This thesis is about sound and space, and is an exploration of sounds and spaces using Pierre Schaeffer’s sound object theory. It addresses aesthetic and experimental approaches to the exploration of spatial audio and site-specific practices through the intrinsic and extrinsic features of sound objects. These experimental approaches make use of software tools for composition, installation, spatial programming, and sound design, as well as for virtual reality simulation.
The main contribution of the thesis is an exploration of the relationships between sound and space, going beyond the technical issues of the spatialisation paradigm and into issues of place, site, and landscape, as guiding principles for spatial audio practices. The ambisonic soundfield is in this thesis seen as a link between sound objects and spatialisation of sound masses, sharing the same multidimensional space.
The thesis aims to study the various features of sound objects through a multidimensional model where we can access main features as well as sub-features, and sub-sub-features, of sound objects. This thesis is divided into four parts, where the first three parts discuss different aspects of the object–structure relationship, and where the last part is a discussion of possible extensions of Schaeffer’s typomorphological system of identification, classification, and description of sound to encompass spatial features.