Introduction: Leonardo Music Journal 29

Abstract

thematic issues for over 20 years. This is the second time in a row that this journal has been published without an overarching theme. I confess that I was not entirely convinced that nonthematic issues would be as exciting as the thematic ones had been. But I must admit: I am not at all disappointed. The previous one worked just fine. And the present one works really well too. Our former editor-in-chief, Nicolas Collins, had an eye for spotting themes that were exciting, innovative and relevant. Nevertheless, I often wondered whether or not thematic issues were preventing potential authors from engaging with the journal more widely. Of course, both approaches have their advantage and disadvantages. The variety of high-quality papers that were submitted for this issue is impressive. The volume covers a wide range of topics, some of which I was not even aware were being developed in such depth, from writings about musique concrete in Korean, to spiritualism and activism, to virtual reality musical instruments, genetic music and 3D music notation, to cite but six. It was a real treat to have had the opportunity to read these papers ahead of their publication. I am delighted to have been invited to introduce this issue, which opens with Kat Austen’s article addressing what is perhaps one of the most significant global issues of our time: climate change. Austen created compelling music using data collected at the Arctic, and I was excited to learn how she engaged with the data and repurposed the scientific equipment for measuring them. Also politically motivated is Aviva Rahmani’s Blued Trees work. It combines concepts from music, acoustics, art and environmental policy. Hundreds of GPS-located trees in the path of proposed natural gas pipelines across the North American continent were painted with a sinewave symbol. Data from the GPS locations and interpretations of geographic features informed the composition. Virtual Reality (VR) technology has been around for a while, and a number of musicians and artists have experimented with it. The article by Anıl Çamcı and John Granzow brings something innovative: they combine VR and digital fabrication technology to design new musical instruments. And Kıvanç Tatar, Mirjana Prpa and Philippe Pasquier introduce a piece based on a VR environment of their own design, where a performer interacts with an artificial agent though breathing. They employed multiagents combined with emotion recognition systems to control the parameters of the piece. A note by David Kim-Boyle introduces an approach to notating music in three dimensions. He is interested in real-time notation of generative music and also dynamic visualizations of music. The author illustrates his ideas by means of examples and discusses the potential of his 3D notation methods for implementing immersive mixedreality music notation systems. The article by Yuan-Yi Fan explores sound spatialization techniques to harness listeners’ experience in a given space. The author presents a framework to think about the interplay between moving listeners and moving sounds. The framework, consisting of object-based audio, indoor positioning system and algorithmic spatialization strategies, is demonstrated by means of a case study installation. Although not strictly connected to VR research per se, Fan’s framework is bound to inspire the development of sophisticated systems for auditory immersion in VR environments. The multimedia piece Landscape: Home by Chaz Underriner uses an electric guitar, video projections and a surround-sound system. Underriner’s article articulates the representation of reality in art, which makes it possible to render the unreal familiar and the real unfamiliar. The author uncovers techniques for representing surreal realities in literature and compares them with well-established practices in electroacoustic music. Audio feedback can generate fascinating sounds. It is often thought that filtering is caused only by the acoustic properties of a room. Lilac Atassi’s note reminds us that the equipment (e.g. the speaker and microphone) also filters the sounds. She introduces her endeavors to reduce the effect of audio equipment’s frequency-response on the sound. Virtual reality and mixed reality are blurring the distinction between the real and surreal. Playing music with introduction