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Abstract

Most sound artists have, at some stage in their work, recorded real-world sounds and incorporated them as sources in their music. However, the recordings seldom correspond to the space and spectrum we actually hear, and the transmission tools available to us often distort the projection of our artistic vision to the listener. These distortions can may inform the creative process in a positive way, such as close-microphone techniques that are often used to capture details in near-field sound, or accepting what a microphone captures as we forage for new sounds and new experiences. It is easy to loose contact with the amazing aspects of the real-world spatial scene, simply because of how difficult it actually is to take a true representation back to the studio.

This presentation highlights a selection of artistic and technological approaches I have developed to leverage the affordances of the three-dimensional real world, and to explore and expand these findings in the creation of a musical discourse that traverses reality, extended reality, and memetic abstraction.

Examples include the spatial decomposition of higher-order ambisonics scene-based recordings to reveal features otherwise lost to everyday incidental listening; outdoor sound installations that spatially interact with the natural environment; and the use of 3D LiDAR and 3D impulse responses in the composition of audio-visual performances.

Biography

Natasha Barrett (NO/UK) is a composer, new media artist and researcher. She creates acousmatic, electronic, and live-electroacoustic music, public-space sound installations and audiovisual works. She is widely recognised for her artistic exploration of 3D sound and ambisonics.

In addition to her solo career, she regularly collaborates with performers, visual artists, architects and scientists, often drawing on data emulating or created by real-world processes as a source for artistic exploration. Some of the highlights include 3D audiovisual artworks with the USA-based OpenEndedGroup, science-art sonification in collaboration with geoscientists, and live electronics collaborations with soloists and ensembles such as Ensemble l’Itinéraire (FR) and Cikada (NO). She is also the co-director of the performance ensemble Electric Audio Unit that curates and performs spatial music concerts in Norway.

Her work is commissioned and performed worldwide and has received awards in 35 international competitions, including the most prestigious prize available for Nordic composers, the Nordic Council Music Prize. Her music is released on Persistence of Sound (UK), Sargasso (UK), Lawo (NO), Aurora (NO), empreintes DIGITALes (CA), and numerous compilations. She has held professorships in Norway and Denmark, and now works freelance.