Point, Surface, Twist# Our exploration is rooted in the convergence between theoretical speculation and practical experimentation within sound synthesis. Drawing inspiration from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s insights into auditory perception, particularly the transformative effects of manipulating point-like signals, we explore properties of specific topological structures. In particular, we are interested in the topological composition of the torus and its de-compositional transformation into t...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Workshop at the Institute of Music Technology, Sibelius Academy, Uniarts Helsinki # Workshop in Helsinki, 07-11 of June (daily, 10:00- 18:00), 2025. Tutors: David Pirrò, Alejandro Olarte, Leonie Strecker Students of the Sibelius Academy: Jekaterina Viltsenko, Adolam Cohen, Lumi Mannermaa, Jonatan Snaper, Saku Liimatainen Students of the IEM Graz: Zlata Zhidkova, Roman Gavryliuk, Joseph Böhm, Max Reiner, Diego Piñera Final concert - presentation, 11.06.2025 Intro #| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Cube presentation 2023 # Lecture, Installation and Performance Thursday, 06.04.2023, IEM CUBE This event introduced for the first time the project’s central research questions, aims and its methodology, alongside related past and current artistic works. Contingency and Synchronization: Iteration 2b (Installation)# Contingency and Synchronization: Iteration 2b is part of a series of artistic research works by Luc Döbereiner and David Pirrò exploring the interaction between the determinism ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Floating # David Pirrò In my fragments “Floating”, “Undeterminism” and “Interference” I will talk about three different modes of speculation: speculation through the world, speculation through the self, speculation through the other. These fragments will revolve around a personal re-computation, reinterpreting and perhaps distorting the scientific past through my eyes and experiences within this project. I will now talk about speculating through the world. The image you see here ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Drawing Interfaces for Sound # Olivia Jack NoisePaint is an ongoing exploration of live drawing as an interface for composing and performing sound. The project proposes a playful, hybrid environment for sketching small sound and visual ideas. Each drawing (or visual-sonic gesture) exists within a world of other gestures, which can interact with each other by colliding, intersecting, or exerting gravitational forces on other elements within the world. The project explores synthesis as an emerg...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Research questions# The project’s aim is to generate aesthetic positions in the work with digital sound synthesis that open up speculative alternatives unreachable from standard positions. This opening is motivated by a number of fundamental artistic questions that stem from our practices as sound artists, composers and performers working with generative sound processes: What are the consequences of regarding composition as sound synthesis and sound synthesis as musical composition?| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Undeterminism # David Pirrò In his book “Science and Hypothesis,” mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincaré takes it upon himself to shake the foundations of science. He does so very gently. Poincarè is best known for his contributions to the theory of dynamical systems, chaos, and, toward the end of his life, quantum mechanics. Not so much is known for his contributions to the discipline of geometry. The chapter “Space and Geometry” of this book reads almost like a science fict...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
xCoAx 2023 # Speculative Sound Synthesis: Synchronization# Performance at xCoAx Conference 2023, 5-7 July in Weimar, Germany. DOI 10.34626/xcoax.2023.11th.430 Speculative Sound Synthesis: Synchronization is a live electronic performance by four interlinked players exploring ways of coupling sound synthesis systems, algorithmically, performatively, and sonically. Rather than focusing on making the instruments produce specific results, the performers aim to make their instruments’ material qu...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
A Brief History of the Khipu# Astrólogo Poeta Agricultor by Guaman Poma de Ayala The Bolivian thinker Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui analyzes the representation of Guaman Poma de Ayala, an indigenous astrologer, poet, and farmer, highlighting the integration of intellectual and manual labor, and the conception of Nature as a subject. The image illustrates the convergence of art and science in ancestral cultures. The emergence of the khipu dates back approximately 4100 years before Spanish colonial...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
October 20, 2023. Composition and Speculative AI, Workshop at Next Generation program, Donaueschinger Musiktage 2023. The Composition and Speculative AI lecture/workshop explored ways of approaching AI and machine learning in musical composition, moving beyond imitation and emulation of existing music or specific sounds, and investigating algorithmic adaptation. It explored how speculative methods can inform new generative processes and aesthetics, challenging conventional boundaries. Luc Dö...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Guest Artist: Farzaneh Nouri # Diegetic operands: Exploring aesthetics of non-representational data in machine improvisation# Lecture and performance Tuesday 30.01.2024, 19:00, IEM CUBE The performance presented the results of a research project that speculates on the aesthetic potential of non-representational data within the framework of machine improvisation. Two live algorithms were developed and programmed to autonomously participate in an improvised performance. They perform decision-ma...