This paper presents a methodology and a set of tools for gesture control of sources in 3D surround sound. The techniques for rendering acoustic events on multi-speaker or headphone-based surround systems have evolved considerably, making it possible to use them in real-time performances on light equipment. Controlling the placement of sound sources is usually done in idiosyncratic ways and has not yet been fully explored and formalized. This issue is addressed here with the proposition of a methodical approach. The mapping of gestures to source motion is implemented by giving the sources physical object properties and manipulating these characteristics with standard geometrical transforms through hierarchical or emergent relationships.

SpatDIF, the Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format, is an ongoing collaborative effort offering a semantic and syntactic specification for storing and transmitting spatial audio scene descriptions. The SpatDIF core is a lightweight minimal solution providing the most essential set of descriptors for spatial sound scenes. Additional descriptors are introduced as extensions, expanding the namespace and scope with respect to authoring, scene description, rendering, and reproduction of spatial sound. A general overview presents the principles informing the specification, as well as the structure and the terminology of the SpatDIF syntax. Two use cases exemplify SpatDIF's potential for pre-composed pieces as well as interactive installations, and several prototype implementations that have been developed show its real-life utility.

A doublebass-player, composer and digital artist, Jasch is active in electronic and exploratory music, in jazz, contemporary music, performance and installation art as well as writing music for chamber-ensembles, theatre and film. His main focus is on works combining digital sound and images, abstract graphics and experimental video in the field of electro-acoustic music and in mixed-media projects for the stage and in installations.Jasch has been invited as artist and lecturer to numerous cultural and academic institutions and has presented installations in galleries and performances in clubs and at festivals such as Résonance Festival (Paris), Sonar Festival (Barcelona), Transmediale Festival (Berlin), the Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and many other venues throughout Europe, North America, Australia and Japan.

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Jan Schacher asks what it is to imagine and initiate an action on a musical instrument. For Schacher, the body is the central element of listening and sound perception, and thus the body, in an embodied and enactive sense, becomes the focus for musicking with both conventional instruments and digital instruments, where, in the latter case, bodily schemata are replaced by metaphors and instrumental representations. This last theme provides a significant topic of enquiry in the chapter, and it is explored from a number of angles, chief among which is a focus (through the lenses of motor imagery and imagination in music) on relations between inner and outer aspects of our ways and means of listening to and performing both music and sound. Ultimately, Schacher identifies a tension underlying digital musical performance brought about by the fracturing of the “action-sound” bond, a bond that is the basis for our sonic perception not only of the natural world but also of the world of culturally defined musical performance.