This is a live binaural recording of two collaborative pieces  of sonic architecture by Matt Spendlove and Amanda Butterworth, composed for 6.1 and performed at project Difvuse, London, May 2025.
Emergent algorithmic processes generate a 3D aural space of phasing minimalism. These works create temporary communities of pattern-makers, where the multichannel environment becomes a shared space for discovering emergent sonic relationships.

Recording taken with Sennheiser Ambeo Headset.

Pattern Making - Live Binaural Recording at Project Divfuse London

Commissioned by the Cheriton Light Festival.
Supported by the AHRC research project ‘Into The Forest’, led by Dr. Eleanor Barraclough

‘Animal’ was inspired by Dr Eleanor Barraclough’s work on the forest themes and the podcasts that she had produced from that research. Karen conceived 'Animal' as an experimental work in using psychoacoustics in a public urban environment to awaken human instinct learnt over millenia.
Beginning in the modern day, the piece leads the viewer back to the Mesolithic landscape at the end of the last ice age. Extensive research was undertaken to re-create the forest sounds of that time through an immersive multichannel soundscape. A thoughtful moment occurs when the audience find themselves sheltering from the ‘rain’ in a cave, complete with paintings from yet another, much earlier era than the Mesolithic. The human presence in the landscape is the audience themselves, surrounded by the natural sounds and suggestive imagery of a world now lost to us.

“We found ourselves deep in the prehistoric forest edge, exploring the primal conditions from which storytelling emerges. what does a human brain do when given the raw materials of sound and silence, light and darkness, myth and memory? The audience reaction to the final sequence was like nothing I’d experienced.
Karen understands sound not only as atmosphere, but as a means to hold an audience in a moment, to guide their emotional and imaginative experience, and enhance their understanding.” - Eleanor Barraclough

Animal

Animal (Mesolithic Forest - excerpt)

Commissioned by English Heritage for their property, Belsay Hall
Co-created with Belle Mellor, Myles McCloud and Ross Ashton (The Projection Studio)

This history-based animation was created to tell the story of the history of Belsay Hall.
It does this through a specially developed character, the Wild Man, which is an emblem drawn from the Hall’s history and the history of the Middleton family, who are most associated with it.

The multichannel audio was created in surround sound. The sound design was created to integrate with the unique structure and features that comprise the medieval kitchen space it is located in, and with the mapped architectural projection for the animation. 
The script and storyboard was developed between Karen Monid, Belle Mellor, the animator and Myles McCloud, who wrote the script and voiced the Wild Man, under Karen Monid’s direction. The projection design and technical director was Ross Ashton, under The Projection Studio.

VIDEO CLIP HERE:
https://vimeo.com/1108705711

“My 2 year old went to see this today with her grandparents and absolutely loved it, she can't stop talking about it!” -Instagram
“It’s amazing! We had loads of compliments about it” - Instagram
“This was absolutely amazing, our kids were completely in love with it” - Instagram

The Wild Man of Belsay

The Wild Man of Belsay (excerpt)

Commissioned by the AHRC research project, INTO THE FOREST, led by Dr Eleanor Barraclough. 
Created for Light Up Trails and exhibited at Sir Harold Hillier Gardens

This unique project was the result of a creative partnership with the historian, author and BBC presenter, Dr Eleanor Barraclough. 
'Song Of The Pine' integrated the cycle of forest ecology with the fireside storytelling traditions of the Vikings and Anglo Saxons, as seen through the life cycle of a pine tree, the original Christmas tree.
Atmospheric and emotional, the piece drew on the audience’s own ancient and instinctive response to the primeval supremacy of ice and fire and aimed to reconnect them to the fullness of forest life.
Using a combination of specially written poetry by Karen, the piece fused modern technology in the form of specially designed foliage projection and a 5.1 surround sound system with traditional storytelling, creating a compelling work suitable for an all age 21st century audience.