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Interference # David Pirrò We play together. The sound that each of us makes goes into our instruments. We made them that way: open, ready to let the outside in. The other’s sounds are not just used as an effect, they enter into the inner workings of the instruments, interfering with them, manipulating them, modifying them in ways that we, playing alone, would not think of or reach for.| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Objectives# Abolish the difference between Composition and Synthesis# While com-position and syn-thesis are synonymous in their respective languages of origin, computer music systems as well as dominant musical perspectives on sound production and composition make a clear distinciton between both. This distinction is partly technological and partly inherited from the separation between the composer and the performing musician, which itself reflects the different values assigned to intellectua...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Reimagining the Khipu# Electrotextile pre-Hispanic computer Independent artistic research 2013-2018 Khipu | Electrotextile Pre-Hispanic Computer at Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, 2019. Credit photo: vog.photo_arselectronica With the aim of materializing this research, in July 2017 in Mexico City, I directed an experimental creation laboratory called “Textile Computing and Sonification of Spectra.” Through an interdisciplinary methodology, we delved deeper into its history, symbo...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Expanded Reimagined Khipu# Sonic Performance & Instrument Development Speculative Sound Synthesis Design commission 2024 Low-frequency oscillators (Subaquatic bass machine) & DIY theremin by Corazón de Robota The second phase of this project is focused on consolidating a performative sound piece, expanding and deepening the research initiated in the previous stage. Starting from the basic structure of the work constituted by the conductive strings and electronic circuits, a series of experim...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
What is an impulse response?# The impulse response of a system consists in exciting the system with a test signal and then measuring the system output. When we have a recording of the test signal and the output signal, we can subtract the former from the latter to obtain a measurement of how the system responds to any part of the signal. In acoustics, a similar technique is used for measuring room responses. You start out with a test signal covering the range of frequencies you’re intereste...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Lecture-Performance and Workshop at the Institute of Sonology 2024 # Lecture-Performance and Workshop at the New Music Lab of the Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire The Hague, 22-23 of March, 2024. In the lecture performance, the project team offered thoughts about the role of speculation in their artistic practice in a speculative form, an experiential exploration where speculation takes center stage. They navigated the landscape between aesthetics, sound, technology and methodology ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
ObjectOriginMaterials Studio DeskDomesticWood BikeDomesticMostly metal Kitchen tableDomesticWood Makrut lime (recorded with a Geophone)DomesticWood (living), soil, terracotta Makrut lime (recorded with a contact microphone)DomesticWood (living), soil, terracotta Kombucha (1.7 litres)DomesticGlass, liquid (water, sugar, tea), scoby (fungal culture) Thermos bottleDomesticSteel Woollen jumperDomesticWool Wooden elephantKenya, currently in my homeWood Oat milk (1 litre)DomesticCardboard, oat milk...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Methodology# The project reads the relation between technology and the arts bidirectionally. The question of how technology transforms art and the question of how art transforms technology condition and necessitate each other. Posing these questions at the same time initiates an oscillation between the poles of stabilization and experimentation that gives rise to the project’s central research question: How can the oscillation between technological closure and aesthetic opening reveal unexp...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Talking Knots performance# Oracle reading of a khipu# TALKING KNOTS performance at Fertile Void Festival, Quantum Paradoxes and the Physics of Living Matter, HKW, Berlin, 2024. Photography by Mica Dans. Astronomical khipus were Andean instruments for recording stellar cartographies with strings and knots that symbolized mystical numbers, embodying days, months, and celestial years—like books of prophecy and divination. An ancient code that unveils the divine nature of the cosmos. Due to the...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Team# David Pirrò# David Pirrò is a sound artist and researcher based in Graz. Pirrò studied Physics at the University of Trieste where he obtained a Master’s degree in theoretical physics. In 2007 he obtained a Master’s degree from the School of Music and New Technologies at the Conservatory “G. Tartini” in Trieste. Since 2007 he has been a lecturer and researcher at the IEM. His works include interactive compositions and sound installations as well as audiovisual and electroacous...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Artistic, Sonic and Experiential Outcomes# The uncertainty of the past and the nostalgia of the future TALKING KNOTS performance at Fertile Void Festival, Quantum Paradoxes and the Physics of Living Matter, HKW, Berlin, 2024. Photography by Pablo Torres Gomez. The sonification of the electromagnetic installation ‘Khipu | Electrotextile Pre-Hispanic Computer’ transformed abstract data into a poetic soundscape, offering the audience a unique auditory experience. This sensory immersion allow...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Cube Lecture# Speculative Sound Synthesis# Lecture-Performance Tuesday, 21.05.2024, 17:00, IEM CUBE In this lecture performance, each team member shared their thoughts on the role of speculation in their artistic practice in a speculative form, navigating the landscape between aesthetics, sound, technology and methodology through a speculative lens. They each chose keywords related to their practice, thoughts or views on speculation, which were presented in a strictly timed manner. The entire...