Speed of Light: Lara Hall, Hannah Gilmour and Ian Whalley performing at Waikato University in Hamilton but being watched and heard in Beijing.
IPv6 – the latest international internet protocol - has been used to perform a piece of music in real time from three different countries thousands of kilometres apart. The work was made possible through the use of multi-channel high-definition audio and video.
Using New Zealand’s KAREN network, Associate Professor Ian Whalley at Waikato University was able to have his 12 minute piece Mittsu no Yugo (meaning three melding to one) performed at the Beijing MUSICACOUSTICA 10 festival – one of the world’s biggest electrouacoustic festivals.
The musicians were at Waikato, in Canada and at the Beijing Festival, and the audience could hear the piece and see the musicians on a screen at the concert. “The video quality is well beyond Skype,” says Dr Whalley, “and the quality of the music at higher fidelity than MP3 or CD. We linked multiple digital video channels and fourteen stereo digital audio channels between the three countries, to allow the real time/interactive performance.”
Dr Whalley notes that work is a first over this distance using this new format and technology. “In addition, the composition melds aspects of sonic cultures from three points of the Pacific Rim. It was a 31,000 kilometre round trip and proves we can join studios in audio and video to cross cultures and create new art forms.”
The work is performed live and interactively in real-time. The musicians in Hamilton were Ian Whalley who played Max/MSP patches, effects pedal and wind synthesiser, violin lecturer Lara Hall who also manipulated looper samples, and masters graduate Hannah Gilmour who operated the spectral beds, rhythm and effects.
In Canada, David Larson was on buffalo drum and Bruce Gremo was in Beijing playing a shakuhachi – a Japanese end-blown flute. “In order to compensate for the slight delay in video, I had to create a score that was well structured but also allowed for improvisation to compensate for the delay.”
So Dr Whalley prescribed the general structure, shape and broad motives for the work. Performers then had to generate and amalgamate sectional content in a conversational manner. “The approach allows for slightly different outcomes from each performance, and additional performers or ‘instruments’ can take part and negotiate new outcomes.”
The work explores sound-based composition, performance and machine agent approaches to composition and performance that are suited to Internet2 music making - part of negotiating new electroacoustic music in real-time.
Dr Whalley says high-quality digital/audio allows new networked art forms that include intelligent machines. His research work is continuing toward further enhancing the role of machine agency in future musical works and performances so that computers become more active participants in the improvisation process, rather than controllers or largely “reactors”.
“The tools and techniques are likely to become increasing common as significantly higher-speed broadband begins to be rolled out internationally. If you can imagine your closest neighbour being digital through high-speed networks, and you become an interactive participant rather than observer in a combined digital/real world that is increasingly dislocated from your immediate geography, you have a sense of the possibilities this new space presents.”