What are sound scores? Which composers around the world work with audio scores? What methods do these composers develop? How does the interpretation of audio scores differ from written notation? What new skills do composers have to acquire and what new questions do they have to deal with in order to compose with audio scores? What can psychoacoustics contribute to clarifying these questions and how does the concept of mimesis (imitation) relate to the aesthetic analysis and evaluation of audio scores?

Composers, musicians, psychoacousticians, and musicologists will explore these questions in close collaboration. To get answers to these questions we will launch an international open call to composers, inviting them to submit compositions based on an audio score on the one hand and set up a composition lab for compositional experimentation with audio scores and its interpretation on the other. In this lab, we create space for analysis and debate regarding the different methods and concepts underlying these audio scores and examine the theoretical concept of mimesis in terms of its applicability to the aesthetic analysis and evaluation of audio scores. In order to better understand the perception of rhythm, pitch and timbre in the interpretation of audio scores, specific audio scores are developed together with psychoacousticians and their interpretation is analyzed using psychoacoustic methods.

Sound as Score aims to create awareness for this compositional approach and an intensive exchange between composers, musicologists and psychoacousticians.

The primary staff involved in the project are Elisabeth Schimana (composer), Susanne Kogler (musicologist), Piotr Majdak (psychoacoustician), and Katharina Pollack (audio engineer, auditory modeling).

Recent activities: 

• The project website soundscore.org is online: Check the wonderfully designed project logos and stay up-to-date with the most recent activities of Sound as Score. 
• Katharina Pollack and Piotr Majdak gave a talk at the Workshop "Perception, Listening, Mimesis and Critique" (organized by Susanne Kogler within musikprotokoll of Steirischer Herbst 2024). Title of the talk: "Modeling the Peripheral Auditory Processes Involved in Mimesis" (5.10.2024).
• Katharina Pollack and Piotr Majdak have recorded Virus 3.6.1, a real-time composition of Elisabeth Schimana, played via audio scores by the Black Page Orchestra in Graz, Leechkirche with 9 microphone arrays, 200 audio channels in total. Performance done within "musikprotokolle" (5.10.2024).