameter mappings (i.e., fre-
quency versus MIDI note number) and/or instrumental arrangements. Moreover, a DLS
transforms the visitor experience by challenging listeners to engage with and react to what
they hear via talkback sessions – giving the audience a freedom not usually encountered
with already codified musical forms.
Data musification brings environmental sustainability into the concert hall. Visualization,
analysis, quantization and physical transcription of the numerically-based dataset pro-
duces traditional scores that can be performed on acoustic instruments. In an ensemble
setting, performers are challenged to incorporate their own expressivity in portraying
the organically-derived pitch and rhythmic materials. Finally, workshops in K-12 schools
excite youth about learning and exploring their world. Hands-on experience delving into

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the science of sound introduces students to: composting and personal environmental sus-
tainability; the nuts and bolts of translating radiant energy to the mechanical energy; the
physics of sound; interactive interfaces; and manipulating sound into music.

Dj, improviser and gamelan musician holding a PhD in Digital Music Composition and
MFA in Digital Art/New Media, J no.e Parker’s work explores pathways emerging from
intersections between visual art, sound, music, data, science, and technology. As a
member of the global community, no.e’s work addresses issues of pollution and envi-
ronmental sustainability from a local viewpoint. Re-contextualizing phenomena usually
taken for granted, Parker often exposes new and mutated realities for her audiences—
creating multimodal experiences of materials and places. Parker’s PhD abstract on C[D]
C was top ranked by Leonardo Journal in 2017. Her research is published in International
Conference of Audio Display & Acoustic Space Journal (16). Exhibitions include: Qianyang
Bamboo Museum (Fujian Province, China), National Museum of the Brazilian Republic,
Danish Museum of Modern Art, UCR Culver Arts Center (Riverside USA), DNA Lounge
(San Francisco USA), Ubud Readers and Writers Festival (ID), Yogyakarta International
Media Art Festival (ID).

Hacking Antarctica
Alejandra Pérez Núñez (Media Art and Design,
University of Westminster)
This presentation, part of an ongoing Ph.D., is focused on the subject of imperceptibility
in the Antarctic and the development of a methodology of inquiry based on the practice
of hacking. The presentation attempts to demonstrate a practice of ”hacking Antarctica”
through the creation of site-specific forays designed to provoke responses that are autono-
mous from the dominant representation of the Antarctic, that of the ‘sublime’.
The implementation of hacking as a practice of autonomy is described through: the
study of electromagnetic frequencies using Free Libre Open Source (FLOSS ) technolo-
gies using a phenomenological approach; the transformation of such frequencies by means
of onto-phenomenological combinations; displacement in agency from the human to the
non-human; and ultimately, the questioning of the very foundations of the problem of
imperceptibility as situated in philosophical inquiry, drawing specifically on the philosophy
of Jacques Rancière. This latter point also interrogates the hierarchies implied in any such
process of discovery.
The research has been conducted using FLOSS technologies including the GNU/Linux soft-
ware Pure Data and ImageMagick; a wireless sensor unit designed by artist-engineer Martin
Hug, and a digital Theremin sensor designed by artist-engineer, Andrey Smirnov.
Initially, the study of the phenomena of imperceptibility took the form of field recordings
of Very Low Frequencies (VLF) and Ultra Violet (UV) radiation in Antarctica and sub-polar
areas. The next phase was a response to the problem of the conception of space as a
unitary phenomena in Antartica and embodied the use of biological cultures as sensors -

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through the use of high contrast photography of bio cultures, visual patterns were exposed
and have been assumed to correspond to the environmental differences and conditions
exposed. These visual patterns have been translated into sound from image data using
ImageMagick and Pure Data with the resultant transcodings manifested in the form of
rhythmic patterns. Subsequently, other modes of knowing have been added to combine
non-human agencies with digital technologies, such as in the case of the digital Theremin
sensor used to sonically render live fermentation in yeast cultures.
These practices have all led to the need to explore the problem of imperceptibility in
Antarctica at an ontological level, and this has included research into the geopolitical
agents behind the Antarctic Treaty System.
Research here has taken the form of the spatialization of sounds and interactive objects
in order to establish a relation of similitude between the work of art and the geopo-
litical ontologies. While the work of art is made of bodies of sound in movement, the
geopolitical ontologies move as they withdraw from visibility. However this approach relies
on assumptions that distribute knowledge in a hierarchical ordering. In other words , while
some things are visible, others are hidden, some things are made evident some others
are kept secret, some things are perceptible, while others are sublime. This organizational
hierarchy is reproduced while searching for the imperceptible. However, spatialization of
ontologies made into sound art installations, controlling arrays with oscillators in PD, and
providing interactivity through the use of a digital Theremin sensor, has taken me to reflect
about the production of Antarctica outside a model of truth and to recognize this disman-
tlement as the ultimate hack.

