Waikato musicians go high-speed for Beijing festival

University of Waikato musicians playing live in Hamilton used high-speed Internet2 and IPv6 format to link digtial video and audio to open this year’s Asian Telemusic Concert at the Musicacoustica festival in Beijing.

Playing in China

Composer, Associate Professor Ian Whalley, and research assistant Hannah Gilmour played with musicians who were based in Singapore and China. They used five digital video channels and multiple stereo channels, to link the performers in the three countries. The work also used data control from Singapore to trigger instruments in Hamilton and the performance was watched on a big screen by the audience in Beijing.

Composer Ian Whalley says combining audio and data control interactively through the high speed network allows for new forms of music and performance.

His work for the Musicacoustical Festival work was called KishiKaisei. The title is understood in Japanese as “to come out of a desperate situation and return to life”.

Composition

Structurally, the work evolves in five waves; three that build to collapse and two that slowly die out.

Whalley says this latest performance builds on prior work he did last year that used acoustic instruments in combination with intelligent machine applications. “This new work is based on digital instrument software and sound programming, which is then played through real-time controllers.

“We used three sound-based wind instrument-based controllers playing between Hamilton and Beijing interactively to form the basis of the work. In addition, other sounds at Waikato were manipulated by the Singapore player by sending performance data over the network.”

Whalley says with high-speed broadband, one’s physical location becomes of less importance than telepresence. “It’s about what one can do in the new physical/virtual space, and how one can combine the input of others in a meaningful way across countries.”

Whalley’s research into interactive machine/human net-based performance also involves ‘machine agent’ approaches to music where computers move from being controllers or reactors to active participants.