Spatial Metaphors for Signal Processing Graphs: a Language for Collaborative Composition
11.03.2025 Blauer Saal
Ludvig Elblaus
Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden
This talk will trace how spatial metaphors have been used in a series of artistic projects to provide a handle on abstract signal processing graphs, to allow for intuitive and direct manipulation of large complex systems. As a kind of conceptual architecture, that sometimes link directly to the characteristics of a physical site, the spatial mental models guiding the development, composition, and performance practices, of custom digital musical instruments, provide a language and vocabulary that facilitate collaboration. By drawing on the kinetic, embodied, gestural and mechanical, a set of models have been developed that will be explained conceptually, described in their implementation, and demonstrated with short musical examples.
Bio: Ludvig Elblaus is an artist and researcher working primarily with computational materials to create electroacoustic music, as well as audio-visual installations, museum exhibits, and contributions to larger collaborative works in several traditions, e.g. opera, theatre, and dance. Elblaus is based in Stockholm, Sweden, where he got his PhD in Sound and Music Computing in 2018 at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He teaches at the Royal College of Music in the Electroacoustic Music Composition programme, as well as the Artistic Interdisciplinary Master programme. His latest projects include commissions for the GRM Acousmonium, the Labor Sonor Festival, the Elevate Festival, and performances in Stockholm, Cairo, Vienna, Paris, Zurich and Graz. Elblaus collaborates in the electro-acoustic improvisation ensemble The Schematics (with Erik Calälv, Katt Hernandez, and Daniel M. Karlsson), the networked music project End of Text (ETX) (with Luc Döbereiner) and the musical and artistic research duo utrumque (with Gerhard Eckel).