Program

Trying to keep up: managing cognitive load in audio scores

James Saunders | Open Scores Lab, Bath Spa University

This paper examines how cognitive load theory can inform the design of audio scores that deliberately create unstable performance situations. Audio scores present temporal information that may be unknown in advance and which constantly disappears, creating unique cognitive demands compared to static visual notation. Drawing on cognitive load theory from instructional design, I identify how intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load—alongside specific effects including split-attention, modality, transient information, and task switching—shape performer responses to dense streams of verbal instruction. Unlike instructional design, which aims to reduce extraneous cognitive load to optimize learning, my compositional approach deliberately manipulates these parameters to create productive difficulty. Through discussion of two recent pieces I consider how varying the density, simultaneity, and sequentiality of verbal cues generates distinct performance conditions. The discussion explores how player control over pacing fundamentally alters the way cognitive load manifests, shifting from individual overwhelm to distributed decision-making. For composers working with audio scores, this suggests practical strategies: manipulating verbal instruction parameters provides direct control over extraneous load while keeping individual task complexity low, and incorporating repeated instructional patterns helps players develop response schema.

© Rebecca Saunders

James Saunders

James Saunders is a composer with an interest in group behaviours and decision making. He performs in the duo Parkinson Saunders. He runs the Open Scores Lab at Bath Spa University, where he is Professor of Music.

james-saunders.com

Experiment Design for Psychoacoustic Analyses of Audio-Score Compositions

Katharina Pollack | Acoustics Research Institute, Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Piotr Majdak | Acoustics Research Institute, Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Barbara Maria Neu | University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna

Psychoacoustics and the perception of sound play a crucial role in the process of composing a musical piece. The interpretation by the musician, despite a-priori knowledge about the musical piece, and, if applicable, the interaction between the musician and the composer in a live scenario, both heavily depend on their auditory systems and auditory environment. To better understand the underlying psychoacoustic processes, we conducted an experiment using isolated parts of audio-score recordings of a clarinet. In the experiment, we focused on perceptive parameters involved in the musical piece. We relate our findings to existing psychoacoustic models, considering the limits of the models’ auditory stages and the possibility of incorporating the models in the process of audio-score compositions. To this end, we give an outlook on what a psychoacoustic analysis of audio-score compositions could look like.

Composing the Ears of the Machine: Audio Scores, Selective Listening, and Concatenative AI Improvisation

Ming Yang | Royal Northern College of Music

This paper proposes an expanded notion of audio score for AI-mediated improvisation, grounded in psychoacoustic theory and practice-based composition. Building on Louis d’Heudière’s account of audio scoring with verbal instructions and field recordings, it shifts the focus toward sound without instruction as score: sound that guides performers through selective listening. Drawing on auditory scene analysis and timbre perception, the paper argues that sound can function as a score because listeners extract perceptual dimensions such as brightness, roughness, envelope, and tonal stability and treat them as cues for musical action. It then extends this framework to machine listening, treating corpus-based concatenative systems as computational analogues of selective, feature-based listening, in which descriptors, weights, and distance models define how the machine “hears” and which aspects of the input acquire prescriptive force. A case study of Overlapping for alto saxophone and live electronics examines how this idea is realized through two contrasting corpora, three designed saxophone sound types, and three microphones functioning as independent “ears,” creating a looping audio score shared by human and algorithmic agents. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations of descriptor-based listening— its partial view of the sound object—and argues for composing with multiple, parallel listening modes as a way of articulating richer audio scores between humans and machines.

© Ming Yang

Ming Yang

Ming Yang is a UK-based composer, sound artist and researcher originally from China. Educated in both the United States and the United Kingdom, his practice spans electroacoustic and instrumental composition, sonic art, music technology, and improvisation, with a particular focus on multimedia work and human–AI interaction in music. His creative and research interests centre on sound as a dynamic, interactive system, exploring how musical gestures, machine listening, and algorithmic processes can shape real-time composition and performance. Through this work, Yang investigates how AI may function not merely as a reactive tool but as an active musical agent in improvisation and electroacoustic composition. Yang's music has been performed by ensembles and presented at festivals across the United Kingdom, United States, China, and Mexico. Alongside his concert works, he is deeply engaged in sound installation and spatial audio, with works exhibited in Huddersfield and London that examine perception and space through sonic experience. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), where his research focuses on electroacoustic composition, AI-driven improvisation, and multimedia performance systems.

