Reviews

Abstract

Sitting down to write this soon after it ended, and still dizzy from eleven concerts and many paper sessions in just six days, I will try to give a taste and synopsis of what I think was most interesting, amusing, challenging, or even inspiring at the 1998 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). But it won't be easy. First, an overview: ICMC '98 was held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a quintessential American college town, one of the biggest and best of its breed-meaning that cafes and brew pubs abound, yet, come Friday night, it is still nearly impossible to find one with space to take you and your party of 30 ICMC-ers. But we did manage upon a few occasions. In such a welter of presentations, it is possible to bring out only the highlights, but one can also note trends as perceived by the reviewer, who has been going to these conferences since 1984. Some of the newest technologies have to do with the World Wide Web, and particularly with the Web-oriented programming language Java, as might have been predicted from observing the computer scene outside of music. Much of the work here might be described as belonging to the comparatively uninteresting category of software ports. Still, the impact of Web-based accessibility may bring new benefits by reaching new audiences, composers, and performers, and perhaps by facilitating greater communication and interchange within an expanding community, the latter being just why Conseil Europ6en pour la Recherche Nucl~aire (CERN) developed the Web in the first place. In this context, I would mention some of the Java-based programs that are springing up. Among these are synthesis programs (Phil Burk's Jsyn for real-time synthesis, and of course, IRCAM's latest FTS front end, jMAX-more on this later), and some intriguing developments in notation programs. Thanks to the ubiquity and cross-platform aspects of Java, notation programs seem to be at a threshold for unifying tools across many platforms and many user communities, something that has been notably lacking until now. Of these efforts, the Web-based approach taken by Kai Renz and Holger Hoos in their Salieri program, which builds on Guido, appears extremely promising. It will be particularly interesting once the Java implementation they are working on is completed. Another important development is the arrival en masse of cheap hardware/software systems that can synthesize and process sounds on the fly. These are represented in such works as MSP and jMax, but also in a number of others. For ex-