Impulse Response Study (Audible Ecosystemics nr 1) - Agostino Di Scipio

Ecosystem: a “system” (network of analogue transducers and computer processors) and its “oikos” (the house, the room where the performance takes place), linked by sound-mediated symbiotic and adaptive relationships.

The Audible Ecosystemics project encompasses concert works and sound installations based on a feedback strategy: the performance system emits something audible into the surrounding space while the acoustic response of that space affects and even drives the way the system itself behaves. In Audible Ecosystemics no. 1, room resonances are initially produced by computer-generated sonic impulses, the original timbre of which is shaped by the local acoustics and the loudspeaker system in use. The computer processing adapts itself to the room, via the microphones and loudspeakers placed around it. The result is not a naturalistic image (not a virtual space, not a soundscape) but a process in sound unfolding in close contact with the place where the performance takes place (and with the audience). A good performance is when the interaction between the room, microphones and computer creates a suficiently large variety of emergent “sonic dusts” (granular sound textures of variable density across different time scales).

The live performance is managed by the composer by means of the Kyma/Pacarana digital signal processing workstation and the PURE DATA audio programming language. The synthetic sound material was initially prepared with the Pulsar Generator programme, at the Centre Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis (April 2002). 

Agostino Di Scipio