Federico Camara Halac - Writings

while loneliness in our real lives is increasingly recognized as having dire physical, mental and emotional consequences, cooperative games have been shown to build empathy and provide positive social impact. in this paper, we present “the woods”, a local cooperative mixed reality game that provides players with face-to-face interactions in pursuit of a shared goal using augmented reality and 4-channel audio spatialization panning. this paper discusses the narrative, mechanical, and sonic components of the game, as well as its development process and the player experience. the goal of our team is to develop a narrative driven ar game that promotes collaborative problem-solving and engages players in an emergent physical and digital experience.

deep learning in raw audio-based musical contexts is yet a largely unexplored field. in visual arts, the deep dream collective project utilizes deep convolutional neural network classifiers to generate self-refferential surreal images. in this paper, we present an adaptation of the deep dream project into an audio-based musical context. we created a rapid prototype by sonifying the activation layers of a pre-trained classifier, yamnet. to deal with noisy outputs we implemented fft filters supported on the frequencies of the original or a target audio.

this paper describes and discusses several approaches to working with massively multichannel music live using pure data. traditionally, most computer music works have had a tendency towards fixed media due to its stability and robustness when it comes to performance. likewise, the spatialization paradigm that has governed most electronic music continues to be stereo, with the use of diffusion or ambisonics as last resort spatialization techniques. emphasizing the importance of space, this paper describes the design of a real-time computer music piece called lorenz variations, written directly for high density loudspeaker arrays (hdlas) of variable lengths. in using point-source location techniques and vector-based amplitude panning (vbap) as composing tools instead of spatialization tools, i argue that space is not just a musical parameter but a compositional source that expands our listening experience into yet unknown dimensions, and it is our duty to explore the many aesthetic potentials it advances.

pathosonic is a virtual reality (vr) experience that enables a participant to visualize and perform a sound file based on timbre feature descriptors displayed in space. the name comes from the different paths the participant can create through their sonic explorations. the goal of this research is to leverage affordances of virtual reality technology to visualize sound through different levels of performance-based interactivity that immerses the participant’s body in a spatial virtual environment. through implementation of a multi-sensory experience, including visual aesthetics, sound, and haptic feedback, we explore inclusive approaches to sound visualization, making it more accessible to a wider audience including those with hearing, and mobility impairments.

the aim of this dissertation is to outline a framework to discuss the aesthetic agency of the database in music composition. i place my dissertation in relation to existing scholarship, artists, and developers working in the fields of music composition, computer science, affect, and ontology, with emphasis on the ubiquity of databases and on the need to reflect on their practice, particularly in relation to databasing and music composition. there is a database everywhere, anytime, always already affecting our lives; it is an agent in our aesthetic and political lives just as much as we are agents in its composition and performance. database music lives in between computers and sound.

the practice of composition takes place from the most distant memory of sound to the intimacy of perceivable waves. for music to emerge from these waves, two negative processes need to take place, relating to consciousness, memory, and difference. these constitute the possibility condition of what i call the unveiling, staging, and unworking of the music object. from this rethinking of the composition practice, how does identity emerge from this precondition of difference? this is how the database enters into this framing of the practice of composition. drawing from derrida’s conceptualization of the archive, i find the ‘archontic’ principle embedded within the structural quality of the database, and emerging through its performance. the computer is a multitude of databases constantly projecting their authority, their archontic power onto their users. thus, in the same way the written word becomes the rule, just as the structured data prescribes its command, the severed object of music emerges as style, order, or identity. the question is, however, how can we conceive the aesthetic experience without this authoritative character; without this inherent imposition of order and identity? the space is opened, thus, for the concept of an anarchic unwork of art.

“hearing the self: a spectral experience” (aka hally) is an interactive, immersive, multimedia, and robotic installation, simulating the process by which the human brain per- ceives the world. this paper explores the role of both sound and image in the definition of the self this installation brings forth. we briefly explore previous approaches to image soni- fication, and propose that through video-based convolution new conceptualizations of the self can arise. further, this expression of the self is neither centered on the human par- ticipant nor on the socially constructed notions of the self, but on nonhuman aspects such as the reflection and capture of light, or the technological array of the installation as such. the participant’s exploration within this spectrality results in an uncanny and playful experience.

a black box room packed with a rather large audience surrounded by 16 genelec speakers set as two rings of 8, with an elevation of about 1.5 meters. i arrived just in time for the concert and there were barely any seats left. i sat at the back with my head right behind speaker no. 5 –a quite ‘bad’ location to listen to spatialized music inside a dome. i had the old fear one might encounter in an electroacoustic concert if one is not sitting around the ‘sweet spot’.1 despite my fears –and this is why i am writing this–, dr. justel started playing marelle2 and i could listen to her music inside the entire space in front of me. how did she achieve a complete multidimensional image that can be grasped from a point other than the center of the listening space? to what extent is this composition inherent to a particular spatial distribution? how can i go about showing this? this text is my response to her use of space.