Sound Spatialisation, Free Improvisation and Ambiguity.

This paper documents emergent practice led research that brings together live sound spatialisation and free improvisation with digital tools in a performance context. An experimental performance is described in which two musicians – a turntablist and a laptop performer – improvised, with the results being spatialised via multiple loudspeakers by a third performer using the Resound spatialisation system. This paper focuses on the spatial element of the performance and its implications, its technical realisation and some aesthetic observations centring on the notion of ‘ambiguity’ in free improvisation. An analysis raises numerous research questions, which feed into a discussion of subsequent, current and future work.