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Francisco López 
Musique concréte sonicist Francisco López is a living legend in the world of the avant-garde. More than 150 works and a plethora of performances, installations and collaborations have established him as an artist constantly challenging the boundaries of sound and composition. The Madrid-based sound artist, known for his explorations of environmental recordings and other found sounds (industrial, ambient, classical, compositional and otherwise) will visit Adelaide for the first time as part of a large-scale Australian tour. Over five weeks he and partner Cˇcile Martin, director of Montreal-based radical arts organisation Champe Libre, will explore the country as López engages in live performances and lectures at several universities while also taking time to capture field recordings on their road trip from Perth to Darwin, and also in New Zealand. I ask López, also a researching biologist, if he experiences the same sort of euphoria or ecstasy when he is exploring sound, or is he as confounded by his work as his listeners are? "Ecstasy sounds good to me as one possible descriptor of the immersive experience in sound," he considers. "I'm often involved within the work with sound, both in the solitude of the field recording or the studio, and in the live performances. I'm definitely engaged on a quest for 'losing myself' and being 'confounded' by that immersion. All of this speaks of an ineffable perception of the sonic/music experience. Music/sound can be seen in an amazingly wide variety of ways, especially when the conception of music can include any possible sound and any possible way of using it. From all of these, I find particularly uninteresting those perspectives centered on communication and representation, and particularly appealing those focusing on the instinctive or non-rational aspect of sound. To me, this is precisely the best feature of music, to be away from language and specific meaning." López has performed in a range of places including grain silos and disused railway tunnels. The space affects his live performances in a dramatic way. "The sonic material can actually affect the perception of the space. I position the audience in the middle of a sound field through surround systems, and one of my goals is to give rise to a feeling of being 'inside' the sound instead of listening 'to' it," he explains, "thus transforming the visually-defined space into a space of sound that changes its proportions and dimensions according to the transformations and movements of the sound field. Sound doesn't exist until we hear something, and therefore what we call a sound is always the sound-producing source plus the transmission space. A frequently overlooked fact for live performances is that the sonic entity we're dealing with is a composite of these two elements with an equal importance, both the sound system and the features of the space. The right combination of both - which requires an empirical testing that is rarely carried out - makes an immense difference for any kind of music, if we're really listening." At each of his performances he asks the audience to wear blindfolds while the space itself is also devoid of light "in order to promote a profound listening and immersion into the sound matter, and also to avoid the classic annoying distractions of scenic presence of the artist and his technology." The has had some interesting effects on the audience members. "When you've done hundreds of performances you usually have a collection of weird anecdotes, including people crawling on the floor, crying, feeling as though they are being carried up to heaven by angels or down to hell by demons, and the like," he chuckles. "What I find encouraging is not the extreme examples of this, but the astonishing variety of individual experiences and reactions to the same sonic material. I interpret this as a sign of openness in the content of the sonic creation, and this is also one of my main concerns: to work towards the development of a 'blank' sonic universe." When asked whether his music is intuitive or expressive, spontaneous or reflective even, López responds, "I believe an essential core of my spirit is in all my works - as I think it is for many other composers, despite the Cagean dogma - but never a specific feeling or an expressive instance. There's really nothing specific I want to express or convey with my music. In that sense, it's actually incomplete until a listener has decided what 'to do' with it. It's open for use and interpretation. In fact, I think music only starts to exist when a listener is creating it through his/her dedication and commitment. Before that, there's only raw sound, regardless of the work and efforts of the 'composer'. Or, in other words, the essential act for the creation of music is not the recording or structuring of sonic material, but its appreciation as a musical entity. Anyone can do that."
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