Resonance and Depth: Composing Timbral Identity and Spatial Form in an Artist-in-the-Loop Co-Creative Multi-Agent Percussive Performance

Abstract

This research-creation artistic report presents Resonance and Depth, a 9-minute immersive electroacoustic/acousmatic performance that treats timbre and space as primary compositional materials. Built from live electronic percussion and a personal corpus recorded, curated, and composed by the author, the work investigates how timbral identity and musical form can emerge through real-time recombination, spatialisation, and performer-system interaction rather than conventional harmonic development. The performance is realised as an artist-in-the-loop co-creative multi-agent system integrating MACAT, MACataRT, a MIDI-based musical agent, a spatialisation layer, and a conductor agent. These components recombine and transform the performer's material through concatenative synthesis, audio mosaicing, symbolic mediation, physically inspired synthesis, and object-based spatialisation. The work approaches spatialisation as an active compositional process in which position, trajectory, depth, diffusion, width, and apparent size participate in musical phrasing and form. Through this practice-based framework, Resonance and Depth examines how performer identity can be retained, transformed, and redistributed across human, algorithmic, timbral, and spatial processes within an immersive co-creative performance ecology.