Generative Audioscores as Engines of Social Choreography in Villanelles de Voyelles II

Sandeep Bhagwati and Kasey Pocius | Concordia University Montréal

This paper analysis an instance of a generative audioscore through an analysis of “Villanelles de Voyelles II” (2022), a non-linear audio-based score system. Building on earlier work on Elaborate Audio Scores, the paper argues that this piece represents a qualitative shift from audio scores as conveyance mechanisms toward procedurally composed dramaturgical systems. Musical form emerges from a constrained generative architecture combining weighted instruction sets, elastic temporal distributions, relational pitch logic, and periodic system-wide interventions. Beyond sonic and temporal organisation, the paper foregrounds the affordances of generative audioscores for spatial movement and emergent theatricality. By encoding relations of attention, proximity, and response rather than choreographic gestures, the audioscore enables performers to enact socially legible behaviours without representational intent. The paper situates generative audioscores as notational systems that compose sound, time, space, and social interaction.

© Tommy Davis

Kasey Pocius

Originally from St. John's (Newfoundland), Kasey Pocius is a gender-fluid intermedia artist based in Montréal. Trained in viola and piano, they create live multimedia and electronic performances exploring multichannel spatialization, improvisation, and gestural interaction with digital musical instruments (DMIs). As an associate researcher at the GRMS, CIRMMT, and IDMIL laboratories, Kasey presents work at international festivals across Europe, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia — including ICMC, Ars Electronica, NYCEMF, BEAST FEaST, Sonorities, and Burning Man.

Interpreting Audio Scores: Experiences and Insights

Barbara Maria Neu | University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna

This paper provides a resuming insight into my experiences of interpreting audio scores as a clarinetist. It draws on moments from my experience that began with my first encounter with audio scores and have since continued through sustained and intensive engagement within the framework of a research project about audio scores. The experiences from the initial Encounter with an audio score through to the Performance are described from the perspective of a clarinetist trained in the classical music tradition, who has repeatedly engaged with contemporary music out of personal interest, without having completed any specialized training in this field. The interpretation of contemporary music, extended techniques and collaboration with composers, usually based on written scores, are therefore familiar to me. However, they do not constitute the everyday content of my work as a musician. The starting position of working with musicians, who are somehow familiar with contemporary music but do not work with it in their everyday life, is, in my view, one that composers in contemporary music frequently encounter and will continue to encounter and one for which audio scores can offer unexpected advantages and possibilities.

Playing the Room: Tapeplayer and the Improvised Audio Score

Jonas Sjøvaag | University of Agder, Norway

This paper presents TapePlayer, a tape echo simulator designed as a score-framework for improvising musicians. Drawing on the incommensurate loop techniques of Brian Eno's ambient works, Terry Riley's time-lag accumulators, and Alvin Lucier's room-as- instrument approach, TapePlayer provides a compositional infrastructure: four independent delay lines with configurable lengths, bidirectional playback heads, and—crucially—the acoustic room itself as primary feedback network. The score is not the sound that emerges but the framework that shapes it: system configuration, microphone placement, and spatial acoustics. The improviser activates this structure, generating material that the system transforms and returns. Rather than prescribing pitches or rhythms, TapePlayer establishes conditions for mimetic engagement—performers identify with, respond to, and transform their own sound as it returns altered by room and machine. I examine this relationship through the concept of mimesis as theorized by Paddison: not imitation-as-copying but embodied identification with sound. The paper discusses TapePlayer's technical architecture, its application as score-script for improvisation, and the psychoacoustic implications of a framework that never produces the same result twice. A video demonstration illustrates the mimetic relationship between performer, system, and space.

