Good morning.

Library and thanks to you

every time and
break I really appreciate the work

that video take place.

So you can look at research and

all those things firsthand
perspective with

using technology to turn into

music and also to

so and

if you like what you hear today or
even if you really are interested in.

Thanks very much.

Plus they are just all out if you
don't like anything I present today.

Welcome to the sign generator concert
because the music will be performing is

nothing like what I'm showing.

And so they will be presenting music
from your com which is one of the most

significant centers for
computer music research in the world and

Phillipe Leroux a composer has been
very influential in his work there over

the years he'll be here in person and will
be performing his most famous work for

a singer live electronics and
six musicians from Sonic generator.

It's the most ambitious piece that
sonic general has ever tried to do.

There will be fourteen speakers
involved and two computers and

all kinds of crazy stuff so
if nothing else just come to see

if everything like burns up in
a massive technological failure.

Because that alone should be exciting and

if it works the music
will be really wonderful.

So my training is as low as
I said it is as a composer.

So naturally I think about music a lot but

I also think about the ways that we
experience music in our lives and lately

I've been particularly thinking about
my sixteen month old son in the way he

experience the music in his life because I
just think about my son a lot in general.

So why not also think
about the music from here.

So there's a little video
we shot last weekend and

there's no sound you turn on the speakers.

If you could hear this.

You could hear him.

Actually I have to plug in the U.S.B.
cable to here we go.

There we go.

OK well.

If you heard that you'd hear him banging
some keys on the piano and making some

noises at various points and you would
have lots and it would have been fun.

I'm not going to go back and replay the
video but the key the key point here is

that making music is a really important
part of the way he experiences music not

just listening to it actually making it
and it's not just because I'm a music

professor I'm not pushing him
in this direction trust me.

But it's something that all
the other kids in his day care costs

due to they love experimenting with
musical instruments banging so.

You know what they do in the south it
comes out it's something that brings him

joy.

It helps him develop lots
of different skills and

kind of explore the world around him.

So this is kind of what happens it with
toddlers and then something changes

between when we're toddlers and
when we're like growing up and

this is one useful statistic
to kind of think about that is

a from a survey done by the National
downin for the Arts every five years

on public participation in the arts and
I asked all these people.

This is done as part of
a census has lots and lots and

lots of people in
the United States adults.

How often they play a musical instrument.

And twelve point six percent of them
said they played an instrument at least

once a year.

OK so if we had asked that of toddlers
I think that number would have been

in the ninety's but we ask adults and it
goes down to twelve point six percent and

half of my slide is coming out here
let me try to fix this for a second.

So if the N.E.A.

study is missing a lot of important things
of course it's missing the fact that lots

of people sing in the shower but
they probably said no to this question.

There's lots of the lives those
things don't fall under this

this twelve point six percent figure
I can't figure out to fix this.

So we'll just we'll make up
the left column of the slide here.

So how are we experiencing
music as as adults and

you know in this world around us in
a we're not creating it so much for

not playing musical instruments but
we're engaging with music a lot.

We're listening to music.

As we move through our daily
lives mobile devices and

P three players things like that we're
listening to in concert situations.

We're going we're sitting down
in a big concert hall and and

listening to musicians.

Play music on stage and
we're getting assaulted by music too.

All around us.

In an elevator at
the shopping mall wherever

we're listening to music whether we
like to or not because it's getting

through the speakers that are all around
those well but all this points to a common

theme here that we're music consumers
more than we're music creators.

It's even true for me that I listen
to music a lot more than I make it.

And I think on the whole
that's pretty particular true.

So why.

Why is this the case.

How did how did we.

How did we get here.

I think it's important to look kind
of context in which we experience

music in all those contexts I just
showed you which is there's a composer

who creates music and they may notate that
as a score by writing it down or they may

kind of store that somewhere in their head
and remember this is some music that they

they've created or someone performs that
either reading those notes off a page or

a kind of recalling something from
the store of memory and in their brain and

then the audience hears that sound where
they were sitting in a concert hall or

listening to a recording afterwards.

So this is kind of a feedforward process
the music flows from the composer

to the performer performers
to the audience.

It doesn't go the other way and so
the classic example of this is you go to

hear the Atlanta Symphony play Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony or even better yet

you're listening to the radio in your
car and they're broadcasting a recording

of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony so
Beethoven wrote this thing you know

a long long time ago hasn't changed
a lot recently last I checked.

