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"Obsession" is an acousmatic piece based on juxtaposition of actual and virtual guitar recordings. The piece historicizes the use of FM imitations and older physical models, and blends them with realizations of the instrument from AI-based timbre matching. Here, listening to the boundaries between real and virtual guitars is more than just a technical feature. It explores the idea of the guitar as an electroacoustic instrument, instrumental tropes, and the possibility of liveness as an aesthetic position in fixed media. 

This study focuses on the melding of human agency, digital media, and algorithmic computer systems to create and explore potential taxonomies, modes of utilization, and genre trajectories for using generativity as a feature of sound-based artistic practices. With the automation of behaviours to produce or analyze sound using indeterminate or continuously evolving processes, artists and scholars can discover new identities for digital devices such as mobile phones, rediscover performance gestures of familiar musical instruments, and cultivate meaningful relationships with real and simulated spaces. In this dissertation, the inherently interdisciplinary nature of generativity in the sonic arts contributes to the way in which I draw on writings and related artworks from disciplines such as media studies, cultural studies, and computational visual art to reframe longstanding musicological theorizations of instrumentality, performance practice, and compositional style. In addition to discussing pieces that work as texts in a historiography of generative sonic art, exploring the relationship between system design and cultural positionalities of artists and/or technologists, and examining generativity as a heterogeneous concept that emerges in a variety of ways that can be practitioner or project specific, I also explore how the creation and use of such computer systems can act as a microcosm for broader issues of power that relate to the presence of algorithmic media in culture and the use or misuse of artificial intelligence technologies. As so much of the implementation and scholarship on generativity in the arts depends on the phenomenological perspective of creators, I have integrated some research-creation projects from my practice as an electroacoustic composer and technologist. Most of these works were not made for this dissertation but produced concurrently as part of my ongoing creative interest in generative music and sound art. They are discussed in order to provide an additional layer of context while I pursue my research questions.     

Habitats (2021) is a multi-movement computer music composition by Michael Lukaszuk. Each movement consists of a dedicated algorithmic composition program that explores digital lutherie with extended versions of physical models from the Synthesis Toolkit and custom-built instruments whose bodies change over time. This article describes the manner in which resources from the ChucK programming language are used to shape these instruments, and how aspects of the design and composition of Habitats are informed by prominent conceptual frameworks used in the cultural studies field. With regards to digital lutherie, this article addresses how I sought to convey a sense of instrumentality using simulated bodies that are projected through use within a particular ChucK program, instead of actual physical instruments. The code and resultant audio for this piece are research-creation efforts that respond to our everchanging definition of composition. In linking my computer music practice and scholarly background in cultural studies, this article also aims to highlight how creative coding represents participation in the formation of culture. 

The development of the laptop ensemble in the 21st century has produced new frameworks for exploring connections between technology, nature and history. What changes when environmental sounds and recordings of earlier music are taken outside of the fixed-media domain and realized through structured improvisations based on listening, gestural control and interactions with malleable digital instruments? The prevalence of the laptop ensemble or orchestra as a workshop or ensemble within post-secondary learning environments has created a platform for exploring novel approaches to music pedagogy in which digital lutherie allows users to move freely through a cultural past and into the future. These classroom or rehearsal settings are also well suited for exploring laptop improvisation in relation to research-creation. With the use of sampling and synthesis to recall and emulate familiar sounds and musical works, interactions with and through laptop instruments can act as a tool for knowledge dissemination. The flexibility of the instrument and the ensemble also creates opportunities for building connections between technologies (e.g., coding), compositional structures and the natural sound environment. In a discussion of music for laptop ensemble that has explored these relationships, we focus on works that were played and workshopped during the author’s time spent directing the Cincinnati Integrated Laptop Orchestra Project (CiCLOP), and examine the intentions and results of the ongoing research-creation project Code, Sound and Power.

The Luka‐chucK is a glitch audio composition environment that uses the ChucK programming language as its audio engine. It can be used to generate audio fragments or entire works. A user interface is provided using communication to Max/MSP via open sound control. A key motivation for this project is the development of features that allow the user to anticipate and control sonic results that emerge from digital audio glitches, and to increase the compatibility of such sounds with other materials used to compose electroacoustic music. With the interface, users can input data to modify pitch, rhythmic, timbral and textural elements by affecting algorithmic devices such as looping and conditional statements. The glitch sounds can also be modified by conventional tools such as a step sequencer, musical keyboard and the use of low frequency oscillators. The environment includes a number of audio instruments based on techniques such as foldover from aliasing, the use of infrasonic frequency content, and quality factor glitches with resonant filters. The purpose of this paper is to discuss motivations, applications and further work related to the development of the Luka‐chucK project.

This document discusses compositional ideas and computer music techniques employed by the composer, resulting in the stereo fixed-format electronic work "Sight Unseen". The design and use of new tools for working with granular synthesis should be of particular interest. The use of the typewriter recordings, and the human voice, notably the way in which speech is obscured via computer manipulation is also another important aspect of the composition discussed in this document. The treatment of voice recordings addresses themes of misinformation and information literacy, which is explored in the music with some depth.