© Pierluca Taranta

Jonas Sjøvaag

Jonas Sjøvaag is a Norwegian musician, composer, and PhD candidate in Artistic Research at the University of Agder, where his dissertation examines musical identity and human-machine improvisation. He holds a Master in Performance (improvised music) from the Norwegian Academy of Music and his main instrument are drums. His practice spans drums, electronics, and custom software development – including TapePlayer, Drift Engine, and MusicHal_9001, systems designed for real-time improvisation with machine partners. He has released over 25 albums as leader or co-leader and operates Færder Audio recording studio and the Shipwreckords label. He is also a consultant in digital publishing for artistic research, having developed ECTS-accredited courses in Research Catalogue for institutions across Norway and Europe.

Information embedment in Live-Electronics: Scores, Setups and Performer knowledge

Alex Hofmann and Sonja Stojak | Department of Music Acoustics mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Works for live-electronic music performance depend on a substantial amount of information about the music itself but also about the required technical setups. This paper examines materials for two live-electronic interpretations of historic tape music repertoire and four original works for live-electronics, created by different live-electronic partitioners (LEPs) within the artistic research project “Études for live-electronics". Although written musical scores were not a requirement, for four of the works such scores were created. An analysis of the scores revealed different levels of information detail, depending on the relation of the LEP to the intended performance practice. Implications of access to the remaining information, often embedded in technical setups or retained as the performers’ background knowledge are discussed.

Keywords: Musical notation; Notation in electronic and electroacoustic music; Live-electronic music

© Stephan Polzer

Alex Hofmann

Alex Hofmann is a professor in music acoustics at mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, sound artist and saxophone/live-electronics performer working with improvised and contemporary music. He has authored over 70 publications, including 3 editorial works

mdw.ac.at/alex-hofmann

© Oskar Gigele

Sonja Stojak

is a research coordinator at mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and music theorist with publications including a book chapter, a conference proceedings article, a journal paper, and working experience in editorial work as well as at a music publisher house (Universal Edition).

Towards a notation of sceno-electroacoustic works

Rémy Jannelle and Nicolas Bernier | Université de Montréal - Laboratoire formes • ondes (LFO)

This article addresses theatricalized musical performances within contemporary artistic practices. It examines how these works can expand beyond instrumental execution to incorporate staging and scenography as integral components of performance. The study proposes an analysis of the score of a sceno-electroacoustic work, a mode of musical practice in which sound emerges from transformations of the scenic space itself. This article contributes to reflections on notation, performance, and the role of scenography in electroacoustic music.

© Kevin Delamour

Rémy Jannelle

Rémy Jannelle is an artist-researcher and composer currently pursuing a master’s degree in composition and sound creation at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal. His research-creation focuses on live electroacoustic performance through scenographic manipulation. His work brings together music, staging, space and light within performative and installation-based contexts. He developed Oscillation I (2022), an installation, and Oscillation II (2023), a performance derived from the same scenic instrument. He also has developed the sceno-electroacoustic performances Expansion (2025) and Sémiographie (2026). His practice explores the interactions between scenography and musicality, approaching the stage environment as an instrument in itself. He is a member of the research collective Laboratoire formes • ondes.

© Isabelle Gardner

Nicolas Bernier

Nicolas Bernier is a professor of composition and sound art at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal. His research-creation focuses on the performativity of electronic sound, a practice enriched by dialogues with artists from visual arts, dance, theatre, animation, and poetry. Directing Ensemble d’oscillateurs since 2016, he has actively contributed to the development of electronic music in ensembles. The ensemble explores approaches to score writing and performance techniques in electronic music. This ensemble project has led to the development of significant research-creation projects, notably on the aesthetics of the sine wave (2021-2024) and on performative notation (2024-2027). In 2020, he co-founded the research collective Laboratoire formes • ondes:

lfo-lab.ca

Realization score for digital sound composition

Peter Plessas | Department of Composition Studies and Music Production
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

The composition of electroacoustic music for the recorded medium has become largely independent from the requirement to furnish a realization score. While digital technology invites intuitive compositional work in graphical audiosoftware, a documentation of such creative activity often requires an a posteriori analysis and reverse-engineering approach. The iterative score presented here attempts to bridge the prescriptive and the descriptive nature of scores for sound compositions, that is musical works based on the transformation of recorded sound. Instructions for repeated realizations of an example composition are given, embracing a subtractive approach to problem solving with technology and providing a resource with good accessibility for visually impaired musicians.

