Read the abstract below or download a PDF of it.
Interaction is an integral part of all music. Interaction is part of listening, of playing, of composing and even of thinking about music. In this thesis the multiplicity of modes in which one may engage interactively in, through and with music is the starting point for rethinking Human-Computer Interaction in general and Interactive Music in particular. I propose that in Human-Computer interaction the methodology of control, interaction-as-control, in certain cases should be given up in favor for a more dynamic and reciprocal mode of interaction, interaction-as-difference: Interaction as an activity concerned with inducing differences that make a difference. Interaction-as-difference suggests a kind of parallelity rather than click-and-response. In essence, the movement from control to difference was a result of rediscovering the power of improvisation as a method for organizing and constructing musical content. But control and difference are not mutually exclusive, they are not opposing concepts: Interaction-as-difference is to be understood as a broadening of the more common paradigm of direct manipulation in Human-Computer Interaction. Improvisation is at the heart of all the sub-projects included in this thesis, also, in fact, in those that are not immediately related to music but more geared towards computation. Trusting the self-organizing aspect of musical improvisation, and allowing it to diffuse into other areas of my practice, constitutes the pivotal change that has radically influenced my artistic practice. The work-in-movement, introduced by Umberto Eco is (re-)introduced as a work kind that encompasses radically open works. The work-in-movement, presented and exemplified by a piece for guitar and computer, requires different modes of representation as the traditional musical score is too restrictive and is not able to communicate that which is the most central aspect: the collaboration, negotiation and interaction. The Integra framework--comprising a database model and a corresponding XML representation--is proposed as a means to produce annotated scores that carry past performances and versions with it. The notion of the giving up of the Self is suggested as the common nominator, the prerequisite, for an improvisatory and self-organizing attitude towards musical practice that allows for interaction-as-difference. Only if the Self is able and willing to accept the loss of priority of interpretation, willing to give up or disregard faithfulness to ideology or idiomatics is difference conceivable. Only if one is willing to forget is interaction-as-difference made possible. Among the artistic works that have been produced as part of this inquiry are some experimental tools in the form of computer software to support the proposed concepts of interactivity and along with the musical works they make up both the object and the method in this PhD project. Contained withing the thesis, these sub-projects (all of which are works-in-progress), are used to make inquiries into the larger question of the significance of interaction in the context of artistic practice involving computers.]]>
The primary goal of the IntegraBrowser was for me to realize the idea of the extended score: A score that apart from the score also contained information about the score, about the performances, recordings, recordings of performances, images, score instructions, performance instructions, instructions for the electronics parts, all sound files for the electronics parts, etc. One of the purposes of the extended score is to allow for a performer have as easy access to the meta-information on a piece as he/she would have to the score and the ideas grew out of the wish to document the process of piece rather than the "work". Now, this is not in any way a new idea. The process rather than the result is a mantra that's been repeated for som 40-50 years (at least) and in music it dates back to Satie if not longer.
Nevertheless, the Integra project framework along with the IntegraBrowser allows for adding, editing, sharing, and transmitting a process oriented score which may keep on growing as performances and version are added. Fully implemented it will download and upload its datafiles from the server while online, which, once downloaded, are fully accessible locally. That is, they may also be edited e.g. after a soundcheck if the mixer settings were particularly satisfying, the musician snaps a photo of the desk and adds it to the data file.
One final note note about the IntegraBrowser is that, by reducing the focus on the notation, mainly just by adding other types of information, the difference between the documentation of an improvisation and a composed work of music is lessened. In the end that may teach us something about what the real difference between these two musical practices actually constitutes.
There will soon be a link to the beta version of the IntegraBrowser here!]]>
My current plan is to supply a small program that implements an embedded database server (Apache Derby DB) and a small XML-RPC servlet (Apache XML-RPC). This program responds to requests sent from the WebbApp written using Google WebToolKit. With these technologies I restrict all the implementation to Java, which I know well and have grown familiar to. Further, these concepts blend in well with some of the ideas I have for offline browsing of Integra XML archives and some of the code is likely to be re-usable in the Integra project. Finally, I have chosen well established and widely used libraries for my framework (Apache and Google). Further, the WebApp can easily be made to redirect its RPC requests to an online server if so demanded. IOW, with the extra layer of abstraction between the WebApp and the database, I can easily have a more developed database sitting on a server somewhere (Postgres or MySQL) in which updates and ammendments are being made and still keep the local, embedded database engine small and simple.]]>
I have found two solutions that may work for me:
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!]]>
In practice it took me four hours before I found helpful information at the very bottom of this page. A UFS formatted disk under OS X and shared with NFS can be mounted but not accessed from Linux. The solution is to "downgrade" to NFS2 when mounting the exported directory.
