Description:

Conceptual showroom implemented in the context of the Music in the Global Village  Festival

Music in the Global Village researches technological and artistic domains that are made available through the interaction of humans and machines in networked systems. It aims to create a platform for musicians and media-artists or collaborative net-based art-projects as well as a context for discussion of the latest issues in live-electronic performance. After two editions of the conference in 2007 and 2009, the Symposium in Pécs aimed at summarizings some of the conceptual results of the CO-ME-DI-A project, the ideas initiated at the conferences and the progress made since the first conference.

Objective:

To present lectures, extended group discussions, a concert and installation connected to the theory and practice of networked music. The main goal was to continue an ongoing, growing conversation about networked music.

Results:

There were 22 lectures and 2 discussion sessions.

There was also the premiere at Pécs of the work “D(é)RIVE:GPS-Trans 11” realized during the summer artist residency by EBE and Marek Choloniewski. GPS-Trans is a series of projects by Marek Chołoniewski in which GPS positioning data tracking a car is being transmitted to a concert hall and further processed. The European Bridges Ensemble has been working since May 2010 on the realization of the project during a total of four working periods. The presentation, which accompanied the Music in the Global Village Symposium came in two forms :

1) A concert in which a car driving around Pécs serves as a remote controller for a local multimedia network performance. Four electronic musicians were seated in the corners outside the 4-screen projection creating the impression of a cube. In addition, a fifth performer was allowed to walk around freely to send control information via a hand-held device. The conductor and the video artist were seated on small tables by the walls of the performance space. The concert was successful as a first presentation of a work in progress. Further work on the piece is on the ensemble’s agenda.

2) An installation in which a dance floor interface controls the trajectory of the moving car projected on four screens. The participants of the symposium as well as the general audience were able to experience during the opening hours of the Music in the Global Village Symposium, which took place at the Pécs University Arts Faculty.

The project generated video and sonic documentation.

Event website:www.globalvillagemusic.net

Target group:

Intellectuals, students, artists, children, general public.

Number of participants/visitors/audience :

• Conference participants : 20

• Audience at the concert and installation: 80

Description:

Creation of works for CO-ME-DI-A concert featuring NetTrike and Zoom-Up.

“NetTrike” :

Within the CO-ME-DI-A project a new artwork was produced and realized. Christine Gaigg as choreographer and Bernhard Lang as composer have developed and written this piece for 2 dancers, 2 sound plates, 2 cameras, 2 concert halls. As live-electronics the “Audio and Visual Loop-generator” was extended to networking capabilities, especially using video- and audiostreams. The outcome was a networked concert for large concert halls at IRCAM and IEM, reflecting the use of the network. This piece, streamed over Internet between the two concert rooms at IRCAM and IEM, also realized a live interaction between the target rooms and surroundings. Two dancers and two choreographers on each site are combined with an ensemble, where the dancer produces the sound on a metal brass plate, wearing metal pieces on the feet. The dancers are filmed and reproduced as virtual dancers either over network or locally on a screen. With the motion material filmed, virtual dancers of each side are projected. Using the aesthetics of difference/repetition from the work of Bernhard Lang a new contextual piece arise in audio and visual domain.

“Zoom-Up” :

Zoom Up created in the context of the artistic residency of Andrea Cera, is a distant dialogue between two musicians – one in Graz, the other in Paris – connected by a stream of digital data over the network. The illusion of proximity brought about by the streaming technologies contrast with the fictional character of the sounds that are the basis of this dialogue. The technical setup of Zoom Up functions like a four handed instrument. The two instrumentalists play the same program, a computer version of a “prepared piano” that evolves over time as the score is played. Sometimes the sounds become uncomfortably dissociated with the sounds and gestures we normally associate with the piano. The setup thus allows narrowing or amplifying the distance between the performers. Sometimes they appear to play in the same place; sometimes they seem too distant joined and by a tenuous link that becomes almost invisible; sometimes so near that the performance is lost in the small movements of the hands.

Objective:

The main objective was to create novel works that take into account the specificities of the network when creating the work in question. The goal also was to present the Paris/Graz duplex concert to the general public while taking advantage of the IRCAM and IEM artistic season audiences.

Results:

NetTrike : An idea workshop was held to develop the idea of the piece in February 2010, and in a second workshop the piece was developed at IRCAM in Paris in July and finalized in October. Within workshops and rehearsals a piece for combining two concert rooms was composed and choreographed by Christine Gaigg and Bernhard Lang. Special software development and adoption as part of the artwork was produced. A production of two involved teams developed the main technical showcase, where audience and artists are streamed over the network.

Zoom-Up : This work leverages much of the work initially undertaken in the installation “They Are Here” at the CENTQUATRE arts center in Paris in 2008 and the “An Invisible Line” network installation premiered in Hamburg and Genoa in 2009 (and presented during the NPAPW event right before the CO-ME-DI-A Duplex workshops and concerts. The work successfully managed to incorporate expressive motion capture over the network, one of the goals initially soecified in the scenarios (“use cases”) developed at the beginning of the project.

