Creating systems for collaborative network‐based digital music performance.

Abstract

The internet has proven to be an important catalyst in bringing together musicians for remote collaboration and performance. Existing technologies for network audio streaming possess varying degrees of technological transparency with regard to allowable bandwidth, latency, and software interface constraints, among other factors. In another realm of digital audio, the performance of “laptop music” presents a set of challenges with regard to human‐computer and interperformer interaction—particularly in the context of improvisation. This paper discusses the limitations as well as newfound freedoms that can arise in the construction of musical performance systems that merge the paradigms of laptop music and network music. Several such systems are presented from personal work created over the past several years that consider the meaning of digital music collaboration, the experience of sound‐making in remote physical spaces, and the challenge of improvising across time and space with limited visual feedback. T...