I can swear would I have done it thhe other way around, exporting directories in GNUlinux and mounting them in OS X it would have taken me no more than 15 minutes. Instead I ended up spending the better portion of my day resolving this issue. It's good to be reminded of the reasons for leaving Mac behind...]]>
In the following screen capture we can observe the program while it attempts to organize its weights in response to three sine wave oscillators, crossfaded and tuned to three different frequencies. Thanks to the simplicity of the input the network organizes itself fairly quickly and optimizes its responses so that the winning node travels along the borders of the output map. Once the map is trained the network responds with the same output no matter the order or speed of its input.
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In the next example the network has been trained on six different saxophone samples: Two ordinarily played notes, two "growled" notes and two multiphonics. What we see in the screen capture is the response of an already trained network. Though the output is noisier than the previous example there is a clear pattern to the responses. About halfway I add a simple synthesizer with a pitch tracker (using Miller Puckette's fiddle object in PD). The synthesis algorithm is a simple implementation of Phase Aligned Formant synthesis taken from the PD documentation (Chapter 3, F12). Then, I map the X axis of the network output to the synthesis formant center frequency, and the Y axis to the index parameter.
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The mapping was done more or less arbitrarily, merely making sure the parameters would stay within reasonable ranges. Though the mapping is less sucessful on the multiphonics and the noisy growles, it makes perfect sense on the ordinary notes. Letting properties of the input control aspects of the output that belong to the same class of events, in this case seems to imply that the details of the mapping are less important. However for the noisy input, what we perceive as one sound in the input (a growl or a multiphonic), in the synthesis becomes an oscillation between two different sounds. Here, more care in the mapping is needed, or a "smearing" of the data to couteract the "jumpiness" of the output. ]]>
Yesterday I defended a part of my dissertation (at what is here called a 75% seminar). The opponent was British composer and academic Simon Emmerson, whose new book Living Electronic MusicEmmerson, 2007 seems really interesting. It's difficult for me at this point to get a sense of what really happened, I simply don't have the perspective, but I have feeling it went well. Simon brought up a few issues that are really important for me to think more closely about though he primarily spoke about the musical works and not about the text. This was actually quite unexpected. The concept of artistic research, or of doing a PhD in composition, is very new in Scandinavia (in the UK it has been possible for 25 years) so we don't have an established form for the defense, nor for the content. The problem in my project is it hadn't occured to me that one could look at it from only the point of view of the compositions. IOW, I wasn't prepared for the kind of questions I was getting, nor for the discussions that followed from these questions.
The seminar brought some issues to my attention that I need to consider for the final defense in May, but I was also provided with the solution to a problem I've had difficulties with: The role of the Integra project in my PhD. The issues or questions that Simon brought up were (as I remember it now) mainly concerned with the notation of the music and I feel that most of his concerns would be resolved by documenting my pieces, improvised as well as notated, using the Integra database and the libIntegra backend.
Finally, to more clearly contextualize all of my artistic activities (improvising, composing, sound design, programming, performing, etc) I should write more explicitly about these roles and their relation to my artistic practice. I should examine the composer/performer split of "the musician" that Wishart writes about in his book On Sonic Art Wishart, 1985. In the seminar I am afraid that I came across as a control freak that wouldn't let anyone perform my music without my own participation which is not true at all. It is however true that I'm less interested in this aspect of music making (writing music for others to perform independently of my active participation) because music to me is listening. Writing a score for someone to perform without me hearing it is less interesting to me than working with a performer, writing a score and perform it with the performer (in this context my 'performing' may be limited to sound design or even just listening). Now, and this is the important lesson that I learned, this does not mean that the descritive/prescriptive aspects of the scores are un-important. In particular, the way the instrumental parts in some of my pieces are notated, I can see it is confusing if the electronic part is as lacking of detail as it often is and this is an inconsistency that I need to resolve.]]>
There's an interesting relationship between the mathematical theory of communication; cybernetics; and semiology and my field of inquiry, the question to me being wether the nature of the message is of relevance to the output or the stimuli caused by this message. An example would be: Can a binary signal cause a relevant change--relevant as measured from the outputting system itself--in a continous or analog system. Gregory Bateson Bateson, 1972 would argue that since there is no such thing as a 'territory' without a 'map', or rather that every perception of the territory is a map, than the signal transmitted will already be a transformation, a map in itself, causing change in another map. This would argue that it is up to the "mapping" of the data rather than the transmission of it. From the point of view of the information theorist the main issue is whether the signal-nois ratio is acceptible.
Obviously the problem is infinitely more complex than how it is stated above, especiallly when the semiologist is allowed to enter the discussion.]]>
I need to be able to access and share files between all my computers - some of which are running Linux (FC5) and some which are running OSX. After fiddling around a little bit I decided to go with Samba as it seemed to be the most straight forward and usable solution.
