NOT BEING THERE
Miller Puckette Center for Research in
Computing and the Arts University of California
San Diego
The term "Network Performance" covers a wide range of possible
situations, with such differing promises and difficulties that it
is difficult to make generalizations. Instead, I'll talk about the
specific possibilities and limitations of possible specific
approaches. The following three examples of possible networked
artistic encounters don't cover all the territory but at least
serve as examples: In scenario number one, two or more concert
halls schedule a simultaneous event, each with its own local
audience and performers. Each concert hall arranges to project
images and sound from the remote performers; their images show up
on one or more screens arranged behind the local performers, so
that the audience sees one or more remote stages as well as the
local one, all from more or less the usual viewing angle. This is
often more expensive than simply bringing the remote performers to
the local performance spaces, each in turn, would be, because the
additional complexities in the setup are likely to outweigh the
travel costs they offset. On the positive side, since it's costing
a fortune anyway, it might be worth it to pay for an upgraded
network connection that can guarantee a low latency of
communication. Another problem is the geometry of the situation,
since the local and remote performers can't easily make eye contact
(although at least each can be given a video monitor showing the
other from the audience's perspective). Finally, if more than three
time zones separate locales in which there will be an audience, it
can get very difficult to schedule an appropriate time to hold the
performance. In scenario number two, a concert (or any other event)
takes place in a single location, real or not. But the audience, or
at least some of it, is telepresent, getting video and audio feeds
from the event, and perhaps can also send information back to the
event. This is a good way to save money and fuel (most of which is
usually spent getting the audience to the show). Latency is not
much of an issue (since we could probably tolerate a few tenths of
a second of delay in audience feedback, so we can just let the
audience hear everything a fraction of a second late and nobody
will be the wiser). On the other hand, there's no way to monitor
what quality of sound and picture the remote audience hears and
sees over their home systems. Also, members of the audience don't
hear and feel each other's presence except indirectly; the
psychology of the audience as a group is missing.
Yet a third scenario uses networking only for experimentation
and rehearsal, presumably in preparation for one or more
old-fashioned physical performances afterward, for which the
musicians will have to travel to get to a fixed locale. Here, since
we're likely to try to contain costs for a rehearsal in a way we
might not for a performance, we will probably not end up with
access to special low-latency networking infrastructures (that will
always be boutique stuff), and so latencies will be noticeable and
may sometimes change capriciously. On the positive side, we gain
tremendous flexibility in scheduling, since the performers can
presumably work from locations close to wherever they happen to be.
Time zone differences are less problematic than in Scenario one,
since there are only performers to deal with, and performers are
more able to operate at strange hours than audiences are. These
examples show that there are wide differences in artistic and
practical needs from one networked music performance to another. No
one way of doing it will satisfy everyone's needs; and careful
thought will always be needed in designing a networked encounter
for any specific situation. My own early experiences with networked
performances were very much in the first mold above: performers in
different sites interacting with each other in front of local
audiences. In the years 1997-1999, Rand Steiger, Vibeke Sorensen,
Mark Danks and I formed a group we called Global Visual Music. We
did a series of performances involving music improvisation and live
computer graphics images, one of which was networked between two
sites (Miller Theater in New York, and Intel headquarters outside
Portland, Oregon; the performers were Steven Schick, Anthony Davis,
Vanessa Tomlinson, and Scott Walton). We quickly decided that
instead of doing telepresence (which had already been well explored
by that date), we would try to do something that actually explored
the idea of the physical distance between the sites. Instead of
sending sounds and images across the network, we opted to send
real-time audio analyses of the instruments and for each of the
four instruments to create, on the other side, a possibly variable
'ghost' for the instrument. In the case of the pianos, we used MIDI
interfaces that could either be used to play each other's physical
piano remotely or to play synthetic sounds. For the percussion we
did an instrument-by-instrument analysis (this is the genesis of
Pd's bonk~ object) and
could direct each percussion setup to samplers and/or totally
different sound generators on the other side. In keeping with this,
we connected the audio and computer graphics scenes in the same
way, so that different audio sources could correspond via their
analyses to movements in the graphical realm, either locally and/or
remotely. Because the relationships between local and remote
instruments, and between sound and graphics, were constantly
shifting, the perceived presence of the remote performers was
enigmatic rather than didactic. Each of the two audiences got a
different show; at each locale, the 'here' and 'not-here' were
treated as essentially different perceptible presences. When not
approached carefully, telepresent performance is aesthetically
dangerous ground. If you see someone on a screen, does that mean
the person is really thousands of miles away, or just in a nearby
closet? Our own group enjoyed a cruel spoof at the hands of the
Convolution Brothers at the 1997 ICMC; they did a telepresent
performance except that, after a few minutes, the 'remote'
performer was smoked out from behind a side curtain. In general,
when we watch someone on a screen who is in another place, we are
in a familiar situation: we're watching TV. Watching TV is a fine
thing (saves fuel) but it's not something you want to aestheticize.