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Guest artists# Shuoxin Tan and Joseph Baader# April - May 2025 Shuoxin Tan was born in Beijing, now she is living and working as a freelance composer and sound artist in Cologne. Since April 2020 she studies Epistemic Media at Institute for Music and Media Düsseldorf with Prof. Julian Rohrhuber and composer Marcus Schmickler. Her research currently focuses on Lacanian topology, algorithmic acoustics and mathematical formalization. How to apply “purloined” theory and knowledge into artist...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Speculative Machine Learning in Sound Synthesis # Luc Döbereiner and David Pirrò Paper Presentation at the Sound and Music Computing Conference 2024 in Porto. Saturday, 06.07.2024, ESMAE Porto Download: https://smcnetwork.org/smc2024/papers/SMC2024_paper_id69.pdf Abstract # This paper explores the intersection of technical, conceptual, and artistic aspects of an ongoing engagement with machine learning (ML), specifically with generative ML in computer music, emphasizing the dynamics of the ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024# Symposium 26th - 28th of September 2024 MUMUTH, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz Program Proceedings Documentation Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024 The Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium brought together sound artists, computer music composers and performers dedicated to critical, speculative approaches situated at the intersection of art and technology. The program selection followed an international call and addressed prac...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Agency# David Pirrò To synthesize sound is to listen to sound.# This speculation is based on the concepts I developed during my PhD research. The dissertation can be found here. This research fundamentally revolves around comprehending interaction within the sphere of computer music, particularly the composition of generative sound synthesis processes and their performance. Interaction has become a ubiquitous term in multiple fields, including electronic and computer music. However, the term...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Agent 1# David Pirrò Agent 1 is a continuation of the “Agents” topic, following the Agent 0 case study. In this case study, I further probe the relationship between agency and interaction, understood as an exchange process between agents and their environment. This relationship is complex: agents interact with and change their environment, which in turn changes them. Interaction forms the basis of agency, as the flow between environment and agent defines the agent itself. Moreover, the s...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
AutoRegNN # Luc Döbereiner AutoRegNN1 is an autoregressive feed-forward neural network that predicts the next sample based on previously generated ones. Learning happens online and in real-time while synthesizing sound. Implemented as a unit generator (UGen) for SuperCollider, it uses autoregression and backpropagation with ridge regression regularization to stabilize learning and prevent exploding gradients. The network performs two forward passes for each audio sample, using both external ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Boolean Networks# Luc Döbereiner I have long been interested in feedback in sound-generating processes and the representation of sound in computational synthesis. In the experimental approach described here, a reduced 1-bit sound representation is combined with recurrent network topologies to create a sound synthesis method that has both quasi-organic emergent behavior and a somewhat harsh digital discrete sonority. The synthesis model described here is inspired by Boolean networks1, which a...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Contingency and Synchronization: Conceptual Framework, Artistic Experiments and Speculative Syn-theses # Luc Döbereiner and David Pirrò DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/music_tec-15198 Abstract # Contingency and Synchronization is an ongoing research project exploring the interplay between openness and predictability in computational art. Utilizing distributed multi-agent networks, the project investigates computational synchronization phenomena across installations and visualizations. Central...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Crackle Inverter : Speculative Circuit Design# Ji Youn Kang Inverter (NOT gate) # An inverter, or NOT gate, is a fundamental component in digital circuits, specifically designed to manipulate input and output logic level voltages, representing binary bits of 0 and 1. These binary values are depicted through voltage signals in relation to ground within the circuit. The functionality of an inverter extends to its ability to manage currents in two primary ways: sourcing and sinking. Sourcing cur...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Das Sichtbare und das Verborgene (The Visible and the Hidden) # Leonie Strecker Article published on the Sounding Future Platform. Description # Can visible elements change the perception of invisible sounds? This article examines the work of Estelle Schorpp and Ji Youn Kang, who explore the boundaries of musical perception by playing with the visible and invisible in music. Read # In German In English (Translated)| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Enfolding Plane 4 - Synchronization for 6 Improvisers, WFS system, and Live Electronics # Ji Youn Kang Premiered on 27.Nov.2023 at Muzikfabrik Studio in Cologne, Germany by Ensemble Muzikfabrik and the Game of Life WFS system. Program note# ‘Enfolding Plane’ is a series of electro-acoustic music pieces that are composed for the WFS system. The ‘Enfolding Plane IV’ is written based on the synchronisation phenomenon in nature, for example clocks start synchronising with each other when ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Farzaneh Nouri: Non-representational Data in Machine Improvisation# Abstract# In the context of machine improvisation, non-representational data analysis refers to data that is not directly tied to musical representations. The research project speculates on the aesthetic potentiality of non-representational data analysis within computing processes in the framework of machine improvisation. In other words, this research project aims to suggest an experimental approach to retrieving analysis da...