The SO recorded this thing maybe a day
ago maybe twenty five years ago.

Stuck it on to a fixed media and
now you're listening to it in the car so.

So in this case there's actually no
way that you could then go back and

change what you know what
Robert's manner conducted or

change what Beethoven wrote in the paper
all these things happen to disparate

points in time but even when all
these things happen together.

It's still usually this kind of.

Forward process if you're
sitting in an orchestra concert.

You sit really quietly.

You're not you know you're there to watch
what's happening on stage you're not there

to influence it really if you cough
someone looks at you funny and

I'm like I can't believe you just like.

Lou in this performance I was actually
there a performance once by a community

orchestra and the conductor actually
stopped the performance in the middle

because someone in the audience was
talking and they're like I will not

continue this performance until
there is complete silence.

So I know different musical
genres are a little different.

I'm just using the orchestra because
it's easy to bash the orchestra and

what can I say but
if we if we look elsewhere.

And we think about how you know
how we experience music and

how those experience it's changing
thanks to technology this.

This model doesn't hold
up exactly the same way.

We can think of making mix tapes and
sharing them with their friends or

using lots of internet and social tools
now to do similar kinds of things.

This is putting new kinds of control
into the role of the audience so

we're not making individual songs here but
we're doing something very creative like

kind of curating playlist and organizing
things presenting collections of things

the same way an art curator might
hang paintings in a museum.

We're hanging these songs on
together in a playlist and

they were sharing that with others.

So this is this is rethinking
kind of what audiences

can do to contribute to their
experience of making music.

There's lots of new kinds of musical
instruments that don't necessarily require

the same number of years of training just
to be able to get something that sounds

interesting and
reasonably good out of them.

I mean we can learn really quickly trying
to open up this experience of performing

some more people and of course there's
video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band

that try to simulate that experience
of playing in a group of musicians and

if you look at say the new version of
rock band that just came out last month.

It's starting to increasingly
blurred the lines between what is

a simulation of playing music and
what is actually playing music.

As you go deeper and

deeper into the game you start playing
things that become actually you know for

not equivalent to what you play on
a guitar keyboard or something like that.

This is all kind of opening up this
experience of performance to more people

and performance is not just something
that a professional musician and

spent years and
years of study can do anymore but

something that lots of people can do and
be a part of.

And then.

Software programs are opening up
the process of composition through digital

technologies to lots more people to this
is a screenshot of Apple's Garage Band

it ships with every new Macintosh that
anyone buys as one of many programs that

are kind of has a really powerful
tools in them for making recording and

remixing music but they're oriented
towards towards amateurs people

who don't have a lot of experience with
computer music or with composition and

all round includes lessons to teach you
how to play your instrument better.

They.

And if you don't play an instrument all
you can do lots of remixing you can use

loops that are included with it and so on
and share share your results with others.

So this is kind of.

Composition of performance kind of
blended together in programs like this

because they're often done by the same
person in the same group of people.

But things like Garage Band
are making that much more accessible

to folks as well.

So all these are really fascinating
interesting technologies and I follow

all this stuff and there's a lot of active
research going on in the computer user

community and all of these directions but
they all basically assume that this model

stays the same the music flows from
composer to performer to the audience.

They what they're concerned with
is increasing accessibility

to participation in each of these
stages but this kind of feed forward

process doesn't fundamentally change
any of those examples I just showed.

And that's where my work really comes in
is I'm interested in not just increasing

accessibility to playing these roles
in the music making experience but

actually kind of shuffling around these
roles in the connections between them.

Maybe even blurring the boundaries so
much so that the.

These names don't make any sense anymore
to create context in which there's much

more exchange interplay amongst these
these things and there's basically a new

set of boxes and arrows that describe how
music is created and shared and consumed.

And this all comes back to a quote by
one of my favorite composers John Cage

composing is one thing performing is
another listening is the third what can

they have to do with each other and it was
kind of joking here I think a little bit

on this was in the middle of this kind
of manifesto like thing he wrote.

But I think that for
me this is a really serious question and

it's one I've been thinking
about over the last decade.

Really.
But how I can use technology in particular

to create new connections
amongst these groups so

that people can make music together and
that composition for

me is not a vehicle for
expressing my own musical ideas anymore

it's really a vehicle for creating
shared experiences around these issues.