More generally, telepresent performance almost inevitably has the
side effect of calling attention to the technology (the TV screen)
and this awareness prevents us from achieving the level of
receptivity that music (and other performing arts) should ideally
invite in the viewer. Having seen a lot of networked performances
of one sort or another, I find myself most excited by the potential
of networked telepresence as an aid to rehearsal, not performance.
We are likely soon to see times in which information travels much,
much more cheaply than humans. Good musicians can learn to plan
rehearsals in such a way that 50 or 100 milliseconds of round-trip
latency don't stop them from exchanging ideas (and leaving the fine
tuning of timing for the couple of meetings they might get when
physically together for an actual show). Rehearsing musicians can
face each other, even when there are more than two locales if the
geometry is carefully thought out, and visual cues are much more
latency-tolerant than sound cues. Finally, the economics of
networked rehearsal promise to encourage bolder experimentation
with or by performers, since they can interact economically over a
longer span of time than might be possible physically, given the
hyperactive schedules we all now enjoy. It would be good on at
least some days to just do it all from home.
IndexICMC 2008 HomeConference InfoWelcome from the ICMA
PresidentICMA OfficersWelcome from the ICMC 2008 Organising
CommitteeICMC 2008Previous ICMCsICMC 2008 Paper Panel & Music
CuratorsICMC 2008 ReviewersICMC 2008 Best Paper Award
SessionsMonday, 25 August 2008Languages and Environments
1Interaction and Improvisation 1Sound SynthesisComputational
Modeling of MusicDemos 1Posters 1Interaction and Improvisation
2Aesthetics, History, and Philosophy 1
Tuesday, 26 August 2008MiscellaneousAlgorithmic Composition
Tools 1Network PerformanceComputational Music Analysis 1Panel 1:
Reinventing Audio and Music Computation fo ...Panel 2: Towards an
Interchange Format for Spatial ...
Wednesday, 27 August 2008Studio Reports 1Mobile Computer
Ensemble PlayDemos 2Posters 2Algorithmic Composition Tools
2Interface, Gesture, and Control 1
Thursday, 28 August 2008Interface, Gesture, and Control
2Languages and Environments 2Spatialization 1Computational Music
Analysis 2Panel 3: Network PerformanceDemos 3Posters 3
Friday, 29 August 2008Sound ProcessingAesthetics, History, and
Philosophy 2Interface, Gesture, and Control 3Spatialization
2Algorithmic Composition Tools 3Studio Reports 2
AuthorsAll authorsABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYZ
PapersAll papersPapers by Sessions
Topicscritical theory/philosophy of technology, postmodern cy
...sociology/anthropology of everyday sounds, situated per
...history of computer music, women and gender studies, ed
...philosophy/culture/psychology, music information retrie
...electroacoustic music composition, aesthetics of music,
...singing analysis/synthesis, music analysis/synthesis, v
...interactive and real-time systems and languages, music
...human-computer interaction, sound synthesis/analysis, i
...interaction design, computer music, performance art, el
...physical interface design, performance systems, gesture
...language/education/history/sociology of computer music,
...composition systems and techniques, languages for compu
...programming languages/systems, audio synthesis/analysis
...composition, music cognition, music informatics, human- ...music
information retrieval, audio signal processing, p ...computational
musicology, music cognition, music and AI ...music cognition,
rhythm/meter/timing/tempo, computation ...music information
retrieval, audio content analysis, to ...spatial audio, audio
signal processing, auditory percep ...physical modelling, spatial
audio, room acoustics, aura ...sonic interaction design,
physics-based sound synthesis ...audio signal processing, sound
synthesis, acoustics of ...audio signal processing, acoustics,
software systemsphysics-based sound synthesis, virtual room
acousticscomposition, music analysis, software for pedagogyPANEL:
Towards an Interchange Format for Spatial audio ...PANEL: Network
PerformancePANEL: Reinventing Audio and Music Computation for Many
...
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