Alejandra Pérez Núñez is a South American Free Libre Open Source media artist,
active in live noise performance, environmental detection and electromagnetism. Her
artistic research is currently focused on the study of the imperceptible in Antarctica.
Her areas of work have ranged from art to education with practice in streaming, col-
laborative writing and hardware hacking. She is now based in London where she is a
PhD candidate at the faculty of Media Arts and Design, University of Westminster.

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Keynote Address 

What to Ware? A Guide to Today’s

Technological Wardrobe
Nicolas Collins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Why does ‘Computer Music’ sound different from ‘Electronic Music’? Nicolas Collins exam-
ines several traits that distinguish hardware from software in terms of their application in
music composition and performance. He discusses the often subtle influence of these dif-
ferences on various aspects of the creative process, and presents a number of inferences
as to the ‘intrinsic’ suitability of hardware and software for different musical tasks. His
observations are based on several decades of experience as a composer and performer,
and in close engagement with the music of his mentors and peers.

New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins spent most of the 1990s in Europe, where he
was Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Amsterdam), and a DAAD composer-
in-residence in Berlin. An early adopter of microcomputers for live performance,
Collins also makes use of homemade electronic circuitry and conventional acoustic
instruments. He is editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal, and a Professor in the
Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His book, Handmade
Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking (Routledge), has influenced emerging
electronic music worldwide.

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Critique and Ethic

Lofi et subversion : de la construction

des systèmes audio comme formes critiques.
Guillaume Loizillon (Musidanse – Université Paris 8)
Lofi est une expression que l’on trouve initialement chez Murray Shafer dans son ouvrage
des années soixante-dix : Le paysage sonore. Elle sert à qualifier l’environnement sonore
moderne envahit par les bruits mécaniques et électriques du monde en transformation.
Elle sert à définir essentiellement le paysage sonore urbain. Dans ce cadre, Lofi s’oppose à
hifi qui pour sa part désigne une haute qualité sonore environnementale. Celle-ci se trouve
dans les campagnes où se déploient des activités humaines non prolongées par la machine
mécanique et l’électricité. Hifi qualifie également bien entendu, les sons de la nature, de sa
faune et de l’ensemble des phénomènes sonores qui la peuple.
Hifi désigne aussi, sur un plan plus global, tout dispositif technique qui procure un rendu
sonore transparent et fidèle en regard d’une source supposée pure. Hifi est une norme de
l’industrie électrique appliquée aux appareils de reproduction sonore. Dans ce contexte et
par opposition, la lofi concerne toutes les pratiques qui usent de systèmes réputés de basse
qualité audio et qui instancient ce rendu sonore comme valeur esthétique. Il va de soi qu’il
ne s’agit pas d’une mesure définie par l’industrie, mais d’une modalité théorique et pratique
de critique et de subversion de celle-ci. Nous sommes ici dans un domaine unifié aux ques-
tions du son sale, de la distorsion ou de la saturation et des esthétiques qui ouvertement se
mettent en opposition avec l’aseptisation supposée du son de l’industrie musicale.
La lofi trouve aussi des prolongements dans des questions d’économie de production et
d’appareils audio. De ce fait, elle permet de construire une esthétique de la subversion qui
passe par la construction des dispositifs plus que dans la composition du son lui-même.
Souvent une pratique usant de systèmes lofi se conjugue avec l‘idée de récupération ou
de recyclage du matériel ainsi que d’un emploi du son non normé, mais pas systématique-
ment sali ou abîmé. L’évolution des supports, leur démultiplication et les questions liées
à la compression des données audio est également à prendre en considération. Ces élé-
ments instrumentalisent la discussion complexe sur la qualité audio, entre son évaluation
quantitative et sa pragmatique, comme par exemple le mp3 l’illustre avec son usage géné-
ralisé par de très nombreux consommateurs. À cet égard, ce son compressé constitue un
cas transversal entre une norme conçue par l’industrie et un usage du son émancipé des
considérations d’auteurs et de droit.
L’objectif de cette présentation est ainsi de se recentrer la question sur les systèmes audio
et leur conception dans les dispositifs des arts sonores. Il s’agit d’envisager l’usage de dis-
positifs lofi dans ce cadre de création où elle est souvent une condition d’existence même
des œuvres. Ici, la notion même de subversion est constitutive du système, au cœur de
l’usage des appareils qui le constitue. Cette présentation sera ponctuée par des exemples
de dispositifs sonores variés, dont ceux utilisés par l’auteur à l’occasion de différentes
installations ou performances.