© JJ Kucek

Peter Plessas

Trained in violin and guitar, Peter developed an early interest in studio composition and electronic music, writing and playing experimental music in addition to DJing. Following studies with Gerhard Eckel and Winfried Ritsch, Peter graduated in sound engineering from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He established himself as live electronics musician, collaborating with Peter Ablinger, Gerd Kühr, Klaus Lang, Philippe Leroux, Olga Neuwirth, Klangforum Wien and musikFabrik Köln, amongst others.
Peter's compositions feature tape music, chamber music for DJs, spatial music and works for dance and theater. His artistic output is lined by research in digital instrument design and auditory perception. Peter has been a visiting scholar to UC Berkeley, McGill and Concordia Universities. He has taught at IEM Graz and is currently a senior lecturer for electroacoustic composition at Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts.

plessas.mur.at

The Ragion Tropica Tactics: Inhabiting the Vibration, Audio Cartography, Sound Routes, and Other Useless Hacking Tools

Giuseppe Silvi | Conservatoire “A.Casella” of L’Aquila

Feedback-augmented instruments unveil unmapped sonic territory. Nevertheless, cartographic tactics can trace soundroutes that notation renders repeatable. This paper documents practices that emerged from augmenting an orchestral timpani with electromagnetic feedback: geometric spatial discretisation, exhaustive cataloguing of tridimensional samples, numerical analysis, and graph plots yield maps and performative notation. Each phase arose through sustained engagement with the instrument’s particular constraints—cataloguing revealed analytical needs, analysis suggested notational possibilities, notation exposed cataloguing gaps—a circular process termed ragion tropica (tropic reason), which operates through tactical circulation, guided by the material itself. The graphs that emerge from this circular process—where nodes represent catalogued sounds and edges encode timbral proximity in descriptor space—function as sound routes: performative trajectories through organised territory that the composer traces, producing frameworks and scores which preserve navigational flexibility, sustaining the performer’s agency within the very constraints that make compositional discourse possible.

© Marco Iacobucci

Giuseppe Silvi

Giuseppe Silvi is a professor of Electroacoustics at the Conservatory “N. Piccinni” of Bari and a doctoral researcher in Artistic Research in Music at the Conservatory “A. Casella” of L’Aquila. He studied Electronic Music at the Conservatory “S. Cecilia” in Rome with Giorgio Nottoli, Nicola Bernardini, and Michelangelo Lupone, and completed advanced studies with Alvise Vidolin (Ac-cademia Chigiana) and Michelangelo Lupone (Accademia Santa Cecilia). His research centres on the development of invented electroacoustic systems, including S.T.ONE, a tetrahedral omnidirectional loudspeaker, and Tempo (Timpani Electro-Magnetic Pulse Oscillation), a feedback-augmented timpani. He is the founder of LEAP (Laboratorio ElettroAcustico Permanente) in Rome and of the SEAM (Sustained ElectroAcoustic Music) project, dedicated to the interpretation of electroacoustic repertoire with particular attention to the Roman School tradition.

Mass-spring Lattice Physical Modeling Synthesis using a Quantum Algorithm

Xavier Davenport | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In this paper I describe how a recently developed quantum algorithm for simulating the dynamics of mass–spring systems can be applied in the artistic context of physical modeling synthesis, and I propose a scalable “virtual microphone” method based on amplitude amplification for extracting perceptually relevant information from the simulated system. After outlining how to synthesize sound using a one-dimensional mass–spring system with both fixed and unfixed endpoints, I discuss the scalability and implications of this approach as quantum hardware develops. Potential applications of this theoretical framework include the simulation of imperfect vibrating systems and the large-scale modeling of systems containing up to on the order of 1029 coupled masses in a 100 qubit system.

