This round-table discussion brings together composers, sound artists, and specialists in auditory and acoustic research to examine the ways in which contemporary musical practice increasingly destabilizes the boundary between the audible and the inaudible, transforming silence, background sound, and sonic residue into autonomous compositional material.

The discussion proposes a critical engagement with a range of questions that, until relatively recently, occupied only a marginal position within musical discourse: does the notion of absolute silence remain conceivable in the digital age? To what extent can white noise function as a structural and perceptual component of musical composition? And how do the physiological and cognitive limits of auditory perception shape contemporary compositional strategies?

Particular attention will be devoted to the phenomenon of “hyper-silence” within acoustic concert environments, as well as to the aesthetic and structural functions of both “aggressive” and “passive” forms of white noise in contemporary compositional thought. The participants will address one of the central paradoxes of present-day sonic culture: whether silence itself may be understood as a mode of sounding, and whether listeners can be trained to perceive compositional and formal structures embedded within white noise.

Participants:
Svetlana Lavrova — composer, musicologist, Doctor of Arts
Dmitry Shubin — composer, improviser, artistic director and conductor of the St. Petersburg Improvisers Orchestra
Karina Nesteruk — composer, musicologist