Guillaume Loizillon est maître de conférence au département musique de l’université

Paris 8. Compositeur et musicien il est toujours attiré vers des expériences, et des
terrains artistiques étendus : musiques électroniques, improvisation, poésie sonore,
installations sonores et rencontres interdisciplinaires. Outre son travail personnel, il

18
 a collaboré entre autres avec : Merce Cunningham, Barney Wilen, Joel Hubaut, Hektor
Zazou, Jacques Donguy, Valère Novarina… Il est cofondateur de label indépendant
TRACE Label spécialisé dans les musiques électroacoustiques, la poésie sonore et
l’improvisation.

Un pas en avant, deux pas en arrière :

DIY, accommodement et dilemmes éthico-pratiques
des musiciens des scènes contre-culturelles
contemporaines parisiennes et berlinoises face
aux technologies musicales.
Romuald Jamet (Centre Urbanisation Culture Société,
INRS, Canada)
Les pratiques DIY ont fortement marqué la musique dès les années 1960 alors que le mou-
vement hippie récupérait, recyclait et transformait les déchets de la société de la société
de consommation pour rendre à ces rebuts une utilité sociale, culturelle et artistique
(S. Brandt, 1971) et que les premiers « garage band » s’essayaient à améliorer et person-
naliser leurs premières guitares et amplis usinés (Jamet, 2015). D’un autre côté, le DIY fut
particulièrement mis en avant par le mouvement punk comme contestation éthique et
politique de la société de consommation par l’autogestion, l’autoproduction et l’explosion
des cadres stylistiques en revendiquant la capacité de tout à chacun de faire de la musique
comme il l’entendait (F. Hein, 2012). Ainsi, avec l’apparition des différentes scènes musi-
cales à portée contre-culturelle (Hippie, Punk, Electro, etc.), le cadre éthico-pratique du DIY
participa significativement des dynamiques subjectives, sociales, politiques et pratiques
émancipatrices. Chacune de ces scènes ont ainsi été historiquement marquée par les tech-
nologies qui leur étaient contemporaines, que cela soit en les détournant ou en y résistant
(Joe Bill, 2012).
C’est ainsi en étudiant les musiciens amateurs (punk, ska, hip-hop, jazz, chanson, etc.) des
scènes contre-culturelles parisiennes et berlinoises contemporaines qu’il devient possible
de saisir les différentes conséquences sociales du DIY quant à l’usage social et les consi-
dérations éthiques quant aux technologies musicales. En effet, alors que les home studio,
la MAO, la diffusion des musiques sur des plateformes en lignes (facebook, bandcamp,
youtube etc.) ou encore les licences « libres » (Creative Commons, Copyleft, LAL) sont
devenus des technologies régulièrement utilisées par les musiciens, ces derniers semblent
pour autant résister à nombre d’autres technologies. En effet, revendiquant le fait qu’ils
peuvent et doivent faire la musique par eux-mêmes, beaucoup des musiciens avancent que,
de la composition à l’enregistrement en passant la diffusion, il est nécessaire de contrôler
l’ensemble du processus musical afin que leurs musiques ne puissent être récupérées
(F. Hein 2011).

