Page 33 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

22 The topography of composing work

are an indispensable element of understanding what the performance is
designed to achieve. Following Wolfgang Iser (1978: 34f.), we might call this
the “implied listener”. In that sense, the audience is indirectly present during
the composition process.
As the divergent remarks make clear, it is impossible to reduce the com-
poser’s relationship with the audience to a simple formula. And yet, despite
the varying attitudes, the artists’ professionalism is characterised by a reflexive
mind-set, which can at times be rather unarticulated (see Szivós 2014: 27): to
take into account who the audience is and how to connect with it sensually,
emotionally and intellectually.

1.2.2 Cooperating with sound engineers and software developers
As we hinted in our description of the developments in software and spatial
acoustics for the performance context, some composers – depending on their
artistic orientation – collaborate with sound engineers and software developers.
In certain cases, they even depend on such collaborations (see also Born 1995:
210–218, 262–275; Vinet & Delalande 1999). In his interview, the computer
musician and sound director Markus Noisternig describes collaborating with
the composer Olga Neuwirth, who in her work “Lost Highway” wanted to
generate sound clouds that nervously circled around the audience in coloured
micro-fluctuations. These sound domes were created during the live perfor-
mance by electronically distorting the sounds of the solo instruments (sax-
ophone, trombone, clarinet): “For example, a clarinet plays multiphonics at
various pitches. These are then put into a feedback loop, where they’re dis-
torted by a harmoniser or phaser according to the score, and make sound
clouds.” The distorted sounds then describe fluctuating, small circular move-
ments around “a centre of gravity that slowly moves across the room”. The
speed of these movements and their displacement around the centre can be
controlled at will for each sound component “to produce an ambient sound. […]
It creates a soundscape within the performance space.” It was not only a
substantial challenge for the collaborating team of computer scientists and
sound engineers to realise this composition idea. According to Noisternig, the
2003 performance of “Lost Highway” also used five high-performance Linux
computers to handle the various tasks. Thus, projects that rely on spatialisation
demand a skillset from the composer that includes both knowledge of com-
puter technology and analysis of spatial acoustics. The technical collaborators
become performers in that they too implement the score, albeit on a computer,
not on an instrument. In other words, their participation in the performance is
not just technical but aesthetic as well (see also Barrett 2014).
Collaboration between composers, software developers and sound engineers
creates a win-win situation. Alfred Smudits (2002) and Kurt Blaukopf (1989/
2012: 63–91) coined the term “mediamorphosis” that also applies for the
digital era, where creative artists “must acquire extensive competencies so as
to master and optimally use digital means of production” (Smudits 2002: