Anacoustic Modes of Sound Construction: Toward a Practice

This paper provides an overview of anacoustic modes of sound construction and virtual semiotics—a propositional framework following N. Katherine Hayles’s posthumanism for the creation and analysis of electroacoustic music. Anacoustic modes address the computer at its most fundamental level: the syntactic level of information. This changes the nature of signification as sound is considered first as an informational construct rather than a material circumstance, rupturing the front-loaded meaning that arises from our acoustic experience.

Techniques by Brün, Xenakis, and Tone elucidate the anacoustic concept and form a basis for identifying sonic parameters unique to their methods. This paper concludes with an expanded view of virtual semiotics based on current artistic research by the author, which establishes a symbiosis of anacoustic modes with standard digital practices.