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Quels sont ainsi les régimes de justifications et les points de rupture dans l’argumentation
des musiciens quant à l’usage des différentes technologies ? Comment l’éthique DIY est-
elle convoquée pour justifier tour à tour de l’usage et du refus des différentes technologies
disponibles ?
À partir d’une recherche socio-ethnographique dans le cadre de ma thèse (2009-2016)
portant notamment sur l’éthique de ces musiciens, j’essaierai dans un premier temps de
présenter quelques lignes de force éthiques et pratiques de l’usage du DIY au cœur de
ces scènes parisiennes et berlinoises. Dans un second temps, j’essaierai de montrer à
partir de différentes observations et entretiens menés dans le cadre de cette recherche
que, si la notion de DIY sert à légitimer l’usage social des technologies « personnalisées »,
ce même principe sert à justifier le refus des technologies qui pourraient transformer et
modifier les dynamiques sociales et compositionnelles de la musique. C’est à partir de ce
double constat qu’il sera possible de saisir le DIY non plus comme une seule injonction au
détournement et à l’appropriation des technologies à des fins émancipatoires, mais aussi
comme une éthique sociale potentiellement technophobe.

Romuald Jamet est docteur en sociologie de l’université Paris-Descartes (2016)

et post-doctorant à l’INRS (Chaire Fernand-Dumont sur la culture, NENIC Lab) depuis
février 2017. Ses recherches doctorales ont notamment porté sur les théories critiques
de la culture, la musique et les contre-cultures, plus précisément sur les subjectivités
des musiciens amateurs des scènes contre-culturelles parisiennes et berlinoises. Depuis
2017 et dans la même veine, Romuald Jamet s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux
cultures numériques ainsi qu’aux plateformes de musique en ligne et aux expériences.

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Making and DIY

Valeurs du hacking et pratiques de l’improvisation

libre. De quelques improvisateurs-luthiers
Clément Canonne (CNRS – IRCAM-STMS)
L’improvisation étant une forme de création spécifiquement instrumentale (l’improvisateur
crée de la musique à son instrument, avec son instrument, par son instrument, pour son
instrument, parfois même contre son instrument, mais rarement sans son instrument), il
n’est guère étonnant que l’exploration de l’instrument constitue un des centres spécifiques
de l’activité créative des improvisateurs, exploration comprise tantôt comme recherche
d’un son, ou d’une sonorité singularisante, tantôt comme extension du vocabulaire instru-
mental, et par là même, élargissement de la palette timbrale de l’instrument, voire dépasse-
ment des limites et contraintes organologiques dont il est porteur. En particulier, le monde
des musiques librement improvisées apparaît comme largement traversé par une tendance
au bricolage instrumental, allant de l’assemblage d’objets ou d’instruments plus ou moins
altérés en un set d’improvisation singulier jusqu’à la confection complète d’instruments
autonomes.
C’est précisément ce passage de l’improvisation libre comprise comme invention à
l’instrument à l’improvisation libre comprise comme invention de l’instrument que je sou-
haiterais interroger dans la présente communication, à partir d’un ensemble d’enquêtes
ethnographiques et d’entretiens réalisés auprès de cinq improvisateurs s’exprimant à
la croisée des musiques improvisées, des musiques expérimentales et de l’art sonore :
Pascal Battus, Thierry Madiot, Anton Mobin, Jérôme Noetinger et Arnaud Rivière. Je
m’attacherai à montrer comment, dans le travail de ces musiciens, les logiques d’exploration
organologique se retrouvent hybridées à des postures et à des pratiques plus spécifique-
ment issues du monde hacking, que ce soit dans la conception de l’instrument comme objet
technique ouvert, dans le primat accordé à la fabrication artisanale et au recyclage, ou
encore par la charge subversive ou émancipatrice accordée à ces activités de lutherie ainsi
qu’aux formes de diffusion et de mise en jeu auxquelles elles s’articulent.

Clément Canonne est chargé de recherche au CNRS, rattaché à l’équipe Analyse des
pratiques musicales au sein de l’UMR 9912 « Sciences et technologies de la musique et
du son » (IRCAM-CNRS-UPMC). Ses recherches portent principalement sur la question
de l’improvisation, envisagée à la fois comme pratique et comme paradigme. Son travail
récent a fait l’objet de publications dans plusieurs revues internationales (Cognition,
Revue de Musicologie, Psychology of Music, Journal of New Music Research, etc.). Il
s’intéresse également à la philosophie de la musique : il a dirigé un ouvrage collectif
consacré aux Perspectives philosophiques sur les musiques actuelles (Delatour, 2017)
et a traduit et introduit, en collaboration avec Pierre Saint-Germier, une sélection des
Essais de Philosophie de la Musique de Jerrold Levinson (Vrin, 2015).

