Syneme: Live

Abstract

Network music foregrounds the materials and processes of communication and in so doing repositions the acousmatic and other strata of electroacoustic music practice. The type of network music considered in this paper, at base defines a member of its category as music which undergoes an electrical-optical conversion, referring to its transport over fibre-optic research network backbones. A more compelling motivation for us is the realisation that network music entails the exploration of disjunct chronotopic frames (stated less poetically as ‘latency in the network’) using probes of sonic material travelling near the speed of light. This article is an overview of a three-year project investigating music performance over high-speed research networks, a project funded by the Canada Research Chair programme (Syneme). The aim of the project was fourfold: to investigate aspects of physical and social networks in the production of network music (The Network); to investigate a branch of study continuing but critically distinct from Internet music as marked by ingenious strategies mounted to overcome the conditions of slow networks (Liveness); to embed ourselves in new practices (Telemusic Studio) and technologies (Artsmesh); and to compose network music pieces (Net Works). Our narrative picks up from where high-speed P2P networking crosses a threshold producing a successor to the Internet akin to the methodological shift that occurred in electroacoustics when CPUs achieved rendering speeds that allowed for real-time audio.