To think what the ear has already heard. Following a trace – intuitively, attentively, sensing the curvatures of sound, spinning them forward. All action arises with and through listening.

But what emerges in the space between imagination, perception, and tool?

In his lecture “Toward a Tactile Aesthetics of Listening,” Thomas Gorbach explores the role of auditory practice in the digital compositional process. Drawing from his own artistic experiences – from instrumental performance to the development of the Vienna Acousmonium – he describes composing as a form of auditory thinking, as a process of tracing within the acousmatic space. In Gorbach’s compositional approach, contemporary technologies significantly expand the creative space. Working with digital tools, multichannel spatial organization, and algorithmic processes opens new ways of imagining, shaping, and setting sonic relationships in motion. Key areas of focus include the layering of sound materials – seen as a densification or even overflow of the imagined sound gallery – the refinement of montage techniques, and a specific transparency within polyphonic textures. At the core of his work lies the transformative use of gesturally applied parameters: pitch & time, colour & space, tim & tom – terms that in Gorbach’s approach stand less for abstract axes and more for energetic movements in mutual tension and interpenetration. In this way, the classical system of compositional order is deliberately set in motion – within a field oftension between control and permeability, between structure, gesture, and acoustic superimposition.