So I want to show you what I mean by
that today by talking about three

recent compositions of mine that
explore this in very different

ways on the first is
a piece called Flock for

Saxophone Quartet on that explores what
happens when these roles get reshuffled

in a live performance where all this stuff
is happening live at a concert venue.

When the second one is called piano.

It explores what happens
if we try to shuffle.

Some of the stuff up using using
internet and social media but

keep the actual concert
performance fairly fairly similar.

In the final project is actually one of
the still ongoing called Urban remix which

basically asks what happens if
we go out into the world and

instead of being limited to
a concert hall or even so

much the Internet that both of those
are involved in that project what

happens if our experience in the point
of sharing in the framework for

that is based on the world at large and
location within that world.

So I'll talk first about.

Flocke and this is a piece for Saxophone
Quartet dancers audience participation

real time video animation and

electronic sounds like to keep
collaborators on this remark.

Godfrey who was at the time
a master student music technology.

He was actually a first student
to graduate from the program and

he's a professor in digital arts at
the province to tutor New York and.

The key question here was basically how
can professional musicians and audiences

interact with each other during a live
performance to create music collectively

and this is kind of what the block diagram
for say would look like for this piece.

It's it's no longer this thing that
just goes from left to right but

it's a loop that runs in performance and
so each iteration of the loop basically.

This takes place in an open venue where
everyone is actually moving around through

the physical space during the performance
the saxophone as the dancers

the audience members are all moving and
their location.

It's driving and
influencing the music and how it unfolds.

So the audience kind of starts over
here in this part of the box and

they're taking on part of
the role of performers here but

moving to the space actually entering
the stage of the composition and what's

coming out of that is location data about
where they are at any moment where they're

moving where they are in relationship
to each other and to the performers

that goes into computer software which is
doing some kind of realtime composition

using algorithms to take that information
and map it onto music notation.

There's no score that exists in advance
for this piece the score is generated

a new at every performance the notation
is generated dynamically in real time

based on what the audience is doing and
what that computer algorithm outputs.

So the saxophone course that reads
that music notation and interprets it.

Well to make a sound that is the
composition that then of course feeds back

to what the audience is doing and we
begin another iteration through the loop.

There's a lot of other inner
connections and things here.

But this is this is kind of the core
way that I think about this piece and

how these.

Relationships exist within it.

So it's like very briefly
just about these input and

output mechanisms in
the piece little bit more.

It's location data so there's about
one hundred audience members for

saxophonist for dancers.

We're trying to figure out where they
are at any given moment in the piece and I

worked with Frank to Larry over in college
of computing back in two thousand and six

to develop a computer vision system that
works really robustly in performance and

reports the locations of all these people
all to the computer and there's actually

just a single camera mounted on the
ceiling of the performance space captures

all of this data and reports it is just X.
Y. coordinates for each and people this.

There were a lot of interesting
constraints in terms of this problem.

The biggest one being that we work in
union venues with very limited time for

set up and so it's something that we knew
it would be very flexible very adaptable

very easily calibrated to
work incredibly reliably in

of variety of different spaces
with very short notice and

this did a great job of not to get into
the technical details today but I'm always

happy to talk afterwards any questions you
might have and then on the other side.

How does the computer communicate
with these musicians and

the music notation
becomes the interface but

the score is not as fixed object like
it is in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

the score is this dynamic mechanism for
communication and so.

The i Phone had just
come out at this point.

You couldn't develop apps for it yet.

We were using old Pocket P.C.'s because we
needed something that the musicians could

see that was wireless and

they could travel with them as
they moved through the space and

since the Saxons were also moving around
start our inspiration came from marching

bands which I borrowed the marching
band liars and will foot folders from.

From Chris more or
marching band director and

then just put a ton of velcro on them and
slot these pocket pc's on there

operate on a wireless network so that
the computer is actually able to say my.

Rosalee custom music notation to each
of the musicians telling them what they

should be playing at any given time and
sometimes that music looks almost normal.

So in this example on the left
you can see the green note is

that particular musician is supposed
to play is that kind of greyish

pinkish notes in the background showing
them what the other musicians in

the ensemble are playing this
is textual instructions here.

There's a counter and you can see the
scrolling kind of measure position there

which is supposed to be
playing at any given time.

That's one extreme of the notation
the other extreme is what you see

on the right here which looks like
finger painting or something.

