ICST Artist in Residents 24.06.-14.7.2024 (Spatial Audio Synthesis Residency)

Born in Denmark 1967. I returned to Denmark in 2019 after almost 30 years in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Studied dance and improvisation at the SNDO Amsterdam. Studied classical voice with coloratura soprano Marianne Blok for more than a decade. I have worked in multimedia projects of all sorts and sizes over the past 30 years. For a large part autodidact in mathematics, programming and algorithmic composition. My studies of pure mathematics have been quite systematic over the past 20 years, and are ongoing. Specific interests go towards algebra, algebraic geometry and group theory. The later years I have had many presentations of computer music works at international conferences. The work with Higher Order Ambisonics / spatial audio – has been a natural extension of the interest in geometry. The work has developed thanks to working periods at CCRMA Stanford, IEM Graz, NOTAM Oslo, EMS Stockholm.

This work will arise from and tailor itself to the actual sound-space, and to the speaker layout on which it is performed. The work takes as input a recording of the ambient noise in the space and it takes as well the coordinates and radii of the speaker layout. The geometry of the setup will be considered a polytope which is then reflected mathematically 1 or more times into a higher dimensional geometric space. The total structure will, model a Digital Wave Guide Mesh (DWGM), and there will be a variety of possibilities for how to create the structure. This structure will determine spatialization, as well as it will have local instrumental qualities in the direction of the traditional Karplus-Strong idea. The mesh can be rotated and transformed separately in different subspaces / different dimensions. The ambient recording will be input to the DWGM and it will also through algorithmic mapping serve to control various time flow aspects.

The aim is to create a work which is harmonically scaled to the actual setup as well as it will be adding a compositional aspect which is fed, so to say, by the space itself. Harmonic material will be scaled / tuned to real proportions, using a measure for the speed of sound, to determine wavelength in relations to the actual sizes. Interference fields and effects will be considered and tested by listening. The last topic probably having a close to chaotic complexity, but a discussion would be very interesting.