1.5-hour keynote presentation, by Nicolas Gold

Abstract:

For the last eight years my colleagues and I have been engaged in a programme of research on the integrated teaching of sound, music, and computing in schools, underpinned by STEAM and constructionist perspectives.  This approach allows us to introduce many topics to students including aspects of physics, sound, lutherie, composition, making, coding, software engineering, design, and sustainability.  In this talk I will review our research activities and lessons learned, using these as stimuli to reflect on ethical and practical aspects of the work.  In keeping with the conference theme I will also offer some thoughts on ‘place’ as it applies to our research, and the place of technology in such educational activity more generally.

1.5-hour keynote presentation, by Gerriet. K. Sharma

Abstract:

Extended reality is no longer a horizon to come—it is already shaping the conditions of our perception. XR unfolds as a hybrid sonic space, where multiple agencies and overlapping realities converge, producing environments that compel us to reconsider how we listen, how we share presence, and how we coexist. In such spaces, immersion is not simply a technical affordance but a field of tension, where different perceptions of world are negotiated in real time. Within XR, immersion is not simply a technological feature but a social and perceptual negotiation, where multiple realities and worldviews overlap. Sound becomes a sculptural force, capable of mediating between co-existing perceptions of world and generating resonant presences that question what it means to inhabit shared spaces. Through composition, sound art, and experimental performance with spherical loudspeaker arrays like the IKO, we can probe these hybrid systems in everyday architectures, revealing their hidden potentials mobilizing them toward futures grounded in new modes of collective perception. Critical Immersion Studies reframes immersion itself as a contested field—its ethics, its aesthetics, and its role in shaping collective futures. Sound and music emerge here as resonant presences, capable of sculpting spatialities and forging hybrid sonic societies attuned to critical awareness, cultural agency, and new modes of coexistence.

1-hour keynote presentation, by Michael Fowler

Abstract:

The American composer John Cage (1912-1992) was widely known as a polymath who utilised the Zen Buddhist notion of avoiding egoic attachment as a catalyst to drive a radical aesthetics of indeterminacy that found form in music, art and poetry. As a master storyteller, Cage used narratives about his compositional processes and inter-personal encounters not only in texts about his music, but often as the musical score itself. In this talk I will introduce two such works, “Sound Anonymously Received” (1969/1978) and “Variations VIII” (1976/1978), each of which were born from unique social circumstances and architectonic contexts. For both cases, I provide my own novel realisations in the form of two mythic narratives and accompanying art works. These realisations emerge from my interdisciplinary research practice that integrates analytic methods drawn from pure mathematics, knowledge representation and structural semiotics as a means to rewrite Cage.

1-hour keynote presentation, by Natasha Barrett

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.

1-hour keynote presentation, by Eric Lyon

Abstract:

An interest in spatial projection of sound is found in some of the earliest electroacoustic music theories and practices. Far predating this is an awareness of the inherent spatiality of sound and music, along with musical practices in a variety of cultures that make deliberate use of such spatial opportunities. Electronic, and especially digital musics have increasingly explored spatial opportunities with the development of surround loudspeaker arrays – quadraphonic, 5.1, octophonic, and ultimately high-density loudspeaker arrays, supported by software solutions such as Higher-Order Ambisonics for reproducing sound field recordings and for creating new, spatially rich sound fields from the imagination of the artist.

While this combination of research and artistic exploration has produced wonderful and unique results, the expense of multichannel hardware and the need for specialized engineering expertise has confined much of this work to facilities at academic institutions, and state-funded artistic research institutions. Such institutions have not always been broadly inclusive in terms of which artists are invited to create at their facilities.

This presentation will trace a history of exploration of spatial music at a variety of institutions from Dartmouth College to Manchester University to Queen’s University Belfast to Virginia Tech, with a particular focus on recent spatial music projects at Virginia Tech that were designed to welcome artistic participants who are not often included in academic spatial music practice. The benefits of such approaches will be discussed, along with suggestions for developing stronger ties with communities of practice that can benefit from such engagements, while advancing the artistic and technological endeavors of institutions that support spatial music.

1-hour keynote presentation, by Fränk Zimmer

Abstract:

Sounding Future is a platform at the intersection of sound, music, and technology. It invites artists, developers, and enthusiasts to share innovative practices and ideas. The aim is to foster knowledge exchange and inspire collaboration across communities in art, science, and technology.
The keynote introduces three central areas of the platform. The first is Articles, which combine essays, tutorials, and project presentations in extended media formats. The second is the 3D AudioSpace, launched in 2025 as an open streaming platform for immersive 3D audio. It presents a broad spectrum of works, from acousmatic and contemporary art music to field recordings and music for drama. The third is Worlds, a new section currently in development. It is conceived as an interactive virtual environment where installation-based sound works can be documented or newly created. Listeners can freely explore these environments, with perception changing dynamically through movement and orientation in space. Sounding Future thus links reflection, listening, and virtual environments – closely aligned with the CMMR 2025 theme “Sound, Music: Space, Place.”

30-minute keynote presentation, by Gascia Ouzounian

Abstract:

This talk introduces the concept of vibrational architecture—architectures that foreground energetic, sonic, and vibratory capacities rather than treating vibration as an external, unwanted, or extraneous phenomenon. Beginning with Katarzyna Krakowiak’s Making the Walls Quake as If They Were Dilating with the Secret Knowledge of Great Powers (Polish Pavilion, Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2012), the talk examines how vibrations, tremors, and acoustic energies can reveal the interconnectedness of buildings and the wider ecologies in which they are embedded. Drawing on theorists and practitioners including Maryanne Amacher, Mark Bain, Steve Goodman, Nicole L’Huillier, Jonathan Tyrrell, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and Jan St. Werner, it traces a genealogy of vibrational practices that reconfigure architecture as a living, conductive field rather than a static enclosure. The talk further explores anti-monumental designs in which sound and movement dissolve the fixity of monumental form, proposing vibration as both an aesthetic and political force. In developing this materialist and transductive framework, the lecture advances an understanding of architecture as an energetic phenomenon in which matter and energy are continuously intertwined, co-producing the spaces we inhabit.

30-minute keynote presentation, by Jonathan Tyrrell

Abstract:

This talk discusses recent architectonic experiments that investigate how sound can be experienced through solid matter. It focuses on Bardo: House of the Refrain, a sonic meditation platform installed at a Tibetan Buddhist centre in rural Austria in 2024. The installation features a solid wood surface for meditation practice outfitted with seven low-frequency transducers and supported by an actively bent timber gridshell structure. The discussion situates this work within a broader theoretical framework of vibratory architecture, exploring how such practices challenge conventional design methodologies.