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This paper addresses questions regarding the performance of interactive music compositions through an examination of the author's own works. The questions emerge from the compositional impetus and the subsequent technical design of each of the works. The paper also examines some of the forces impacting the performance, preservation and long-term vi...
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... original version was replaced by a compact single unit ( Figure 4) that we called the Unified MIDI Time Clip (Pennycook 1992a). For this version, then McGill University PhD candidate Dale Stammen encapsulated all the Max functionality from the first system into a single Max external, thus simplifying the process of sending the MIDI messages to the device. ...
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Citations
... Many works face serious reproduction problems after a short period of time. There is a very interesting lecture on the subject by Bruce Pennycook (2008) with the title "Who will turn the knobs when I die!" dealing with two main issues: • The first one deals with the problems created out of the fast development of technology. Works written in a system 4 or 5 years ago, already face the problem of requiring translation from the old software to the new one. ...
... Many works face serious reproduction problems after a short period of time. There is a very interesting lecture on the subject by Bruce Pennycook (2008) with the title "Who will turn the knobs when I die!" dealing with two main issues: • The first one deals with the problems created out of the fast development of technology. Works written in a system 4 or 5 years ago, already face the problem of requiring translation from the old software to the new one. ...
The following paper intends to be a starting point of a reflection on new forms and challenges that contemporary musicians and music creators are facing when dealing with chamber music.
The text begins with a brief historic review on the development of chamber music as an art form and further moves into a presentation of new chamber music formats and a brief discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the new media practices compared to more traditional approaches. The text ends with a reflection on the nature of chamber music and the future challenges.
... » (Tanenbaum, 2005, p. 27) Or, du fait de cette obsolescence particulière, les objets culturels qui emploient la technologie informatique, au titre d'objets culturels, ne peuvent plus prétendre à une pérennité équivalente aux autres objets culturels. De nombreux acteurs ont déjà fait observer qu'une menace d'amnésie plane sur tout le pan de la culture qui ose s'aventurer dans la sphère numérique (Bernardini et al., 2005 ;Pennycook, 2008 ;Bonardi et al., 2008). ...
La préservation à long terme d’artéfacts culturels numériques utilise depuis plusieurs décennies une stratégie consistant à conserver les supports d’une copie analogique. Si cette stratégie a été largement adoptée pour les artéfacts numériques multimédias comme les vidéos, conservées sur film pour une durée supérieure à 100 ans, les artéfacts numériques logiciels, plus complexes par nature, ne peuvent bénéficier, jusqu’à présent, que d’une préservation à court terme. En effet, la migration, l’émulation ou la virtualisation ne sortent pas ces artéfacts logiciels du monde numérique en constante évolution, exigeant d’incessantes améliorations et adaptations technologiques. Nous proposons une nouvelle stratégie de préservation qui opère une dénumérisation d’artéfacts audionumériques logiciels, permettant leur reproduction à partir d’un support analogique.
... 3 Perhaps we are far from the ideal, but it is interesting to consider what would be required to enable the archeology of new media. In our mind, the motivation is quite similar to that of electroacoustic music composers who wish to archive software, digital scores, paper scores, recordings, and descriptions of hardware setups [5,6]; however, until now, there appears to have been little discussion of preservation of the hardware itself. ...
The purpose of this brief paper is to revisit the question of longevity in present experimental practice and coin the term autonomous new media artefacts (AutoNMA), which are complete and independent of external computer systems, so they can be operable for a longer period of time and can be demonstrated at a moment's notice. We argue that platforms for prototyping should promote the creation of AutoNMA to make extant the devices which will be a part of the future history of new media.
There has been an increasing number, development, and availability of platforms choices to prototype electroacoustic instruments in the last decade. This demonstrates a growing interest in physical computing among the “technological-music” community. Bela and Daisy are nowadays among the most popular and widespread platforms specifically developed for out-of-the-box music technology purposes. Each of these platforms has its own unique features, capabilities, and community, providing options for different preferences and requirements and exhibiting an increasing adaptability in terms of computer music languages. This raises the question: which one is the ideal to develop an electroacoustic instrument? In this article, we present an overview of these platforms, among others that have been used since 2000, from the viewpoint of the performer-luthier at the development stage for an electroacoustic instrument to perform music in the wilderness. In addition, based on a specific project the authors are developing, we propose some design guidelines which considers the musical and technological possibilities and implications of these platforms.
Electronic music is a hugely impactful development that altered the entire course of twentieth century music, though it often seems a bit hard to access analytically. This article uses sketches to open a window onto the ways that composers adapted to the exciting but unfamiliar realm of electronic music. In the postwar era, European avant-garde composers such as Berio, Boulez, Kagel, Koenig, Ligeti, Pousseur, and Stockhausen, who had access to institutional studios, expanded their musical thinking in dialogue with electronic music technologies and discourses. Initially, composers made translations to and from acoustic music, but quickly learned to create musical ideas in cooperation with technicians and studio machinery. Composers also took on new scientific insights as they learned how to use electronic studio machines for making effective musical sound. In this way, the studio’s technological affordances and constraints, as well as its collaborative working culture, had major impacts on the progression of both electronic and acoustic music.
We have constructed an interactive touch surface exhibit to re-appropriate a historic electroacoustc composition for the digital age. The electroacoustic work in question is Henri Pousseur's seminal composition 'Scambi', originally created in 1957 at the RAI Studios, Milan. The status of Scambi as a key example of an electroacoustic 'open' form makes it ideal for re-appropriation as an interactive public exhibit, while an existing musicological analysis of Pousseur's compositional instructions for Scambi provide insight for the user interface design and translation of written textual composition process into interactive software. The project is on-going, and this paper presents our current work-in progress. We address the musicological, practical and aesthetic implications of this work, discuss informal observation of users engaging with our tabletop system, and comment on the nature of touchscreen interfaces for musical interaction. This work is therefore relevant to the electroacoustic community, fields of human computer interaction, and those developing new interfaces for musical expression. This work contributes to the European Commission 'DREAM' project.
Les recherches décrites ici abordent la problématique de la préservation à long terme du processus temps réel dans la création contemporaine utilisant le numérique. En effet, nous avons développé une stratégie d' abstraction, laquelle consiste à générer automatiquement une documentation mathématique qui explicite la sémantique d'un processus, représentée uniquement à l'aide de la notation mathématique et du langage naturel. L'objectif et lénjeu de cette approche sont à situer dans le statut auto-suffisant de cette documentation, en tant que support autonome pour la réimplémentation.
The author presents the "Interactive Event Manager" (IEM), a modular framework for realizing interactive electroacoustic works. Developed as a performer's tool for the realization of multiple works by various composers within a single setup, IEM also presents an opportunity for composers wishing to create new interactive works without the need to develop or maintain a complex dedicated system. IEM is a script-driven network of synthesis, DSP, audio and MIDI i/o, and utility modules in the form of Max/MSP abstractions. IEM modules may be instantiated, connected, and controlled in real time via event scripts. Modules may be shared between different interactive setups, and new modules may be created and added to the IEM system as needed. The author presents the general premise and evolution of IEM, its basic structure and scripting protocol, and examples of performance systems developed using IEM.
