Sound, space and time are inextricably linked. As an architect and musician, I am interested in the simultaneous capacities of architecture to influence the composition and experience of performed music-and of performed music to influence the composition and experience of architectural space. My architectural research projectthe Augmented Instrumentalist (tAI)-sets out a methodology by which architectural spaces are understood as and designed to be instruments-as a means of replicating the unique acoustic profile of the city of Venice during the acqua alta. In tandem with the development of acoustically generative themes within my architectural research; my musical compositions actively appropriate architectural spaces as musical instruments, by responding to the acoustic qualities of specific performance spaces. When performed, my pieces exploit acoustical phenomena such as reverberance / echo and sympathetic resonance to articulate and augment musical motifs. For example, by using excessive reverberance to construct a harmonic sequence, or by suggesting a rhythm from an echo. Architectural acoustics have long had an effect on the development of musical ideas: "... in the old churches the walls were in fact powerful instruments which the ancients learned to play upon… [When it was discovered that] more than one tone could be heard at the same time with pleasing results, the harmonies produced by the coinciding of notes began to be regulated and used. From this partsinging developed [polyphonic music]" (Rasmussen, 1962: 230) This article investigates spatio-temporal interdependence between architecture and performed music within the context of my ongoing research.

This article discusses the importance of active listening when engaging new audiences with experimental and unfamiliar musical formats. Spatial music is examined as a physically immersive medium in which the audience is implicated as an active component in the execution of its performance. A brief account of the historic context of spatial music will be presented alongside speculation for the trajectory of its future; particularly its potential as a model for audience engagement. This article will first consider how spatially immersive performances have the capacity to activate listeners and how can this help to engage new audiences with new ways of listening. It will also question the notion of inhabiting spatial music, with an investigation of the multiple ways in which spatial music relates to physical space and the terms of its inhabitation. The concept of virtual listening will be discussed in response to trends towards passive hearing, as driven by recent technological developments in acoustic software and hardware, and the resultant abstraction of the spatial and social dynamics of sound in virtual space. The physiological and psychological differences between listening and hearing will also be examined as a means of establishing fundamental differences in the ways that we interact with music, and questioning what our listening habits tell us about audience engagement in the context of experimental music performance. This article will also question the individual roles of the musician, composer, architect/designer and audience in the ongoing responsibility to improve audience engagement in new, or unfamiliar musical works. Importantly, this article will also explicitly examine who we are referring to when we use the term ‘new audiences’. Major developments in acoustic technology during the last few decades have somewhat confused the diagram between music, space and listener. The understanding of which elements are active and which are passive is especially ambiguous at a time when ambisonic and binaural technologies have become developed enough to provide accurate simulations of the abstract, acoustic qualities of spaces, but on virtual terms. Architects, composers, musicians, engineers and audiences are at a crossroads in the development of new music and experimental, spatiosonic practice. ‘Spatiosonic’ is a hybrid term which is used throughout this article to describe work and phenomena which regard space (spatio) and sound (sonic) as equal, interactive partners. This article considers some of the opportunities and limitations at stake in current techniques of composition, performance and listening.

Natural language is a high-dimensional form that evolved through innovation and repetition over millennia. We tend to imagine language in the shape dictated by our writing system, as words on a page, or as sound. The aim of this paper is to explore how one aspect of this high-dimensional form could be rendered in 3D. Contemporary software developed for the production of film and video animation became a tool for us to model natural language. The paper begins with an overview of historical material about features of language and computational design that became relevant for our project. The whole system and structure of a language, its grammar has been compared to a geometry for centuries, as principles that define its shape. One aspect of this complex configuration was selected for 3D modelling; evidentiality. This aspect of every language points at the evidence for what people are saying. The paper lays out the research trajectory that allowed us to conceive of evidentiality as a third dimension, which is often lost in translation. We offer a step-by-step account of our methodology and 3D design process. Our findings consist of four introductory prototypes and digital 3D images, each one designed on the basis of a short language sample. The portrayal of a language excerpt as a digitally frozen shape enabled us to print natural language in 3D. Such 3D language objects not only extend the legacy of form-finding within computational design, but also allows for spatial intuition to help us get a more solid grasp of languages we may not speak.