Video extract here:
https://youtu.be/uKziRcCkhAU?si=pjD2sGoSb3eee31D

‘Song Of The Pine’ was seen by 70,000 people and the piece was very well received, and was voted the ‘Audience’s Favourite’ by the visitors on the trail that year.

“Karen had clearly done extensive research into my work and used that foundation to craft a resonant, immersive experience. She composed a remarkable sound design that felt both ancient and vividly modern. Being recorded and directed by her as a narrator felt completely natural.” - Dr. Eleanor Barraclough

Song Of The Pine

Song Of The Pine ("It Sang" - excerpt)

Song Of The Pine (Gift Bringing/'The Angel Gabriel' - excerpt)

The title NEuripides merges “Neuron” and “Euripides,” reflecting both the technical method behind the composition and its aesthetic resonance. The piece is generated using an artificial neural network composed of four neurons - a minimal AI system that produces layered sonic gestures throughout the training process. These gestures, often repetitive and evolving, evoke the presence of an ancient Greek chorus: collective, ritualistic, and emotionally charged.

At the same time, the textures and timbres of NEuripides are deeply rooted in the contemporary world. They echo the spectral fragments that define our current sonic environment - from urban infrastructure to data flows and media noise. In this way, NEuripides becomes a dialogue between ancient voice and artificial system, memory and code, evoking how the echoes of the past can still speak through the networks of today.

NEuripides was first performed as a 4-channel fixed media work in Hannover Musik Hochschule in Kammermusiksaal Uhlemeyerstr as part of the exchange program between MIAM and HMTMH. 28/06/2025, 7:30pm.


NEuripides, for 4-channel fixed media (2025)

In TrajSynth, created for 32-channel diffusion, I explore the use of artificial intelligence as a generative tool - not for producing entire sound materials directly, but for sonifying the dynamic numerical processes that AI methods inherently generate. These constantly evolving numbers, often ignored in mainstream AI-music platforms, carry a latent energy that I find highly effective for sound creation. Rather than rely on derivative outputs, I tap into the internal workings of AI - neural networks, training loops - and translate their dynamics into sound and spatial gestures. With a system like Jean’s, the massive data streams generated by AI find a perfect spatial counterpart. One neuron per channel might be a dream for the future... but even now, the creative potential is vast.

And this, I believe, is only the beginning.

Special Thanks To Jean Voguet, for giving me the opportunity to work on CRANE lab's 32.2 volumiphonic device in 06/07/2025 and for inviting me to participate in his Curated By series on Sounding Future. And to Fränk Zimmer, for organizing the project and guiding us through the process, offering the opportunity to present our works on the Sounding Future platform for 3D Audio Space.

TrajSynth, for 32-channel fixed media (stereo version) (2025)

eChOlapse (2025)
Acousmatic composition for 8-channel polyphonic diffusion Commissioned by the PROSSESES festival, Athens 20-21 September 2025

eChOlapse presents itself not as a narrative but as a sonic drift — a non-linear environment where sound moves through states of fracture and erosion. The work suggests a broken ecosystem, a broken system, even a collapse continually replayed. Repetition does not function as return, but as residue; loops falter and fold back into themselves, echoes collapsing into echoes. Forgetting becomes a way of renewal, while recalling appears as a destructive fixation — the urge to recover what sound has already erased. In its multichannel presentation, the listener neither begins nor ends but is suspended in a field of resonance, ambiguity, and attrition. Diffusion operates not as projection but as composition itself, where collapse takes the form of structure and disappearance asserts itself as presence.

