Real-World Sounds and Simulacra in my Computer Music

Abstract

The author first emphasizes the fact that hearing mechanisms are adapted to performing investigations on the origin of sounds generated in an acoustic environment. He states his interest in staging encounters between the visible world of real sounds and the invisible world of digitized sounds: the former are constrained by their acoustic generation, while the latter can be termed illusory and devoid of material constraints. The author then comments on the use of metaphors, real world sounds and simulacra in his computer music, with special emphasis on the pieces Little Boy, Passages, Sud, Invisibles. He proposes that even though art involves artifice, the anchoring of inner perceptual mechanisms in the external, real world can justify the attraction of musicians to nature.

Keywords:

• Computer music
• nature
• computer synthesis of sound
• simulacrum
• hearing
• perception
• acoustic world
• virtual sound
• imitation
• program