Dr Simon Atkinson — Research Overview

Recent creative projects, performances, events

A cycle of pieces called Interiorities, commissioned by the Society for Electroacoustic Music in Sweden (SEAMS), parts one and two premiered at an invited concert given at Fylkingen, Stockholm in February, 2007. This music explores potential meeting points, and frictions, between the acousmatic tradition, and that of the developing area of live electronics which concerns itself with post-digital aesthetics, bricolage with electronics and found objects, hybridity, and reaction against the laptop in performance. Interiorities 1 for feedback instrument with found object controllers and 8-channel electroacoustic sound was composed for the performer John Richards.

A CD of this music is due to be released by Electron Records during 2008.

Recent writings, conferences, symposia

The Electroacoustic Resource Site (EARS) project: www.ears.dmu.ac.uk

'Interpretation and musical signification in acousmatic listening'. Organised Sound, Volume 12, Issue 02, 2007, pp 113-122. Cambridge University Press.

'The ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS): philosophy, foundation and aspirations’. (w/ L Landy) Organised Sound, Volume 9, Issue 01, 2004, pp79-85. Cambridge University Press

‘Introducing the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS)’. (w/ L Landy) In Proceedings of the 2003 International Computer Music Conference - Singapore, pp115-18. San Francisco, CA: ICMA.

'Abstraction, reality and the loudspeaker'. Paper given at Institut für Musikwissenschaft, University of Leipzig, at Electroacoustic Music: Technologies, Aesthetics, and Theories - a Musicological Challenge, September 20-22 07

'Inscribing Instabilities' - at the invitation of Elektroakustik Musik i Sverige (EMS), Stockholm 23.2.07

'Musical semiotics and electroacoustic music studies’. EMS06, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, October 2006

'Surrealism and musique concrète: a lobster and a telephone or melting watch without source or cause?' MTIRC research symposium, 'Music and Surrealism', March 2006. Joint presentation with Simon Emmerson and Leigh Landy

'Discourse, structure and mutli-loudspeaker performance: a critique'. MTIRC research symposium,'Music and Space', De Montfort University, Leicester, April 2005

'The Electroacoustic Resource Site (EARS): philosophy, foundation and aspirations'. At A century of innovation involving sound and technology: resources, discourse, analytical tools. Conference organised and hosted by IRCAM, Paris, in collaboration with Sorbonne, INA/GRM, the Musée de la musique (Paris), and Electronic Music Foundation, October 2003