à Vassiliki Legaki & “Gotye”

eChOlapse (2025)

Buy and download this course now at www.glocourse.com

Or contact me for 10% DISCOUNT for PAYPAL and 20% for CRYPTO

Email: Maris.amandateam@gmail.com

Discord: Maris246

Course list: course24h.com/courselist/

[Glocourse.com] Acquisition X - Build Multichannel Acquisition Funnel

The Gardens Between The Pillars

The Gardens Between the Pillars is one of five movements of The Elemental Cycles, where each cycle uses a primary element as the principal character.  In fact, all five cycles are considered works for “cinema for the ear.”  For this cycle, the sole element used is wood, including sound images pertaining to wood.  There are books and creaky doors, wood surfaces where steady and irregular footsteps walk, the flow of trees pertaining to The Pillars, as well as divine and earthly creatures, and pure and warpy, rough music to accompany this cinema for the ear.

The Gardens, first and foremost, are made up of interior and exterior scenes, motions and projections, and the emergence of figurative and explicit sounds from the decentralization of The Pillars.

In search of a narrative, doors open and close, pages turn,
The duality of images that represents:

Theory and Knowledge
Beauty and Violence
Life and Death
Temptation and Enlightenment

The duality of these sound-images contains the same motion ‘not two’: Advaya
The Pillars points at transcending this duality through 
The reallocated sound images, sound function, and motions
As ways to navigate The Gardens Between

The Pillars¬ are the paths, which reveal the interconnection of the natural, the inter-complexity of the nurtured, and the intervening of scenes through insertion
Which often feel that what is represented is horrific and cruel

We recognize from the far plane The Gardens as a gestalt labyrinth
Up close we perceive the many, many paths and narratives
Between The Pillars, we are presented implications of sounds that have neither beginning nor end

A wanderer severed from illusion in the infinite forest
An area of the Everblossom trees, a life of fleeting beauty 
It is the worldly sculpture of the Bas and High-Relief 

Realms of the Divine and Mortal

An immersion of boundless rhizome—a chiasmus of sonic ascription
An immersion of all materials of wood perceived 
A duality must be understood to walk the way broadly 
And you will hear it in everything 


The Gardens Between The Pillars

David Quang-Minh Nguyen is an audio engineer, sound designer/re-recording mixer, and composer of concert music. His current interests lie in composing acousmatic works that explore multi-channel loudspeaker expansion, various types of sound spatialization, and immersive audio.

Recognized nationally and internationally, David has had his works presented at the June in Buffalo New Music Festival, where he received individual master classes with Harvey Sollberger, Martin Bresnick, Roger Reynolds, and Brian Ferneyhough. He was an active participant in the Festival DME under the direction of Åke Parmerud, Musique & Recherches Académie d'été de composition électroacoustique under the direction of Annette Vande Gorne and João Pedro Oliveira, and the Sounds Around Me Festival under Thomas Gorbach. He was also selected by Master Artist Robert Normandeau for a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

His works have been presented at more than fifty national and international events, and he is a laureate or finalist in numerous competitions.  He has been published on ABLAZE Records' Electronic Masters Vol. 7 and received an honorable mention at the XII° Destellos Electroacoustic Competition 2019 for his work Misprints.  He also placed 2nd in the XIII° Destellos competition for Adumbrations, was a finalist for the PRIX CIME 2019, and won 2nd place for the ASCAP/SEAMUS Award for his work Weight Stranding. In 2021, his SEAMUS-commissioned piece Whale Song Stranding was selected for presentation on the SEAMUS 31 CD and received the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis selection.  David was awarded the Prix CIME 2023 Residency Award for Whale Song Stranding.  His work Texture Arc the Points won 1st place in the ULJUS Međunarodno Pijanističko Takmičenje Smederevo Competition and 2nd place in the prestigious Concours Biennal de Composition Acousmatique Métamorphoses.

David Q. Nguyen holds a BM from Old Dominion University, where he studied with Andrey R. Kasparov and Mark Chambers.  He also graduated at the top of his class from The Omega Studios School of Applied Recording Arts & Sciences with a focus on Audio Engineering in the Music Industry and Film/Television.  He has received his Master and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his primary teachers are Reynold Tharp, Erik Lund, Eli Fieldsteel, Sever Tipei, and Scott A. Wyatt.