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Détourner, créer et personnaliser son dispositif

de jeu dans la musique noise au travers du hacking
et du DIY. Vers une autre façon d’appréhender
l’action musicienne
Sarah Benhaïm (CRAL – EHESS)
Depuis la genèse du genre à la fin des années 1970, la musique noise se caractérise par des
pratiques instrumentales étroitement liées à une culture d’expérimentation alternative.
Des lecteurs cassettes détournés au circuit-bending, de la guitare préparée aux micro-
contacts, des éléments percussifs bricolés au synthétiseur homemade, le dispositif de jeu
résulte de nombreuses pratiques qui témoignent d’un rapport décomplexé aux sources
sonores. Dès lors que l’on s’attache aux spécificités de ces pratiques, le hacking comme
le DIY apparaissent prédominants en caractérisant certaines manières de composer le
dispositif et en déterminant pour une grande part les rapports d’apprentissage et de trans-
mission qui structurent éthiquement et économiquement le genre. Pour rendre compte
de la manière dont intervient le principe du hacking dans la noise, la présentation explorera
à partir d’exemples issus de mon matériau d’enquête (entretiens, observation de terrain,
fanzines) les divers gestes qui œuvrent à disposer les éléments de jeu, depuis la mise en
circulation « libérée » du bruit et l’importance de la connectique, au détournement d’objets
signant une appétence au bricolage et à l’ingéniosité, ou encore à la construction électron-
ique DIY entreprise par les amateurs de manière autodidacte, de façon à montrer comment
ils participent à reconfigurer la figure du musicien en déplaçant la compétence instrumen-
tale conventionnelle vers le bricolage et l’ingénierie. Il sera également question de mettre
en lien ces pratiques avec leurs lieux et leurs sources d’apprentissage qui véhiculent une
approche anti-consumériste de l’instrumentation, qu’il s’agisse d’ateliers et de workshops
ancrés localement ou plus généralement d’Internet comme lieu majeur de mutualisation
des ressources. En tant qu’il est intrinsèquement associé à l’impératif catégorique du DIY
qui structure l’éthos noise – dont la démocratisation des pratiques s’effectue parallèlement
par le jeu d’improvisation libre, le rejet de la technique, l’horizontalité du monde de l’art et
la porosité des scènes – le hacking fédère en effet une communauté globale qui revendique
l’autonomie des pratiques et l’accessibilité du savoir, au-delà des contraintes et des intérêts
industriels. Dans le cadre de la noise, nous verrons que la libération du code prônée par les
hackers dans le monde informatique s’apparente en quelque sorte à une libération de la
pratique musicale par la valorisation de la créativité individuelle et par la démocratisation
du jeu musical, sollicitant ainsi des éléments de jeu et des manières de jouer alternatives à
rebours des conventions.

Doctorante en musique et sciences sociales à l’EHESS/CRAL, Sarah Benhaïm mène

une recherche sur les musiques noise et expérimentales contemporaines ainsi que sur
les valeurs et les représentations culturelles associées à leur contexte underground.
Secrétaire de rédaction de la revue Transposition, musique et sciences sociales et
membre du groupe de recherche ANR Musimorphose(s), elle a enseigné la théorie
et l’histoire de l’art puis le graphisme alternatif à l’ESAD d’Orléans. Elle pratique
parallèlement la musique électronique improvisée au sein du trio DMZ.

