Virtual environments for creative work in collaborative music-making

Abstract

Virtual environments are beginning to allow musicians to perform collaboratively in real time at a distance, coordinating on timing and conceptualization. The development of virtual spaces for collaboration necessitates more clearly specified theorizing about the nature of physical copresence in music-making: how the available communicative cues are likely to affect the nature of visually mediated rehearsal and performance. Pilot data for a project carried out at the New School for Social Research demonstrate some important factors relevant to designing remote spaces for musical collaboration, and suggest that virtual environments for musical collaboration could actually enhance the feeling of being together that creative musical expression requires.