There's all these squiggles there's
a few pitches that are indicated but

it's really about contour
it's about register.

It's about gesture and
this is really a guide for

improvisation we worked with jazz
musicians that were very comfortable

working with experimental
improvisation contexts and

did great stuff when they were presented
with this kind of music as well.

So then the key question is how do we
get from the location data that's coming

into the computer about where everyone
is to this kind of notation and

there were this is a full evening piece
it's about sixty to seventy minutes long

and so over that time scale.

We worked with a lot of different
strategies for how to map this.

So I'll discuss just a broad
strategy is the first one basically

from a bird's eye view of
the performance space one axis in the X.

axis is essentially the position within
this measure the Y. axis is pitch and

it's quantized to different scales that
change involve the course of the piece.

So if you look in the left
here you'll see that.

It starts off with each person it's in the
space basically generates a single note.

These are these green and

there are flashing they get assigned to
the player that's closest to them but

as time goes on we start extending
the durations of those notes.

So there's not just this point a list
of texture but we get long tones and

things that develop in the chords and then
we start connecting the dots between these

things so you actually become contours and
so just flat lines and you start.

I start to see that happening right now
it's in the notation of the green line in

the foreground.

Now it is.

And some of the pink lines over
there are watching it as well.

So that's a basic strategy is looking
at X. is kind of time within a measure.

Why is this quantized pitch along
some kind of harmonic plan and

various strategies for kind of connecting
dots to build up larger gestures so

it's not just a bunch of old dots
the other strategy is basically

a polar coordinates system where each
saxophonist is the center of their own.

Polar coordinate world.

They're like radar scanning around
them for audience members and

maybe within this range of
influence you can see this

on the right it's a little right
here is as large as a bit and

see these things kind of scanning around
looking for people and as they find them.

They then generate No it's based on their
distance and their angle of incidence.

The thing that happens a lot here
is that I don't just look at

instantaneous data where is or
people standing right now but people

will create trails across the notation as
they move so might be over two seconds or

over five seconds or over ten seconds
that helps build up larger gestures and

it also reduces the amount of variation
from one measure of music to the next or

basically creates larger
scale more gradual changes

as opposed to we're just
using instantaneous data.

These can change much more radically
from one measure to the next.

So all these things were done at different
points during the piece to create

different different musical goals to
achieve different interactive goals and

obviously to add enough
variety to the experience

to make this engaging over
a kind of context and

time scale the last lot I have of
this piece I want to show is is this.

This is what I performed
on during the piece.

This is my scary little control interface
there is about one hundred different

parameters on the left column and there's
some monitoring that shows me the harmonic

content and where you know the location
data coming in and notation going out.

Well there were hundreds of cues that were
preset that I could call up in a given

time but I was constantly manipulating
this thing during the performances.

Well responding to whatever happened and

each each unique performance
of the work to try to kind of

tweak these things on the fly to either
push the music in a certain direction or

control the pacing in a particular way or
react to something that was happening.

You know one performance a ballroom
dancing broke out in the middle of this

kind of these parameters
to kind of encourage that

that activity to remain a little
further along in the texture because I

thought it was really creative and
interesting and I wanted to encourage it.

And I also often sent textual notes
to the musicians that would show

up on their screens with questions
about balance or phrasing or

different different things to kind of you
know add suggestions like a conductor

might do through their their visual check
just yours so I guess that was my role and

kind of real time and
in each of the performances I mentioned

three short clips now these videos are
very dark because the hall was very dark.

But to the amount of video and
the computer vision that was going on.

These are from two different performance
venues one was in our Center in Miami that

commissioned this work and that's where
this clip is from you'll see this is from

the beginning of the piece it actually
starts with just for saxophonist on stage

alone for the audience kind of invited to
come up and you'll see them moving around

you'll see some video responding and
there are these kind of colored lights

they're wearing these hats on their head
facilitate the computer vision out of the

house.
Give it another clip here.

This is our moment.

Piece for
the eye is what it takes center stage or

pretty much the entire At
various points during the piece.

We have one hundred.

Audience members all on stage at
once interacting with the musicians.

We did this in test studies we discovered
that very uninteresting things tended to

happen because everyone was just
kind of waiting around waiting for

someone else to take the lead.

So we did a few things to try to
start a spur some creative action.

