We may be used to thinking of a computer based interactive system as a cybernetic system in which information is transmitted from point A to point B and where great care is taken to avoid noise in the transmission. Think of the pedal that S.Ö. is using in ``Viken'' to step through the piece. If the signal going from the pedal to the Max/MSP patch running the piece was noisy or ambiguous it would probably be useless. `Almost a pressed pedal' is not a valid message in that system.
In our joint project we will attempt to avoid the kind of binary oppositions that require a clean control signal path (such as the pressing of a pedal) in the design of the interactive system. It is our belief that this can be achieved in approaching the issues differently but more experiments have to be carried out. Obviously this will also affect the way the instrumental part is written.
A few remarks needs to be made regarding this if we want to successfully transfer this knowledge to a practical musical situation:
Accordingly, the musical synchronization and low level time scale has to be dealt with; but on the structural level above that, perhaps a sensitive interactive real time performance system can deal more freely with time and that such an approach will result in a more natural interaction from the point of view of the performer. We believe that this kind of flexible machine-musician interaction calls for flexibility also in terms of musical notation. The concept of the open work is one of the early ideas of musical modernism and obviously not a new thing in itself [Eco, 1968]. In other words there is a great deal of experience to be gathered from these early experiments. However, our attempts at creating a dynamic score, a framework of musical notation in which different paths can be taken, is not implicitly related to the stylistic and esthetic grounds of the open work in the modernist era but instead related to its impact and operational function in machine-musician interaction today.
What this may translate to in the context of an interactive real time performance system is that no matter what the current process is, and regardless of the current mode of interaction, the initiative can shift back and forth between the performer and the electronic part just as it does in the documented session between S.Ö. and L.M..
The way the idea of the composer has been deconstructed in this study, what remains of it is 'the one with the intention to create' (see Figure 9). On a higher level of intention, L.M. is the only agent aiming at creating a musical work named ``Viken''. S.Ö.'s higher level intentions are towards performing L.M.'s work once it is finished and contributing to the process of completing it. In the case of a performance of a mixed media work we find that the same model transcribes to the level of performer and computer. The flow of intention in the performance is on the performers side, the computer being the responding part (see Figure 10). In other words, the attributes we assign to the composer in the documented session belongs to the interpreter at the stage of performance.
