Volume 40, No. 1Futurity

Futurity marks the fourth volume of Chroma since its reboot, and features fully-refereed papers from the Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC) 2024, hosted by the Australian Institute of Music and chaired by Dr Mark Oliveros. Held across Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal/Sydney and online, the conference theme invited participants to contemplate the future of music and how technologies impact sound, compositional practices and performance.

Two contributors in this volume explore the expressive potential of gestural control in their work. In Developing Ensemble Works for Acoustic Instruments and Audiovisual Media, Nava Ryan investigates how technology can serve as a bridge between performers and audio-visual elements. Through the use of TouchDesigner, Pure Data and wireless sensor gloves, Ryan proposes a method that foregrounds performer agency and deepens the connection between performer and work. Sophie Rose’s Drowning in the Weight of Your Expectations uses gestural interaction to engage with themes of identity, power, and resistance. For Rose, technology functions as both a critical lens and a performative tool, reinforcing the role of embodied agency in narrative construction.

Angus MacLaurin and Mike Callander’s “Like Embers in the Tune”: an examination of Burial’s sample reuse addresses technology and affect in the context of electronic music production. Focusing on British producer Burial, they trace the reuse of four vocal samples across seventeen years of his work, demonstrating how repetition and self-reference can evoke emotional resonances. Their analysis highlights how aesthetic constraints and technical limitations can produce rich affective experiences.

This volume also introduces a new “research-in-progress” section, offering a space for  contributors to reflect on the future directions of their work. Alexandros Drymonitis and Marinos Koutsomichalis present Composing for Acoustic Robots - Instant Synthesis For Computer-Controlled Acoustic Instruments Through Live Coding And AI, outlining their experiments with real-time composition for two instruments, a Yamaha Disklavier and a MIDI-controlled organ, via LiveLily and a recursive neural network capable of generating musical patterns on the fly.

Finally, Chroma is itself looking to the future with the appointment of a new editorial team comprising Donna Hewitt, Mike Callander and W. Sze Tsang. We extend our deepest thanks to outgoing editor Charles Martin for his dedication and leadership in the journal’s revitalisation in recent years.