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 Soft hacking : créations et appropriations organologiques
dans les pratiques de la musique électronique
Baptiste Bacot (EHESS / IRCAM-STMS)
Contrairement aux pratiques acoustiques de la musique – dans lesquels les gestes entre-
tiennent un rapport de causalité physique direct avec la production du son –, celles de
la musique électronique requièrent, pour bon nombre de musiciens, de construire des
configurations instrumentales, souvent hybrides, qui correspondent à la finalité de leurs
projets musicaux et dans lesquels le mapping entre geste et son est un critère primordial.
Deux options se présentent alors : soit les musiciens créent interfaces et logiciels afin
d’obtenir un contrôle gestuel optimal sur la matière sonore, soit ils assemblent des élé-
ments préexistants (machines et logiciels produits en série) et les paramètrent pour que les
configurations instrumentales répondent à leurs besoins. Dans les deux cas, ces dernières
se stabilisent au terme d’un processus de travail individuel ou collaboratif que nous propo-
sons de qualifier de « soft hacking », c’est-à-dire d’une forme de création et d’appropriation
au long cours, dont chaque étape apporte des modifications apparemment mineures mais
essentielles. La différence principale entre soft hacking et création musicale électronique
« classique », réside dans la dimension collaborative de la création organologique ou bien
dans la démarche expérimentale qui y préside. Ce sont ces approches des instruments
électroniques, bien souvent négligées, que nous entendons questionner.
Reposant sur une enquête ethnographique documentant les pratiques de musiciens élec-
troniques issus d’horizons esthétiques variés, cette communication analysera, documents
multimédias à l’appui, les processus de création et d’appropriation organologiques des
trois musiciens suivants. Pierre Jodlowski est compositeur, concepteur d’installations et
performer français. Sa configuration instrumentale singulière, qui le suit depuis dix ans,
a vu le jour au cours du travail sur une pièce mêlant danse et musique. Jesper Nordin est
un compositeur suédois et « inventeur » autoproclamé. Nous avons suivi pendant plusieurs
mois le travail de production de Sculpting the Air, une œuvre électroacoustique dont les
parties électroniques sont régies par les gestes du chef d’orchestre, créée durant le festival
ManiFeste de l’IRCAM, le 13 juin 2015. Enfin, Robert Henke, de nationalité allemande, est per-
former, ingénieur et fer de lance de la techno minimale. Deux exécutions de Lumière, une de
ses performances multimédia, seront comparées sur le plan technologique, en accordant
une large place à la dimension organologique de la pièce. Nous nous appliquerons, dans ces
trois cas, à mettre au jour les mécanismes de création, de collaboration et d’appropriation
instrumentale – qui dépassent largement la simple description technique – en analysant
tout à la fois la dimension gestuelle des interfaces, les choix de mapping faits par les
musiciens et l’analyse des discours sur leurs propres configurations instrumentales.

Baptiste Bacot est doctorant à l’EHESS (CAMS) et détaché dans l’équipe APM (IRCAM-
STMS). Il travaille sur la musique électronique selon une approche ethnographique
visant à circonscrire les rapports entre les corps musiciens, les instruments élec-
troniques et l’impact de la technologie sur les manières de produire, de concevoir
et d’exécuter la musique. L’analyse située du processus de création musicale dans
des esthétiques variées (musique populaire de danse, musique électroacoustique,
performance audiovisuelle), reliées entre elles par le partage des mêmes outils tech-
nologiques, permet de poser les fondations d’une organologie gestuelle des instru-
ments électroniques.

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A Dialogue, In Absentia – Composition Applications

of Bluetooth Implanted Trombones
Andrew A. Watts (Stanford University)
Written in 2016 for Rage Thormbones (Weston Olencki and Matt Barbier), A Dialogue, In
Absentia explores the means of shaping Bluetooth audio playback in real-time through
utilizing the acoustics of the trombone. This work is a continuation of my research into
the compositional applications of linguicide or “language death”, focusing on the ability
to convey meaning through the voice even when syntax is lost, fragmented, or otherwise
unintelligible. The premise is two giants of existentialist philosophy, Søren Kierkegaard and
Friedrich Nietzsche, are conjured to debate on the topic of solitude (embodied by the trom-
bone duo). After a number of excerpts from each philosopher, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche,
on solitude have been selected, the prose is processed through different text-to-speech
synthesizers. In the score, this text will be treated with a fragmentation procedure using
the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), initiating the transformation from “faceless”
soloists into the purity of unattainable language. The goal is to strip the distance these
intensely humanistic texts from natural expression, so that the duo can “hack” the play-
back and bring in added nuance and human expression.
Expression is achieved in modifying the playback by fitting a wireless Bluetooth speaker (a
“BLKBOX POP360 Hands Free Bluetooth Speaker) with cork affixed to the exterior firmly
in the bell of the trombone. An electronic playback device, such as a smart phone, that can
transmit a .WAV audio file via Bluetooth. Preferably, the audio software also clearly displays
the time during playback. From an acoustic standpoint, “sealed” by the encapsulation with
a mute, the audio sounds from the bell are directed back through the instrument, eventu-
ally becoming audible when at the other end, the mouthpiece. The sound is modulated in
real-time before reaching the mouthpiece by the soloist adjusting the length of the tubes
via the trombone slide. Once the sound exits the instrument through the mouthpiece it can
be linguistically articulated by each soloist, respectively, using the space in the oral cavity
to shape the vowels (i.e. changing the formants using the space within the mouth).
Both parts start out almost entirely disconnected from the means of traditional tone pro-
duction on the trombone. The soloists modulate reverberated white and brown noise play-
back. Then playback sounds, now the existentialist text-to-speech audio, are filtered by the
performer’s mouth shapes (i.e. the resonant spaces the oral cavity makes when formed in
various un-voiced open vowels). The effect here is akin to an electric guitar “talk box”. For
the Kierkegaard part, as the piece slowly progresses the unvoiced vowels become voiced,
with the performer audibly pronouncing these text fragments in the same position as
before, with the playback from the mouthpiece positioned to resonate in the oral cavity. On
the other hand, the Nietzsche part is continuous outbursts rather than a subtle evolution.
The finale shows the Nietzsche sound stretch into an elongated tone. The soloist creates
beating with the interference of pitches, sung and electronically produced, both inhabiting
the acoustic chamber of the trombone.

