Deutschlandfunk broadcast: Music as Code

Listen to ZKD at today's Atelier neuer Musik on Deutschlandfunk with the following co-production by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Anna Schürmer (musicology) und Prof. Florian Hollerweger, Ph.D. (ZKD). The broadcast can be streamed from the Deutschlandfunk webesite for seven days after it airs.

Music as Code – Code as Music
A small history of computer music: from Bell Labs to algoraves
How do we perceive sounds that are no longer notated on staff paper, but instead programmed with computers? What is the nature of sound generated by algorithmic processes? And how does our auditory perception change when we listen to musical programming languages? Anna Schürmer and Florian Hollerweger – professors of musicology and digital innovation at HfMT Köln – sketch in this broadcast, how our understanding of music shifts if we no longer regard it as a closed object, but as a fluid, dynamic interplay of human, machine, and code. Using historic sound recordings and small live-coding sessions, the program traces the steps of computer music from the 1950s until today.

Bibliography
for particularly interested listeners

• Aaron, Samuel. 2016. "Sonic Pi: Performance in education, technology and art“. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 12 (2): 171–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2016.1227593.
• Aaron, Samuel, and Alan F Blackwell. 2013. "From Sonic Pi to Overtone: Creative musical experiences with domain-specific and functional languages“. In Proceedings of the First ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modeling & Design, 35–46.
• Abelson, Harold, and Gerald Jay Sussman. 1985. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. 1. ed. MIT Press.
• Ariza, Christopher. 2011. "Two pioneering projects from the early history of computer-aided algorithmic composition“. Computer Music Journal 35 (3): 40–56. https://doi.org/10.1162/COMJ_a_00068.
• Doornbusch, Paul. 2004. "Computer sound synthesis in 1951: The music of CSIRAC“. Computer Music Journal 28 (1): 10–25.
• ———. 2005. The Music of CSIRAC: Australia’s First Computer Music. Common Ground.
• ———. 2013. "The music of CSIRAC, some untold stories“. In Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Electronic Art, eds. K. Cleland, L. Fisher, und R. Harley, 1–3. Sydney. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9654.
• ———. 2017. "Early computer music experiments in Australia and England“. Organised Sound 22 (2): 297–307. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771817000206.
• Farnell, Andy. 2010. Designing Sound. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press.
• ———. 2011. "Behaviour, structure and causality in procedural audio“. In Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments, eds. Mark Grimshaw, 313–39. Pennsylvania: Hershey.
• Feaster, Patrick. 2010. "Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville: an annotated discography“. ARSC Journal 41 (1).
• ———. 2019. "Enigmatic Proofs: The archiving of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograms“. Technology and Culture 60 (2): S14–S38. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2019.0062.
• Hiller, Lejaren A., and Leonard M. Isaacson. 1959. Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Hollerweger, Florian. 2021. "Streaaam: A fully automated experimental audio streaming server“. In Proceedings of the Audio Mostly Conference, 161–68. Virtual/Trento, Italy: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3478384.3478426.
• ———. 2024. "Audio beyond demand: Creative reinventions of the broadcast listening experience“. In Innovation in Music: Technology and Creativity, eds. Jan-Olof Gullö, Russ Hepworth-Sawyer, Justin Paterson, and Rob Toulson, 2:172–88. Perspectives on Music Production. Milton Park: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003118817-13.
• Lefford, Nyssim, and Barry Vercoe. 1999. "An interview with Barry Vercoe“. Computer Music Journal 23 (4): 9–17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680674.
• Mathews, Max. 1963. "The digital computer as a musical instrument“. Science 142 (3592): 553–57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1712380.
• Mathews, Max V. 1969. The Technology of Computer Music. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press.
• McCartney, James. 1996. "SuperCollider: A new real time synthesis language“. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, 257–58. Hong Kong.
• Park, Tae Hong. 2009. "An interview with Max Mathews“. Computer Music Journal 33 (3): 9–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40301041.
• Puckette, Miller. 1988. "The Patcher“. In Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, 420–29. San Francisco: International Computer Music Association.
• ———. 1991. "Combining event and signal processing in the MAX graphical programming environment“. Computer Music Journal 15 (3): 68–77.
• ———. 1996. "Pure Data: Another integrated computer music environment“. In Proceedings of the Second Intercollege Computer Music Concerts, 37–41. Tachikawa, Japan.
• Roads, Curtis. 1980. "Interview with Max Mathews“. Computer Music Journal 4 (4): 15–22.
• Sterne, Jonathan. 2003. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
• Stowell, Dan, eds. 2009. "sc140: 22 pieces by artists from around the world, each piece created with just 140 characters of code.“ 2009. https://supercollider.github.io/sc-140.html.
• Thompson, Izaak, and Florian Hollerweger. 2023. "Pure Covidata: An automated sonification of the Covid-19 pandemic’s recent state“. In Psychoacoustics in the Loop: Proceedings of the 7th Interactive Sonification Workshop, eds. Niklas Rönnberg, Sara Lenzi, Tim Ziemer, Thomas Hermann, and Roberto Bresin, 75–81. Delmenhorst, Germany: Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK); CITEC, Bielefeld University. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7552251.
• Vercoe, Barry. 1985. Csound: A Manual for the Audio-Processing System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Media Lab.