Cinema for the Ears pushes the boundaries of what music can be by immersing audiences in their own imaginations using experimental sound.<\/p>\n
The annual Cinema for the Ears concert was held on Monday, Oct. 13 by the LSU School of Music\u2019s Experimental Music & Digital Media program. The showcase featured eight electroacoustic experimental pieces by LSU students, faculty and world-renowned composers with the intention of introducing audiences to a unique form of storytelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to immerse the audience in sound and create kind of a different concert setup than normal,\u201d said Fiona Ju, a third-year Ph.D. student in the EMDM program and the sound technician for the event.<\/p>\n
Unlike a traditional concert with live musicians on stage, Cinema for the Ears was entirely computerized, with all of the music coming from speakers rather than performers. With no visual subject to focus on, audience members were meant to focus solely on the music and how it made them feel.<\/p>\n
The concert was held in the Digital Media Center Theatre, which boasts an impressive sound system of 92 speakers and 71 audio channels. Ju was able to use this sound system to map out the audio of each piece onto different speakers across the room, creating a layered, multi-channel musical environment that literally surrounded the audience in sound.<\/p>\n
At any given moment, one could hear the creaking of a door to their left, the clanging of metal-against-metal to their right or the whistling of wind travel from one side of the room to the other. During one piece, the sound of rainfall coming from speakers above and around the audience made it feel as if rain drops were really falling from the ceiling itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like raining from the ceiling,\u201d Ju said. \u201cBut actually, it\u2019s just because we have all the speakers in the ceiling. I\u2019m just mapping those sounds to the channel of the rain to the ceiling of the theater, so you feel like it\u2019s raining from above your head.\u201d<\/p>\n
The term \u201ccinema for the ears\u201d was first coined by French composer Francois Dhomont to describe how sound, like a movie, can take one\u2019s imagination on an immersive, cinematic journey without the use of visual aids. Dhomont was a pioneer in electroacoustic and experimental sound.<\/p>\n
According to Ju, experimental music is not a single genre but rather a broad concept that encapsulates any kind of music pushing against the status quo.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s doing something that\u2019s unconventional,\u201d she said. \u201cOutside of what people usually think music is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Electroacoustic music, in particular, combines elements from both acoustic and electronic styles of music. For example, a composer might use audio samples of real-world sounds and then manipulate them electronically, adding reverb, delay or overlaying purely electronic sounds onto the acoustics.<\/p>\n
Because it can be manipulated to create unique sounds and produce interesting effects, electroacoustic music lends itself to experimentation. Structure and melody are often pushed aside in favor of chaos and spontaneity. The point of this style is not to be beautiful or pleasing to the ear, but rather to make audiences feel something and to prompt listeners to reconsider how they define music.<\/p>\n
This specific style of music is certainly not for everyone. Ju recalled a concert she attended where much of the audience left after just one or two pieces, but she maintained that it is important to challenge audiences in order to make any strides in the music industry. Afterall, many standard practices in the music industry today were once radical ideas when first proposed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re still doing this,\u201d Ju said. \u201cWe keep doing experimental things. We keep pushing the boundary and see what we are going to have in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
EMDM will host its next event, Laptop Orchestra, on Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Digital Media Center Theatre. Admission is free.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source lsureveille.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cinema for the Ears pushes the boundaries of what music can be by immersing audiences in their own imaginations using experimental sound. The annual Cinema for the Ears concert was held on Monday, Oct. 13 by the LSU School of Music\u2019s Experimental Music & Digital Media program. The showcase featured eight electroacoustic experimental pieces by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2095200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2095199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Cinema-for-the-Ears-turns-imagination-into-the-ultimate-instrument.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2095199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2095201,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095199\/revisions\/2095201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2095200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2095199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2095199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2095199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}