How can form  evolve under a nowadays psychological framework? Is it more difficult to compose long or short pieces and is there any morality in it that serves as a proof of the composer’s skills? My musical interests are focused on a personal composition method that started from my late integrated masters years in Thessaloniki and which eventually was the subject of my PhD research in York. It used to serve as a preliminary stage for an instrumental composition; however, since 2017 the “Selective Subtraction of tone and rhythmic material” composition technique serves as a tool to create but mostly to sculpt the tone and rhythmic material of the instruments that will interweave with the electronics. As its name signifies it is based on a subtractionprocess that gives a certain amount of material. This material forms the basis for an evolutionary process where finally, all these elements are combined in order to give the final piece. Under the scope of electronics it incorporates computational methods like Csound software, Ableton Live and MaxMasp (Sound Synthesis private patch library) in the direction of finding new ways of pattern development and thus evolution of the form.

For examples of the Selective Subtraction of tone and rhythmic material” composition technique enter here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/alutmo3h0ue30ec/AAC-LmZExoUMBr6lVgabz1YOa?dl=0

Sound Synthesis private maxmsp library: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvxYMmv9_S-sgfRtKB-Vq4t2l1PE_g?e=o8BN6A 

PhD thesis: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/20111/
Website: https://manolisekmektsoglousite.wordpress.com/
email: ekmektsoglou8@gmail.com 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Manolis Ekmektsoglou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied composition at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with Dimitri Papageorgiou and in the University of York, UK (PhD) with Thomas Simaku. He also spent a year at Hannover Musikhochschule studying acoustic and electronic music with Joachim Heintz, Gordon Williamson and Ming Tsao. He is an Assistant Professor of Instrumental and Electronic/Computer music Composition at İTÜ, Center for Advanced Study in Music (M.I.A.M.).

Manolis participated in the “Labor Beethoven 2017-2020” project, funded and organized by the Berlin Academy of the Arts. He received the third prize in the Karol Szymanowski composition competition 2023 with the work Motion, in Two, for solo violin.

His pieces have been performed by many ensembles in several festivals in many countries such as Greece (OutHear Week, DissonArt ensemble, Off Borders Festival), Germany (Neues Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Earth, Sky, Space festival, Hitzacker 2018), Italy (Soundiff project), Turkey (MIAM 20 year-Gala), Iran (Reza Korourian Awards electroacoustic music festival 2017), Hong Kong (AMGA ensemble) Spain (Mixtur festival 2016), Austria (NAMES ensemble, Synaesthesis ensemble, Crossroads festival, KUG), the UK (Resonance FM 104.4, Kinetic nights festival, Manchester, Gallois trio, Diotima Quartet, Psappha ensemble, Resonance FM, RNM Call 2022), France (Viberation#2, Réseau inDREAM Network), the USA (MISE-EN festival, NYCEMF, Impulse festival 2024), Argentina (Atemporánea festival 2022), Romania (EELISA 1st conference, 2023) and Switzerland (UMS n’ JIP).

An upcoming publication by Manolis in the MIT Computer Music Journal (Volume 48, Issue 4) explores the impact of emerging AI technologies on music composition and performance. It also proposes an alternative approach to generating textural and timbral transformations in mixed-media composition through the use of a dynamically trained neuron.

Musical Practices in the Contemporary World is his first book, where he tries to sum up what has happened in New Music after the 70s, making meaningful connections with the past and providing suggestions from contemporary repertoire. 


For a detailed CV follow this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ph47cs1c2geuni87r4yhp/CV.pdf?rlkey=eejehdl2u0fc9kgdxcenlhsij&st=6rjxtt9z&dl=0

Stylianos Dimou is a distinguished Greek composer renowned for his expertise in acoustic, electroacoustic, and acousmatic music. In addition to his compositional work, he is an accomplished conductor, accordionist, and electronic music improviser. Dimou’s contributions to the field have earned him numerous awards and recognitions, supported by prestigious international organizations such as the Fulbright Program, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative, Ernst Mach weltweit, Federal Ministry of Culture and Media of Austria, SWR Experimentalstudio, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and Cité Internationale des Arts.

