Orion Visiting Scholar Lecture
Jude Brereton, Professor of Audio and Music Technologies
Singing in space(s): Past, present and future

Music happens in acoustic space; for centuries composers and musicians have exploited the relationship between music and acoustics to great effect. Acoustic science has moved in huge strides from the days of using canons to capture the acoustic characteristics of a concert hall for further analysis. Audio digital technology allows us to capture data on room acoustics in great detail and use this to ‘auralise’ virtual sound environments allowing us to place a performer — virtually — in any acoustic space we choose. This presentation will report on learnings from the ongoing interdisciplinary project Architexture, which explores the connections and interplay between architectural acoustics, musical performance, and audience engagement through the use of interactive auralisation, composition and live events. The wealth of opportunities for interdisciplinary work on virtual acoustic reconstruction will also be discussed with a focus on engagement and access to the historical, present, and future of heritage spaces.

Jude Brereton is Professor of Audio and Music Technologies in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at the University of York, UK and currently Orion Visiting Scholar at the School of Music, University of Victoria. Her research centers on the analysis and perception of music performance in real, virtual and augmented acoustic environments; she is particularly interested in the role of spatial sound to enhance performer and listener experience and interaction.

For over 20 years she has been active in seeking to improve inclusion and diversity in audio engineering and creative technologies education, and is currently Co-Investigator of an AHRC funded project to develop and evaluate co-created EDI interventions in Virtual Production.  As a musician, linguist and audio/acoustics specialist, her research and teaching is inherently interdisciplinary; she finds the greatest inspiration in collaborating with  musicians, scientists and engineers and seeks to work across and beyond disciplinary boundaries to gain a deeper understanding of our human relationship with sound and audio.

Photo credit: © Kippa Matthews