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Workshop at the Impuls Academy 2025 # Workshop at the Impuls Academy in Graz, 18-23 of February (daily, 10:00- 18:00), 2025. For computer musicians,sound artists and composers Tutors: David Pirrò, Martin Rumori, Leonie Strecker Participants of the impuls Academy 2025: Benedikt Alphart, Ted Apel, Francesco Dal Rí, Emanuele Grossi, Georgios Marentakis, Mike McCormick, Nicolas Speda, Justyna Tobera, Lars Fabian Tuchel Final presentation, first performance, 23.02.2025 at the CUBE| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Manifold (2023) # Luc Döbereiner For six voices and live electronics Premiered by Ensemble AuditivVokal, Dresden Performance on May 22, 2023, Kulturfabrik Kesselhaus Trossingen. The piece deals with the ways in which sounds can influence each other, how they meet, transform, mask, and expand. Both the human performers and the algorithmic components listen to each other and act depending on what they perceive, the constraints given by the musical form, and their vocal and technical possibilit...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Phasenregelkreis (2023) # Luc Döbereiner For three oscillators, three performers, and visualization Commissioned by Ensemble Lange/Berweck/Lorenz, Berlin Performance on November 13, 2023, Theater im Delphie, Berlin. Phasenregelkreis (Phase-Locked Loop) is a composition for three performers, three coupled algorithmic sound synthesis systems, and visualization. The piece is understood as an aesthetic speculation that deals with how humans and algorithmic processes can affect each other, i.e., ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Speculative Machine Learning in Sound Synthesis # Luc Döbereiner and David Pirrò Paper presented at the Sound and Music Computing Conference 2024 in Porto. Abstract # This paper explores the intersection of technical, conceptual, and artistic aspects of an ongoing engagement with machine learning (ML), specifically with generative ML in computer music, emphasizing the dynamics of the learning process over its outcomes. Unlike most approaches that prioritize generating “realistic” instru...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Speculative Sound Synthesis / Spekulative Klangsynthese # David Pirrò Article published on the Sounding Future Platform. Abstract # Speculative Sound Synthesis is an artistic practice, a philosophical concept, and a research method. It is an approach to sound synthesis that challenges conventional methods of sound creation and interaction by interrogating the fundamental relationship between artistic practice and technology. In this article, I will briefly introduce Speculative Sound Synthes...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Unclock# David Pirrò One of the fundamentals of all digital sound is sampling. All recorded or synthesized sound waves are conceived as a sequence of values arranged in time in a regular sequence of events, each with the same temporal distance from the next, called the sampling period. Sampling, and more precisely the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, is today the basis of all digital communication, as it allows signals to be band-limited and therefore exchange information using a limited am...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Unlearn# David Pirrò To learn is to adapt. To adapt is to forget This page documents examples and experiments produced with one synthesis model that speculatively explores and implements neural networks under this assumption. Introduction # This work will be published in the paper “Speculative Machine Learning for Sound Synthesis” for the SMC 2024 conference and will be available as soon as as the proceeding of the conference will be online.| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium # From September 26 to 28, 2024, we hosted the Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium in Graz. This intense and insporing three-day symposium brought together 40 artists and researchers who responded to our international call for contributions. The online proceedings, which include both their contributions and the video documentation of their presentations and performances, are available on the symposium’s website at this link: https://speculative.iem.at...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
re-writing# Leonie Strecker This idea occured when we were reading a text about Georges Perec and the Oulipo (Ouvoir de littérature potentielle) group. The group is known for exploring the combinations of mathematics and rule-based constraints for the writing of litature. One well known example of this is the novel “La Disparition” that completely omits the use of the letter “e”. Part of the Oulipo ideas also include that, in opposition to ideas on artistic choice and freedom, rules ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis
Contact # David Pirrò University of Music and Performing Arts Graz Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics Inffeldgasse 10\3 8010 Graz Austria Fon: +43 676 3284006 E-Mail: pirro@iem.at| Speculative Sound Synthesis
AV beats: An audiovisual photoacoustic synthesizer # Paula Vītola Paula.vitola@gmail.com RTU Liepaja Academy Art Research Lab, Liepaja, Latvia Abstract # During spring 2023 I developed a prototype of a modular audiovisual synthesizer that creates sound and visuals by using photoacoustic and stroboscopic principles. The photoacoustic effect is a process of transforming light to sound using a photosensitive material. The photoacoustic effect makes it possible to work with the sound visually ...| Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024