One thing was that we had various
points in the piece that there may be

no audience members on stage they're
all seated in a circle around the.

This stage there might be just one or two
or seven or eight or there may be forty or

fifty or all hundred and
that changes according to some general

pre-planned activities and then we also
brought dancers in to collaborate with us

to work they dance in the piece but
they also work as kind of instigators.

They through gestures.

They they help.

Give people ideas about what to do and

how to participate I suggest when they
might sit down and when they might get up.

They also have a kind of library
of little instruction cards

little printed cars that they can give to
members of the audience which either tell

them to do specific things or they tell
them to recruit other audience members

to do some group activity together.

So this was a point where the audience was
organized into the kind of lines of people

which are generating these these these
rhythmic motives that you hear and

then the dancers in this particular form
started kind of like swaying back and

forth and clapping their hands a little
bit the music that would come out and

the audience followed their cue.

So you see them starting this way.

Now a little bit.

And out of snapping their fingers.

It's a little hard to
hear on the speakers.

Now they're clapping
the law is a lot closer.

This is this is from a different
performance this was in San Jose in

our technology festival there with the the
robot which is a much more experimental

science one percent than the group
that played it in Miami and

this is kind of a point of greatest
chaos in a way in the piece but

even within this is when they're seeing
the finger painting kind of notation even

within that I think your
robot did a great job.

They're incredible musicians taking it out
as a launching point and suggestion and

really putting their own
sound into this and.

And making something really
beautiful out of it so

that there's a really effective passage to
really illustrate what this acts of this

role is of the end of the day
it's not just moving around.

It's not just interacting with guys it's
also taking what comes through the system.

Just like you would with any piece of
music and trying to make it your own.

So

I'll move on here.

This is a great.

I enjoy We're going to piece a lot.

It also taught me a lot about some of
the perils of working with this kind of

interactive technology in live venues to
talk about union restrictions already and

various practical constraints but
there's also a lot of issues

just related to the design questions
how do you get one hundred people or

in a previous piece I did six hundred
people to participate in a piece of music

just kind of present one live kind
of output that's supposed to reflect

what all those people are doing and
do it in a way that's not trivial or

condescending but
also do it in a way that creates into.

Musical results that isn't just this
hodgepodge of all these different

contributions.

So I continue to explore
all those questions but

I also look to different venues in which I
might be able to create different kinds of

designs that don't require such
a massive participation in real time and

that's what I did with piano it's
you it's a piece for solo piano but

there's an interactive Web
component that goes along with it.

My key collaborators were Jenny Lynn
a New York based pianist who

commissioned this work for me and Quito
adventurer who was a masters student here

in music technology hoping that with
a lot of the software development and

key question here is basically how can
a web based participants contribute to

a live acoustic concert performance so
piano it suits

their concert performance is the most
traditional performance context you can

imagine there's an acoustic piano
sitting on stage playing a piano piece.

There's nothing else in live
performance Besides that

I haven't even gone to most of the live
performances which is like a wonderful

thing as a music technology guy not to
have to go like a week ahead of time and

spend all this time setting everything up.

So it's wonderfully
liberating in that way.

But it's not the point I promise you.

Well basically it starts off with
me creating a musical score and

this is this is one of the scores this for
short pieces that are part of this.

This looks kind of like a regular musical
score and kind of not there's a lot of

different musical fragments
one of these pages is for

the left hand one of them is for
the right hand but

basically you follow these arrows and
choose your own path through this piece.

So there's lots and lots.

You know potentially infinite number of
variations depending on how you traverse

each of these each of these graphs
basically of how you go from

one gesture to the next to the next.

So a pianist can actually take this score
and just stick it on a music stand and

start playing from it like this if they
want and can is how to perform the piece

that way with no technology involved and
this is nothing new.

This goes back to practice
of open form composition.

The one nine hundred fifty S. and
composers like Stockhausen are a problem.

But what's new here is that I
want to open the process up to

anyone to be able to make those choices
about the order of these fragments and

how they all fit together essentially
read mix this composition.

So once I create this court.

It goes to these kind of weaponry mixers
who can use a web based interface to do

whatever they want with it and then they
can share it online as an M P three file

or or through their website they can share
our gallery and share in Facebook and

do whatever they want with it and
that can kind of be one point

of experience the piece that actually
never goes into concert performance but

if they can also submit it for
consideration for a performance by a real

pianist on a real piano at a real concert
so I'll show you how that works here.

