An instrument for composing with space itself.
“When new instruments will allow me to write music as I conceive it … the movement of sound-masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived.”
Edgard Varèse, The Liberation of Sound
The Spacesizer is a musical instrument built to keep that hundred-year-old promise. Instead of writing notes, the composer defines behavior: autonomous agents move sound through three-dimensional space, and the instrument generates their trajectories. Where sounds are located, when they occur, and what they sound like are three independent dimensions, each controlled separately, each playable expressively through MPE MIDI.
Where Moljebka Pvlse's recorded work constructs spaces for the listener to inhabit, the Spacesizer makes spatial movement itself performable.
Developed by Fredrik Mathias Josefson as doctoral artistic research (Dr. sc. mus.) at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg / Ligeti Zentrum, under the research title A Method and Toolkit for Spatializing 3D Audio Using Artificial Intelligence. The project spans instrument design, spatial audio (HOA, Ambisonics), and artistic research methodology.