Sonic Phantoms

Barbara Ellison is an award-winning composer and artist whose creations have been presented internationally, including her latest 3-hour album, Cyber-Opera. Thomas Bey William Bailey is a recording artist and author of several books on sonic art, including To Hear the World with New Eyes: A Cultural History of the Synesthetic and Cross-Sensory Arts (2016). Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the main figures in the realms of sound art and experimental music.

Sonic Phantoms channels the spirits of those artists and theorists who have long understood the instability of our relation to the world while providing its readers with an intensely personal insight into a compositional practice that seeks to enable in others a different form of knowing and being in the world. A vital reminder for our post-truth times that we are active agents in the production of the strange hinterland that lies beyond and between us, and of the critical role of art as an interventionist act.

• List of FiguresPrefaceAcknowledgements1 Phantasmagenics 1.1 Sonic phantoms as emergent presence 1.2 Presence by apophenia 1.3 Apophenia and creativity 1.4 Creativity with ambiguity 1.5 Ambiguity as intentional practice 2 Inducing the phantasmatic 2.1 Compositional phantasmatic strategies and techniques 2.1.1 Repetition 2.1.2 Persistence 2.1.3 Layering 2.1.4 Noise 2.1.5 Accentuation 2.2 Realms of sonic phantasmatic experience 3 Phantasma Instrumentalis: The Realm of the Instrument Compositional Series: Harp Phantoms3.1 Sonic exploration of the instrument 3.2 Instrument preparation & sonic blotscapes 3.3 Ritualization in performance 3.4 Structure and possible variations 3.5 Inherent patterns 3.6 Auditory streaming 3.7 Sonic figure and ground 3.8 Listening modes and perceptual competition 3.9 Accentuation of harp sonic phantoms 3.10 A second life of Harp Phantoms in the studio 4 Phantasma Materialis: The Realm of the Object Compositional Series: Drawing Phantoms4.1 Initial material explorations (for a literal ‘phono-graphic’ performance)4.2 The Drawing Room 4.3 Transcendent ‘boundary loss’ 4.4 Automatic drawing – ghosts and dissociation 4.5 Drawing Phantoms performance 4.6 Expanding by narrowing: everyday and induced trance 4.7 Loop multiplicity 4.8 Drawing Phantoms séance4.9 ‘EVP’ and ‘OVP’ 5 Phantasma Humana: The Realm of the Voice Compositional Series: Vocal Phantoms5.1 Katajjaq 5.2 Vocal Phantoms#18 (for live voices) 5.3 Ancient and recent vocal techniques of illusion 5.4. CyberSongs: Text-to-Speech-to-Song 5.5 Micro-temporal mechanisms 5.6 Semantic satiation and semantization 6 Phantasma Naturalis: The Realm of Nature Compositional Series: Natural Phantoms6.1 Listening and recording 6.2 Natural polyphony 6.2.1 Layering 6.2.2 Interlocking 6.2.3 Transitions 6.3 Natural Phantoms 6.4 Beyond composition 7 Coda: Otoacoustic Emissions: The Phantom Within ReferencesIndex