The Black Lives Matter movement has thrown into sharp relief many examples of institutional Whiteness which demand investigation and critical reflection. Experimental Sound practices - creativity in which sound is the basis of the artform, including: noise, sound art, electroacoustic music, soundscape and improvisation - are overwhelmingly dominated by White affluent male practitioners, leaving very little space for alternative experiences or diverse role models. Much recent work in diversifying the field has focussed on gender representation, and while this work is laudable and absolutely vital, there is need to address other instances of poor diversity, such as ethnicity. Black and South Asian artists are some of the least represented within the genre of experimental sound. Their experiences, therefore, provide a valuable counterpoint to the normalised White majority. This research will engage directly with practitioners as key informants, commissioning them to develop compositions which act as sites of critical reflection, enabling the researchers to draw out and unpack understandings of diverse experiences within experimental sound. As Tim Ingold argues, there is a distinction to be made between 'knowing about and knowing through' (Ingold 2013, Making). Thus, six practitioners, representing a diversity of aesthetic styles, career positions, age, genders and backgrounds will be commissioned as key informants to develop works and to share their practices, accessed longitudinally through a range of complimentary methodologies (including anthropological participant observation, practice research, interviews and focus group discussion). Key informants will provide access to additional diverse practitioners and informants who will be interviewed on a one-by-one basis. We will also engage key stakeholders and partners from industry (Musicians Union; Punch Records; Ammo Talwar, Chair of UK Music's Equality and Diversity Taskforce), arts charities (Sound and Music; Usurp Arts), and UK HEIs (British Electroacoustic Network), to expand these individual experiences into the wider context of arts and cultural policy. Outcomes from this research will inform the development of a white paper policy document highlighting the challenges inherent for practitioners of diverse cultural backgrounds as they seek to navigate an artform that is institutionally White. This research has potential to inform UK policy in diversity for arts, culture and music education, creating social and cultural impact by enabling our society to become more enriched, resilient, and enabling diverse communities to play equal roles within contemporary artistic practices. Culture contributes £11billion to the UK economy each year, and British pre-eminence in this area is founded on the contributions made by all of the UK's diverse cultures. Empowering diversity of creativity, the independence of alternative voices and the potential for new ideas and innovation has the potential to benefit not just individuals involved in Experimental Sound practices, but the wider artistic and cultural sector of the UK economy. In engaging with this vital topic, we have the opportunity to catalyse action which can bring about positive change in the artform. Outputs can inform policies which will guide the actions of both universities, educating and providing opportunities for new practitioners, and cultural organisations fostering contemporary music practices in the UK.

As a result of the ever-decreasing cost and increasing efficiency of contemporary consumer hardware and software, advanced audiovisual technologies are now commonplace, even in mobile telecommunications devices. Carefully designed products and services, such as the Netbook and the iPhone, exemplify modern transformations in the contemporary technoculture, providing not just new technology, but more importantly, new economic and social infrastructures by which we engage with audiovisual experience and beyond. These devices continue to offer fresh opportunities for and challenges to the way we perceive our everyday life, augmenting our understanding of the world around us, by delivering information to us at high speeds, and in increasingly intuitive ways. \n\nThis is to some extent enabled by developments in human computer interface research. Interface technologies that until now have been too expensive or too complex for mass production are being prototyped and deployed as part of new consumer devices. Amongst these devices are touch screen or 'surface' interfaces (of which the iPhone is the key example), miniature camera / projection based systems that deploy computer vision and machine listening, such as Microsoft's project Natal and MIT's Sixth Sense, and consumer grade brain-computer interfaces, such as Emotiv systems Epoch, and Neurosky's Mindset Electroencephalograph device.\n\nThese developments have captured the imagination of the public, perpetuating a narrative of the technological extension of humanity. Researchers exploring new directions for interface technology support this extension through terminology such as 'augmented reality' and 'sixth sense technology'. Importantly, what this revolution also brings is the capacity for technology to enhance the lives of those whose experience of everyday life is very different to that of the majority, augmenting sensory experience and capacity in an interesting and highly fertile way. Most significantly, rather than restricting the potential dissemination routes for the application of these technologies, collaboration with those whose sensory experience is different and/or unique continues to add huge value and impact to the refinement of these approaches, allowing lessons learned in less common situations to be deployed in more general scenarios, and vice versa. For example, brain-computer interface technology is of great potential value to those with limited mobility, cognitive impairment or other form of disability, and its use in these environments will continue to reveal the extent to which it is becoming generally applicable.\n\nThrough a multidisciplinary approach that draws on perception and cognition, media engineering, therapy, interactive gaming, sound, music and audiovisual arts, this proposal aims to take completed research in brain-computer interfaces, audio-visualisation, participation and gaming, and develop it in partnership with industry and public organisations in order that it might reach its full potential in terms of social and economic impact, by engaging more fully with those within the public sector who both stand to benefit from, and also contribute to the creation and enhancement of consumer-grade real-time interaction hardware and software for brain-computer interfacing and technology-led creativity.\n

The project, Immersive Pipeline 2: Out of the Lab and into the Wild, will build upon previous cutting edge research at Goldsmiths College on surround audiovisual performance environments and bring them to venues outside the university for public performances embedded in the local communities of East London and South East London. The original project took as a premise that, while virtual reality is compelling, the headsets typically used VR are socially isolating. The initial Immersive Pipeline project sought to make fully immersive sound and image in real space, as a shared, social experience. We did so using the advanced facilities of the Sonics Immersive Media Labs (SIML) at Goldsmiths. In Immersive Pipeline 2, we will take SIML off campus and bring it to community venues such as the Albany Theatre in Deptford and the Old Baths in Hackney Wick. We will bring the SIML projection technologies to these venues and work with local organisers to adapt the architecture of their spaces to set up a SIML off-site. We will curate a series of performance events that will present immersive audiovisual works to the broad general public. Having an extended residency with partner Stour Space at the Old Baths will allow time for a commissioned artist to create a new work in a community arts setting. We will also set up a scale model of the SIML, the "SIMLulator", allowing children and young people to play with a mock up. We will conduct workshops on the SIMLulator, enabling school groups and young people from the communities of East London to try their hand at producing surround a/v pieces using music and visuals from their own aesthetic cultures. We will work with a leading creatve studio, Satore Studios, to share our immersive technologies for use in fashion runway shows and large scale stadium shows. We will also partner with the new music charity, Sound & Music in their New Voices programme. This linking of IP2 and New Voices will enable the group, People Like Us, to use SIML at Goldsmiths to prepare a major US premier of a feature length immersive cinematic piece they will bring in late 2019 to the Recombinant Festival in San Francisco. In this way, the Immersive Pipeline 2 project will take research on immersive media out of the lab and into the wild, sharing our knowledge with artists and creative studios, and bring these experiences to new audiences.