Dimou's musical education began with advanced studies in Music Composition at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where he completed his BMus and MMus under the guidance of Prof. Christos Samaras. He further developed his compositional skills at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music, earning an MA in Composition while studying with notable composers Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Robert Morris, and David Liptak, and exploring advanced electronic music with Allan Schindler "(deceased)".

In 2017-18, Dimou participated in the prestigious Cursus program at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris, where he received professional training in Composition and advanced Electronic Music, under the mentorship of Mikhail Malt. He subsequently served as a Composer and Music Researcher at the OeAD organization, affiliated with the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria.

Dimou’s dedication to artistic excellence led to his selection as Composer in Residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris during the fall of 2019, an opportunity extended by The Embassy of Greece. He earned his Doctoral Degree from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University, where he conducted advanced artistic research and pursued graduate studies as a Dean’s Fellow. His doctoral studies were guided by Prof. George Lewis, Prof. Fred Lerdahl, Prof. Georg Friedrich Haas, and Prof. Brad Garton, specializing in Composition, Music Theory, and Computer Music.

Stylianos Dimou is a tenured Associate Professor of Composition at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen, Norway, within the Faculty of Fine Art, Music, and Design. He specializes in both acoustic and electroacoustic music, with teaching interests that encompass Composition (acoustic, mixed electroacoustic, and acousmatic), Music Technology, Music Theory, and Analysis. Dimou teaches across undergraduate and graduate programs, fostering students' exploration of contemporary compositional practices.

Dimou's research explores the creative symbiosis between human performers and technological systems across various artistic mediums and performance practices. His work emphasizes sonic hybridity and spatial immersion, with a focus on the integration of interactive sound systems, digital signal processing, and multichannel audio. His research delves into the complex structural relationships between chromatic and microtonal aggregations in intricate sonic architectures, with a particular focus on the music of Georges Aperghis. By investigating the intersections of instrumental and electroacoustic elements, Dimou seeks to create cohesive artistic frameworks that expand the boundaries of contemporary music.

Prior to his appointment at the University of Bergen, Dimou served as an Adjunct Faculty member at the University of Peloponnese, Greece - Spring 2024 -, where he taught sound design, interactive sound systems, digital signal processing, and immersive audio. He also held the position of Research Assistant Professor in the Academy of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University - Spring 2021 to Fall 2024 -, where he taught Composition, Music Technology, and Electroacoustic music. His work at these institutions emphasized the integration of technology into music performance, with a particular focus on live interactivity and the creative possibilities offered by technological innovation in the compositional process.

Among Dimou’s most distinguished accolades are the Ulysses Network / IRCAM Award for Artistic Excellence (2018-2019), 1st Prize at the 2nd International Composition Competition "Amici della Musica di Cagliari," and 1st Prize at the International Prize for Composition "Luigi Nono" (3rd edition). He also won 2nd Prize in the 24th Annual Martirano Award, 1st Prize with the Audience’s Prize at the Weimarer Frühjahrstage für zeitgenössische Musik (2012), and the Prize for orchestral music at the 5th [‘tactus] Young Composers Forum (2013). Dimou was a finalist for the Roche Young Commissions at the Lucerne Festival Academy (2013), judged by Pierre Boulez. His academic achievements include the Charles S. Miller Prize (2029) from Columbia University and the Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize from the Eastman School of Music.

https://stylianosdimou.com/biography

Karen Monid is a UK sound artist and projection specialist who has created award-winning sound art pieces and son et lumière works worldwide. Her work is regularly presented at arts festivals and large scale public events.

New tracks tagged #Multichannel