Andrew Watts’ works, from chamber and symphonic music to multimedia and electro-
acoustic, are actively performed throughout the US and Europe. His compositions have
been premiered at world-renowned venues such as Ravinia, the MFA Boston, Jordan

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 Hall, and the Holywell Music Room. In the past few years He has written for top musi-
cians and ensembles including Distractfold Ensemble, RAGE Thormbones, Splinter
Reeds, Quince, Line Upon Line Percussion, Tony Arnold, Séverine Ballon, and the LA
Percussion Quartet. Mr. Watts is currently a doctoral candidate at Stanford studying
with Brian Ferneyhough and working towards a D.M.A. in Composition. He has been a
featured composer at the Cheltenham Music Festival, the 48th International Summer
Course for New Music at Darmstadt, the Composit Festival, the Biennial Ostrava Days
Institute, the highSCORE Festival, the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Etchings
Festival, Fresh Inc. Festival, New Music on the Point, and the Atlantic Music Festival.

Parlour Sounds: Transforming Household Devices

into Electronic Instruments
Patricia Alessandrini (Goldsmiths, University of London)
and Jack Armitage (Queen Mary, University of London)
This session will introduce and demo two instruments using the Bela platform, an embedded
low-latency audio and sensor processing system based on the BeagleBone Black developed
by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory of Queen Mary University. These instruments
consist of a re-purposed vintage radio and vintage iron respectively. Equipped with on-
board sensors and speaker components, they are employed as complete, self-diffusing
instruments. Both were developed for the Parlour Sounds project in 2017.
Parlour Sounds [http://patriciaalessandrini.com/parloursounds] is a multimedia theatrical
performance for soprano and ten instruments employing custom electronic instruments
made from household objects, ranging from appliances to home hi-fi in a vintage aesthetic
evoking a 1960’s British home. Making these objects into instruments both subverts the
objects from their usual function and contributes to expanding the definition of what
constitutes an instrument. The placement of experimentation and creation in a ‘parlour’
is subversive and ironic: by highlighting the subjectivity and isolation of the protagonist, it
posits an ‘outsider’ approach, not tied to institutions such as recording studios and labo-
ratories. It also allows the soprano and the other musicians of the ensemble to experiment
with the use of electronic sound in new ways, playfully exploring it as they perform both
scored and semi-improvised sections. The soprano herself, Peyee Chen, went as far as to
learn to make some of the electronics used in the performance herself, from scratch from
electronic components, in a workshop with Nicolas Collins. After the first performance,
the audience members were able to try out some of the electronic instruments them-
selves, as they required no previous musical or technical experience to be played. Parlour
Sounds was commissioned by Sound and Music UK, with support from Sound-Aberdeen,
Diaphonique, fonds pour la musique contemporaine, Creative Scotland, the French consu-
late of Edinburgh, and the CNSM de Paris, and premièred by the Red Note Ensemble at the
Edinburgh International Science Festival.

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MUSIC & HACKING INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE / MUSIQUE & HACKING

While the radio is free-standing and fairly straightforward in its use, the iron presented
some interesting user problematics, which we hope to further explore through exchanges
during this demo session. This instrument is intended to be used as it was in Parlour
Sounds, i.e., more or less just as an iron is used in the act of pressing clothes. It contains
two transducers, which adhere magnetically to the body of the appliance. The lower sur-
face of the iron was removed to leave an open cavity, such that placing the iron flat onto a
surface transmits the vibrations of its body to that surface, and lifting the iron off and onto
the surface produces a filtering effect; this latter effect is somewhat vocal in quality. The
instrument is equipped with an accelerometer so that one may shape its sound through
typical ironing gestures, and stop the sound by posing it in its upright resting position. It is
also equipped with a microphone hidden in its steam hole, so that one may influence the
frequency content of its synthesis by singing into it.

