Displaced Soundscapes: a Survey of Network Systems for Music and Sonic Art Creation
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LMJ13_02body_005-096 11/25/03 2:57 PM Page 53 Displaced Soundscapes: A Survey of Network Systems for Music and Sonic Art Creation Álvaro Barbosa ABSTRACT The introduction of various collaborative tools, made possible by the expansion of computer network systems and ollaboration has long been a key element in perimeter: 40,009 km). Even with communications technology, has C led to new methods of musical music; therefore, the use of collaborative systems based on data transfer at the speed of light composition and improvisation. computer networks to achieve musical results were a natural (approximately 300,000 km per The author describes a number development. The advent of computer network music dates sec) and unlimited bandwidth, of recent music and sound art back to the late 1970s with early experimental performances bidirectional latency would reach projects involving the use of network systems that enable in California by the League of Automatic Music Composers approximately 133.4 msec, which is geographically displaced [1]. Up until the early 1990s, systems for musical collabora- much higher than the tolerable creators to collaboratively tion using computers were based on local networks. In the last threshold. With such numbers in generate shared soundscapes. decade, the massive worldwide growth of the Internet has in- mind, it is not surprising that net- Various system designs, ideas creased the possibilities for composers, performers and audi- work delay is an assumed part of and concepts associated with this interaction paradigm are ences. However, it is well known that the phenomenon of creating music on-line. presented and classified by the network delay is a major drawback for real-time collaboration The thought that network delay author. over global networks. At the global level, physical limitations is particular to the medium and in current network technology introduce higher latency than that composers should embrace is acceptable for real-time acoustic collaboration. this fact when creating music is For the human ear to perceive two sounds as simultaneous, clearly expressed by experimental artist Atau Tanaka in an in- the sounds should not be displaced in time more than 20 msec terview with Golo Föllmer: [2], which means that for mutual awareness to be supported I find Internet time delay rather interesting and I think of it as in a bilateral performance, the maximum threshold would be a kind of unique acoustic of this media. [R]ather than to around 40 msec (the time it would take a performer to per- play existing music on this new time basis, what is interesting to ceive a second performer’s reaction to his or her action). It me is trying to find a musical language that works on this time should be noted that the perception of two different sounds axis. ...[3] performed simultaneously is strongly dependent on sound This same idea motivated the SoundWIRE group at the Cen- characteristics (timbre, pitch and loudness), musical style and ter for Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford other types of feedback such as visual or physical stimuli. Nev- University to conduct significant research over the last few ertheless, a 20-msec threshold should be adequate. years to address the influence of network conditions in acoustic If we consider the smallest possible peer-to-peer connection communication [4,5]. between two opposite points on the planet, we have an ap- Latency has a highly variable and unpredictable nature, cre- proximate distance of 20,004.5 km (half the distance of earth’s ating time-based errors, de-sequencing and even partial loss of content, resulting in difficult conditions for performance Fig. 1. Screen shot of the FMOL software bamboo interface. With control. There are major efforts under way to improve the sit- this interface the user can manipulate and generate individual or uation by increasing bandwidth and data compression options. collaborative pieces. (© Sergi Jordà) Such improvements, along with restricting projects to Large Area Networks (LANs) or to Wide Area Networks (WANs) in geographically constrained territories (e.g. a country or even a continent), may reduce network latency to levels that will not impede real-time acoustic communication over the Inter- net. Network latency tends to be central to the discussion of network-based activities, yet there are other important issues, such as who will perform with these systems and whether time- based musical events/performances are always appropriate. REDEFINING THE ACOUSTIC COMMUNITY Designing and implementing a network music system supposes that new, meaningful sonic results can be achieved by collab- Álvaro Barbosa (researcher), Music Technology Group, Pompeu Fabra University, Passeig de Circumval•lació 8, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: Ͻ[email protected]Ͼ. © 2003 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 13, pp. 53–59, 2003 53 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/096112104322750791 by guest on 27 September 2021 LMJ13_02body_005-096 11/25/03 2:57 PM Page 54 oration over computer networks. When belong. Realistically it should fit in the tutions such as universities and radio sta- first addressing this supposition, one Supra timescale, defined as a “timescale tions. The electroacoustic music tradition should start by considering the target au- beyond that of an individual composition dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, when dience. In 1984 Barry Truax introduced and extending into months, years, de- it emerged as a discipline in college and the concept of the acoustic community cades, and centuries” [9], since the Infi- university music departments, based on in his book Acoustic Communication: nite timescale is an abstraction beyond the work of composers such as Pierre The “Acoustic Community” may be de- the time life of the present cultural and Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Al- fined as any soundscape in which technological state of development. though there is no comprehensive defi- acoustic information plays a pervasive Some recent artistic proposals ap- nition of sonic art, in the 1980s this field role in the lives of the inhabi- proach unlimited music events. In 2000 became a playground of diversified artis- tants. ...Therefore the boundary of the Antoine Schmitt created the Infinite CD tic proposals and experiments with elec- community is arbitrary and may be as small as a room of people, a home or a for Unlimited Music [10]. Once inserted tronic and digital music creation when building, or as large as an urban com- in a computer, this CD generates music computer technologies became more munity, a broadcast area or any other sys- infinitely, always different yet always sim- widely available to the ordinary music tem of electroacoustic communication ilar, with no images or form of interac- creator, and expanded in the 1990s with [6]. tion. Another approach to this idea the advent of Internet-based communi- Truax’s concept of the acoustic com- explores Internet technology and user cation. munity can be viewed from an on-line interaction: In 2003 Chris Brown pre- context. The notion of a soundscape fa- sented the Eternal Network Music proj- miliar to all users is inevitably tied to sonic ect, a flexible piece created on-line that EARLY EXPERIMENTS WITH events transmitted and produced with allows up to four players at a time to MUSIC AND COMPUTER computers, suggesting that computer- change the harmony and motion of NETWORKS generated electronic music might be an eight modulated sine-wave oscillators to In the late 1970s the commercialization engaging format to address in the place produce a richly vibrating drone that of personal computers in the United of more traditional musical formats. continues endlessly [11]. States, which allowed the fine-tuning of However, traditional musical culture is network topologies, enabled the first at- somewhat strict regarding what consti- tempts by experimental musicians to cre- tutes a music event, and one of the major ETWORK YSTEMS FOR N S ate local computer networks. The first questions regarding collective music cre- MUSIC AND SONIC ARTS events using computer networks to cre- ation by indiscriminate Internet users is Given the subset of the musical universe ate collaborative music were performed whether this community is prepared to constrained to computer-network-based by the Oakland, California, group the express meaningful musical results. The music, it is useful to consider Guy E. Gar- League of Automatic Music Composers fact that Internet technology provides nett’s definition of music: [13]. The “League” came together permanent public access to music crea- through the mutual interests of central tion systems and listening paradigms The nature of music, particularly in the century of John Cage, multiculturalism, protagonists Jim Horton, John Bischoff raises additional questions regarding tra- and other varieties of aesthetic choice, and Rich Gold, who named their new ditional aspects of a musical piece, such becomes more problematic. Nonethe- genre of musical performance Network as its duration. An ongoing musical piece less, I think it is possible to reduce the Computer Music. that is not constrained by time limits problem somewhat. Just as I have con- In 1985 the Network Muse, a network seems to be an appropriate form for sidered aesthetics in only its broadest manifestations, similarly, music can be music festival, was held in San Francisco, using some of the emerging systems dis- roughly considered to be sounds made California, and featured a collective of cussed later