Web-based collaboration, live musical performance and open-form scores

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs Internet-based social listening, composition and improvisation applications become increasingly important cultural mechanisms through which to experience, create and share digital music, the author seeks to create comparable systems to engage audiences within the context of live musical performances. Real-time collaboration with audiences during performance can lead to exciting and rewarding musical experiences. But the technical, logistical and design constraints at live venues, including simultaneous participation and single-stream output, make such live participation systems challenging to create and deploy effectively.This article instead focuses on linking web-based collaborative experiences with more traditional live musical performances. The article explores the motivations behind such hybrid performance works and the history of them, and it then discusses and evaluates two recent works by the author, Graph Theory (2006) and Piano Etudes (2009), both of which use open-form musical scores...