Spatial Music and the Trinity360 Project
Spatial music could be considered as being any form of music which makes explicit and deliberate use of spatial locations, movement, or the acoustic environment. While this form of music has a long and varied history, spatial music performances are often logistically challenging to produce. Until recently, the reproduction of spatial music recordings was also a challenge, requiring the use of multichannel loudspeaker systems or other reproduction formats unavailable to most. The recent emergence of new immersive media formats such as Virtual/Augmented Reality and 360 video therefore represents a significant opportunity for the composition, documentation, and reproduction of performances of spatial music. The Trinity360 project commenced in 2016 and sought to examine the artistic and practical issues associated with this process, through the performance and capture of numerous works of spatial music via 360 video and accompanying spatial audio.
Dr Enda Bates is a composer, musician, producer and academic based in Dublin, Ireland, and an Assistant Professor and deputy director of the Music and Media Technologies programme in Trinity College Dublin. In 2010 he completed a PhD entitled 'The Composition & Performance of Spatial Music', while his current research interests include spatial music, spatial audio for VR, the aesthetics of electroacoustic music, and the Augmented Electric Guitar. He is an active composer of acoustic and electroacoustic contemporary music, and scores and other material are available from his page at the Irish Contemporary Music Centre: https://www.cmc.ie/composers/enda-bates
He is a founder member of the Spatial Music Collective and is an active performer, both of his own work and with The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock, Miriam Ingram, Nina Hynes/Dancing Suns, amongst others. He has also worked as a producer/engineer for a variety of artists and groups such as the Crash Ensemble, Mumbling Deaf Ro, and Conor Walsh.