I began by installing Samba and all its dependencies on my FC5 system by running:
$ yum install samba
In FC5 the samba deamons can be started by running:
$ service smb start
and (optionally)
$ service winbind start
To make the deamons are started at boot time run
$ chkconfig smb on
$ chkconfig winbind on
The main configuration is done in /etc/samba/smb.conf and great help for how to configure it can be found in this document. I wanted a singel directory that would work as a shared volume on the local network so I added restrictions to the hosts allow section (setting its value to 192.168.1. 127. will allow connections only from localhost and the 192.168.1. namespace on the network).
I created a shared volume with adding the following to the smb.conf:
[data]
comment = Data
path = /path/to/shared/directory
force user = username
read only = No
guest ok = No
writable = yes
printable = no
Test the config file with:
$ testparm /etc/samba/smb.conf
Add a user to smbpasswd by running:
$ smbpasswd -a user
Now, restart the Samba server and test your configuration:
$ smbclient -L servername
where servername is the address of the server that Samba is running on. If your are issueing the command from the same machine, localhost would be a woring servername. If this works you can try to connect to your service by running
$ smbclient //localhost/data
and enter the password you added for the user edited above. In the example, localhost is the server and data is the name of the server as it is defined in the smb.conf.
Now, in OSX use the 'Connect to server...' command and enter:
smb://servername/data
as the address. If everything worked out you will now be prompted for your password and onced this is enetered and verified, the volume will appear in the Finder.]]>
It turns out he is a musician (plays saxophone among other instruments), a computer scientist, a composer active in the field of new music, and he is a writer on issues relating to contemporary culture. These are many of the same activities I'm involved with and, since it isn't a very common combination, I was pleaseantly surprised. It is always good to know you are not alone!
I don't know much about his music, I haven't heard any of it, but from the Johnson's book referenced above, and from his site (www.jaronlanier.com), I've starting to think I should definitely get one or two of his books. Here's what he writes about his pre-1999 site:
You'll note these pages are not fancy. I'm waiting until everyone has amenities like Shockwave, Java, and VRML before I use them. The point of the web is to get rid of barriers to access. Pretty is good, but it is less important than connection. (I get hilarious flame mail about this- but truly, there are a lot of people in the world with poor connections and older machines.)I sympathise with this. Giving connection precedence over prettiness is a very important statement that has bearing way beyond the context of the Internet. Though both of these are problematic terms I believe it is still a vlaid statement in its simplicity. I would argue that the aesthetics of an object (in the widest sense of the word) may only be validated in the reflection upon this object. IOW it is not an inherent property of the object. Hence, connection is a prerequisite of prettiness.]]>
In January of this year myself and Stefan Östersjö made a version of Repetition Repeats all other Repetitions for the classic dadaist film Symphonie Diagonale by Swedish artist Viking Eggeling. From a music point of view it's a very odd project and an example of a (not widely used) collage-like artistic work method. It's basically the one thing (an existing piece of music) put on top of the other (an art video from the 20's) with minor adjustments to the music. What is it that makes this interesting?]]>
I would especially be interested in hearing from musicians outside of the academic circles, and younger musicians working with computers in the context of improvisation. But obviously, anybody is more than welcome to get in touch with me regarding ICMC (or otherwise...). So, please spread the word and check out the following sites:
]]>I had a great session with one of my advisors, Miller Puckette, in January. Below I will try to summarize some of the ideas that came up in our discussions. Miller is my advisor for the programming and computer music part of my dissertation. One of the things I am working on is self supervised timbre mapping software and this is also what we priarily talked about.
The fact is that this multiplicity, or multitude of expression, is very consistent with some of the main threads of my project. My project is not one thing that is consistently tied together. I have a thesis (the research question) that I try in a number of different ways, and I should focus on letting the different experiences made during the course inform each other, not become each other.
I had a plan to go back and re-work some of my pieces that will be a part of the dissertation and try them with the technology developed within the project. Even if we disregard the slightly annoying smell of "re-writing history to fit the theory", this is not very interesting in itself. It has potential to become interesting in the collaborative project Negotiating the Musical Work, and composition Repetition Repeats all other Repetitions because that project is about changing (negotiating) the form and, to a certain degree, the content to measure the ontological difference.
To conclude, it is fascinating (and scary), to observe how a (not very good) thought can cling on and develop and become a creative obstacle like the idea of integration in my dissertation. It is however also rewarding to notice how little it actually took to make me give it up. ]]>
I seem to remember reading about Sun going open source with the core Java API but I guess it's not come through yet. Anyhow, following these excellent instructions I managed to install the Sun Java alongside the Gnu Java. My project, including the NumberFormatter objects, now compiles without errors.]]>