The Perception of Musical Sound Why Focus on the Perception of Musical Sound?

The considerable development of science and technology in the XXth century has put many new tools at the disposal of the musican -intellectual tools as well as material tools. Sounds and images as well can now be synthesized. The process of synthesis is completely unprecedented : visual and auditory signals can be calculated altogether. This brings considerable changes not only to the generation of images and sounds their morphogenesis -, but also to the way they can be represented, stored, reproduced, distributed. The programming of artistic media implies language, formalism, computation : it affects our conceptions and our notion of reality, and it alters the reception and the perception of art as well as the processes of creation.