© Jinjue Wang

Xavier Davenport

Xavier Davenport (b. 1995) is a composer and researcher working at the intersection of music, audio signal processing, and quantum computation. His work explores physical modeling synthesis, quantum algorithms for audio, and technologically mediated performance, including digital scores. He holds degrees in music, physics, and Chinese language & culture from Wittenberg University, an M.S. in electrophysics from National Chiao-Tung University, and an M.M. in composition from DePaul University. He recently completed a DMA in composition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Cricket Tools: Real-Time Audio Scoring of Quantum State Evolution Across Networked Mobile Devices

Pedro González-Fernández, Thomas Noll and Reiko Yamada | Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, Barcelona

This paper presents Cricket Tools, a browser based client- server system for distributed, real-time audio scoring and synchronized audio playback across mobile devices (phones, tablets) connected to the same local network. Cricket Tools supports two complementary approaches: (1) synchronized fixed-media playback (e.g., multi-part stems) and (2) parameterized, real-time audio scores in which each performer’s device synthesizes an individualized audio guide. This second paradigm is designed for situations where the “score” is not a pre-rendered audio or video file but an evolving process controlled by a conductor or an interactive generative system. In the paper, we position Cricket Tools relative to prior work on audio and audiovisual scoring and distributed notation, drawing on Bhagwati’s framework of audio scores and on Schimana’s “sound as score” practice, as well as on Bell’s SmartVox/SmartBox lineage of web-based distributed parts for ensemble rehearsal and performance. We also describe the system’s architecture and timing approach, including a lightweight time-synchronization model and client-side scheduling for consistent playback across devices. As a use case, we outline a prototype in which features derived from quantum wavefunction evolution (magnitude/phase descriptors) are mapped to real-time audiovisual scoring parameters distributed to multiple players.

© Pedro González-Fernández

Pedro González-Fernández

Pedro González is a Spanish violinist, composer, and researcher specializing in intermedia art. His work has been presented at festivals and venues including the Internationales Musikfest Hamburg, SMC Conference, Centre National de Création Musicale, Resis Festival, Musica Festival, Manifeste, and Klangwerkstatt among others. Since 2021, he has been Professor of Contemporary Music and Multimedia at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona. In 2023, he received a Fulbright Visiting Scholar grant for a research stay at CCRMA, Stanford University. He has also given seminars on multimedia at HfMT Hamburg and MHL Lübeck, and is active as a freelance composer and violinist in Spain and Northern Germany.

© Thomas Noll

Thomas Noll

Thomas Noll works in the field of mathematical music theory, where he published over 50 articles. Together with David Clampitt he received the 2013 SMT outstanding publication award for the MTO article “Modes, the Height-Width Duality, and Handchin’s Tone Character.” From 1998 - 2003 he was the leader of an interdisciplinary research group on mathematical and computational music theory. Since 2005 as a lecturer in music theory at the Esmuc in Barcelona. He was co-editor of the "Journal of Mathematics and Music“ and serves presently as the vice-president of the Society of Mathematics and Computation in Music.

© Reiko Yamada

Reiko Yamada

Reiko Yamada is a composer and sound artist, originally from Hiroshima, Japan. She composes concert works, creates sound art installations, and works with interdisciplinary collaborators. Her work explores the aesthetic concept of imperfection in a variety of contexts. Yamada holds a D.Mus in composition from McGill University and is a recipient of numerous prestigious awards and fellowships. She was a 2015-16 Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study of Harvard University, the 2016-17 artist-in-residence at IEM (Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik), the 2018 Innovator-in-Residence at Colorado College, 2020-21 S+T+ARTS resident artist, and composer-in-residency at Phonos Foundation. Her various projects have been commissioned and/or funded by New Music USA, the Canada Council for the Arts, IRCAM, CIRMMT, Armitage Gone! Dance, and the European Commission among others. Her works have been presented in venues such as The Metropolitan Museum Breuer (New York), and Sónar Festival (Barcelona). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at ICFO (Institute for Photonic Sciences) and a professor of composition at ESMUC in Barcelona.