As a result, the piece was performed between the art university in Graz and IRCAM publicly on two days which included talks by the artists. Video documentation of the pieces, including some interviews, were produced.

Products (if appropriate):

Excerpts of work sessions and performances can be viewed on the CO-ME-DI-A website (http://www2.comedia.eu.org)

Website information on :

• www.ircam.fr

• http://npapw-2010.ircam.fr/wordpress/

• http://www2.comedia.eu.org

Target group:

IEM : General public, Artists, Technicians.

IRCAM : General public from the IRCAM artistic season.

Number of participants/visitors/audience :

IEM : approximately 170 participants for each of the NPAPW and CO-ME-DI-A performances.

IRCAM : approximately 280 participants for each of the NPAPW and CO-ME-DI-A performances.

TOTAL : 450 people.

Description: IRCAM Forum Workshops

Objective:

Continue to expose the public of the IRCAM Forum members to the new possibilities of network performance. This was typical of the strategy of creating intersections between communities that under normal circumstances would not necessarily seek to explore other territories.

Results:

The workshop featured a morning of common sessions with the NPAPW event described above featuring the sessions on artistic and technical state of the art presentations as well as presentations by Bernhard Lang and Andrea Cera. IRCAM Forum members were invited to attend the NPAPW/Forum workshop concert of the 24 November 2010 (see above).

IRCAM Forum website : http://forumnet.ircam.fr/?L=1 provided support for this event

Target group:

Participants of the NPAPW event, Forum members, industrial (Flux, Ableton, Cycling74 …)  and institutional (RENATER, Gaité Lyrique …) representatives.

Number of participants/visitors/audience :

150 participants Forum workshop attendees only.

Description:

Final version of the “An Invisible Line” Installation.

A network music installation: two persons in different sites (Casa Paganini – Genoa and IRCAM – Paris) interact by means of their “shadow” increased by non-verbal expressive and social features. The main improvement to the first « Invisible Line » performance was the inclusion of the analysis of novel features of non-verbal expressive and social behavior, also based on the feasibility study performed on the video recordings of the performances of David Moss in Budapest. The new features developed for this new installation are the following:

Expressive features:

• Fluidity Index of the hand and foot (FI-h and FI-f)

• Contraction Index (CI)

• Asymmetry Index (AI)

• Quantity of Motion (QoM)

Social features:

• Synchronization Index on QoM (Entrainment)

Objective:

Experimentation and demonstration of novel approaches to networked music performance, based on the exploitation of expressive and social non-verbal features to enhance the remote communication between performers. Dissemination of the CO-ME-DI-A results to public audiences. (Here, the audience was actively participating in the installation.)

Results:

Creation of the novel version of the artistic work “An Invisible Line”.

Validation of the novel approach to network performance.

Presentation of the work by Andrea Cera “in situ”.

Proof that expressive elements can be successfully transmitted over the network.s

NPAPW and Forum IRCAM planning and websites (http://npapw-2010.ircam.fr/wordpress/ and http://forumnet.ircam.fr/714.html)

Target group:

• Composers and artists.

• General public.

Number of participants/visitors/audience:

The participants to the NPAPW and Forum Workshops (approximately 30 participants actually “tried out” the installation).

Description:

NPAPW (Network Performing Arts Production Workshop)

Objective:

The use of high-speed networks has opened up new vistas in the field of the performing arts especially in the area of music. Traditional practices, such as rehearsals, auditions, master classes, composition and performance, have all been affected by this new media. This two-day event aimed at providing the participants with an up to date vision of this exciting new area.

This event was organized with the following partners : TERENA (Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association), RENATER, Internet2 (American consortium whose members advance the state of art in networking) and GARR (the Italian Research & Education Network (NREN) which plans and operates the national high-speed telecommunication network for University and Scientific Research.)

Results:

The workshop offered the following features :

• overview of the network performing arts scene,

• presentation of useful concepts for network performance,

• hands-on sessions of established and emerging technologies such as DVTS, JackTrip, ConferenceXP, EchoDamp and LOLA,

• audio and lighting information for best results in video-conferencing,

• live networked master class,

• performances and discussions of works by Bernhard Lang (composer), Christine Gaigg (choreographer) & Andrea Cera (composer),

• networking technical and artistic state of the art presentations.

The end of the workshop featured a duplex workshop and concert (CO-ME-DI-A concert) where the works NetTrike (by Bernhard Lang and Christine Gaigg) and Zoom-Up (by Andrea Cera) were presented by the artists and performed before the public. This workshop event took place on November 24 and preceded the generl public event of the 25^th.

Website : http://npapw-2010.ircam.fr

Target group:

Artists, researchers, CO-ME-DI-A partners, music school heads, performers, general public, IRCAM Forum members for the semi-public workshop.

Number of participants/visitors/audience :

• Approximately 50 participants and speakers for NPAPW workshop itself.

• Approximately 280 invited professionals, NPAPW and Forum IRCAM workshop participants for the semi-public workshop.