Aoqi Deng

Aoqi Deng is a composer and sound artist working at the intersection of composition and spatial installation, driven by a sustained inquiry into how sound constructs and inhabits space. Trained in vocal performance and piano from childhood and later drawn to electronic synthesis, Deng received his undergraduate and graduate education in Tonmeister programmes at the Communication University of China and McGill University, grounding his practice in both compositional and technical expertise. He approaches music as a form of spatial design—concerned not only with melody and harmony, but with the positioning, movement, and dimensionality of sound itself. His current project presents five original compositions rendered in spatial audio, building a three-dimensional acoustic environment in which synthesizers envelop the listener, strings and brass recede behind, harmonies ascend above, and drums and lead vocals anchor the foreground. Sound sources shift dynamically over time, transforming the listener from passive recipient into active explorer of the sonic field. The work is grounded in Marshall McLuhan's theory of acoustic space—the idea that pre-modern human perception was shaped by an enveloping, simultaneous, and multidirectional engagement with sound, before being gradually displaced by the linearity of visual culture. For Deng, spatial audio is not a technical novelty but a conceptual reclamation: an attempt to restore the holistic, immersive conditions of acoustic experience, and to examine how the medium of sound itself shapes perception, behavior, and social interaction.