Real-Time Composition of Sound Environments

In this paper I will present some aesthetic and technical aspects of my work related to real-time composition of sound environments (soundscapes and vocalscapes) through two recent works: “Geografia Sonora”, a sound and video installation on the theme of the Mediterranean sea, a navigation in an archipelago of “sound islands” of singing/speaking voices, sound signals, natural and mechanical sounds; “Vocalscapes on Walt Whitman”, an electroacoustic composition exploring the idea of “poetry as vocalscape” and as “geography” of voices and performances based in the recordings of fifteen talkers. The works have been composed and spatialized in real time by a “sound navigation map”, a virtual score within Max/MSP, the Spatialisateur and Antescofo. Through these two works I will show: 1) by which means a vast sound material can be organized and processed/composed automatically in order to beget a sound environment in real-time through a coherent open virtual score; 2) how such a sound environment may be seen simultaneously as a sound composition, as the trace of a shared experience, as the record of poetry and vocal performance or as the soundmark of a community and of a land.