Patricia Alessandrini is a composer and sound artist creating mostly multimedia and
interactive work. She studied composition and electronics at the Conservatorio di
Bologna, the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, and at IRCAM, and holds two PhDs, from
Princeton University, and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) respectively.
Her
compositions and installations have been programmed in over 15 European countries,
including festivals such as Agora, Archipel, Darmstadt, Donaueschinger Musiktage,
Heidelberger Frühling, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mostly Mozart,
Musica Strasbourg, and Salzburg Biennale. She was in residency with the Ensemble
InterContemporain at the Gaîté lyrique for the Sound Kitchen series in 2015-6.
She
has taught Computer-Assisted Composition at the Accademia Musicale Pescarese,
Composition with Technology at Bangor University, and is currently a Lecturer in
Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she heads the Unit for Sound
Practice Research. Her works are available from Babelscores, and may be consulted at
patriciaalessandrini.com

Jack Armitage is a PhD student in the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, part of the
Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London, supervised by Andrew
McPherson. He holds a BSc in Music, Multimedia & Electronics from the University of
Leeds. His research is currently focused on understanding and supporting craft pro-
cesses in the context of digital musical instrument design. He has three years experi-
ence as a research engineer at ROLI and FXpansion leading the development of multi-
modal and tangible musical interfaces, and three years live coding experience featuring
performances at SXSW in Texas, Berghain in Berlin and Create on Hollywood Blvd.

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ORGANISING INSTITUTIONS

IRCAM
Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique
IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music directed by Frank
Madlener, is one of the world’s largest public research centers dedicated to both musical
expression and scientific research. This unique location where artistic sensibilities collide
with scientific and technological innovation brings together over 160 collaborators.
IRCAM’s three principal activities — creation, research, transmission — are visible in IRCAM’s
Parisian concert season, in productions throughout France and abroad, in a yearly rendez-
vous, ManiFeste, that combines an international festival with a multidisciplinary academy.
Founded by Pierre Boulez, IRCAM is associated with the Centre Pompidou, under the tute-
lage of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. The mixed STMS research lab
(Sciences and Technologies for Music and Sound), housed by IRCAM, also benefits from the
support of the CNRS and the University Pierre and Marie Curie.

MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY – JACQUES CHIRAC

A venir

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MUSIC & HACKING INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE / MUSIQUE & HACKING

PARTNER

Laboratoire d’excellence Création, Arts, Patrimoines

The Laboratoire d’Excellence Création, Arts et Patrimoines (Labex CAP) is a joint initiative
of 17 universities (EHESS, EPHE, CNAM, ENC, ENSCI, ENSAPLV, INHA, INP, IRCAM, LCPI
ParisTech, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and 9 museums and libraries (BnF, Centre
Pompidou, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, musée Les Arts décoratifs, musée des
Arts et Métiers, musée du Louvre, musée du quai Branly, musée Picasso, Sèvres–Cité de la
céramique). It has been funded since 2010 with the aim of supporting and increasing the
role and the international recognition of the best French research laboratories.
Both an observatory and an experimental laboratory, the Labex CAP studies arts, creation
and heritage, as a reference point to understand and to accompany economic changes
of contemporary society, connected with economic life, cultures and means of commu-
nication in our globalised world. The Labex CAP gather scholars in the areas of aesthetic
theories, art philosophy, art, architecture and heritage history, musicology, poetics,
cultural anthropology, sociology of art, history of technologies, as well as communica-
tion and information technologies, design, conservation and restoration. The conjunc-
tion between Labex CAP, major institutions concerned with heritage, and organisations
connected with the area of culture, communication and information technologies, is one of
the strengths of the project. One of its ambitions is to allow innovative and successful col-
laboration between organisations that fall under the French Ministry of Higher Education
and Research and others that are not affiliated. By opening up beyond the academy, the
Labex CAP provides an interdisciplinary view of questions, practices and research proce-
dures. It aims to remove obstacles between the different approaches to art, creation and
heritage, as well as the skills and professions related to those areas.

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