This is the web interface so you can
see it's very similar to that score.

I just showed you.

But it's using graphical notation
now instead of Western notation so

that you don't have to read music
to be able to use it all and

go through you can preview
each of these fragments and

as you like them you can add them
to your timeline at the bottom.

And kind of build up your
own version of the piece.

So now I previewed my right hand and
now I'm going

to switch to the other section which is
the left hand here and put some stuff on.

OK And

I have a four measure master.

I use

That's a basic process you go through and
then when you're happy with it.

You have you save it.

You share it and you can export it as
an M P three you can also export it

is a principle musical score and
Western notation that a pianist

can just click a button and
says print off the website and

have something they can put in front
of them and play off of a concert.

So the framework.

I've used most successfully
to organize this whole.

Interaction is contests.

So the most recent one.

I did was with the New York Times last
spring when I wrote a blog entry for

their contemporary music blog and
we invited time's readers to you see

the title there compose your
own to remakes these etudes and

submit their versions for consideration
for a performance by a genuine pianist.

So we got about one hundred hundred fifty
of these submissions over a week or so and

we selected four of them one for

each of the four little eight
years that make this up.

Jenny went into a recording
studio in the Bronx.

She played a video tape and then we
put these back on the Times website.

So I want to share one of those with you.

This is this is a remake
of that same etude I was

just showing you the score for were

OK

So there is this was done by a Asheville
North Carolina of a singer songwriter

named Evan hill and I exchanged a bunch
of e-mails with and I was curious you

know he's a singer songwriter you can play
the guitar you can write his own music.

Why would he want to use this
which is really more and

more towards people that might not have
those skills not be able to compose their

own music and
he he wrote back basically it's.

Saying that yes he wrote his own music but

he never writes music in this style of the
genre and this isn't a chance for him to

kind of branch out beyond his normal
comfort zone experience something new and

see how his sensibilities as
a singer songwriter emerge with

the possibilities that were executed
through through this open form score and

he said that what he came out was
like nothing he'd ever written.

But it still was unmistakably in his
style or had some sense of his style.

And that was really interesting to me.

Obviously the project raises lots of

interesting questions
about authorship my way to

address this has been to license it under
a Creative Commons share alike license so.

Anyone can remakes these they then
have to release what they did under

the same creative commons license which
lets anyone else then create derivative

works from their work as well.

And when you go into the website when you
go to save something ask you for your name

and then as that follows you know as I
get saved on the website on Facebook

as a printed score or as an M P three file
your name is always associated with that

as long as mine as well as mine were both
listed as kind of code composers so that

was that was the best way I could come
up with to address this question here.

I want to quickly talk about
one more project here and

then I'll open up to some questions.

This is an ongoing project with two
faculty from digital media called to solve

and Michael Nietzsche and
myself and over the year and a half.

We've been working on this.

We've had twenty five students from
various three different colleges

at Georgia Tech ranging from
undergraduates up to Ph D.

students involved in various ways

contributing to the project in various
capacities and the key question here.

Like I said before is how
can our our all environment

around us just in our everyday
surroundings become a framework for

collective musical exploration and
collective creativity.

So this is what this whole thing looks
like here it starts not with composition

but with collection.

So anyone can go out using a mobile
phone app and record sounds.

In the environment around them and
contribute them to our website and

then from there the sounds can take a lot
of different paths the sounds good.

Geo tags on them they get
some other tags on them so

that we know where they were recorded.

You know how you know the users thought
about them something about their

content and they go into our database and
from there.

There's basically three ways they can
go on any one go onto our website and

explore those through a map based
interface and just see what where

the sounds that were captured around
Georgia Tech you can also read

on the web and this requires no experience
remakes and you show you in a second.

You can take these sounds and

create new soundscapes that combine lots
of them remakes of the various ways.

Then you can share those online and then
also if you're a D.J. you can take these

sounds import them into your own working
environment your own production software

or whatever you like to use and
do a lot of performance based on that.

So we've done all of these with
the project I just want to quickly through

the steps the mobile app is for
Android and for I O.

S. basically you log in with your account
as a main menu you record a sound.

We're focusing on fairly short
sounds no more than a minute usually

just a few seconds in length.

You can review it.

You can tag it.

You can name it and

then you upload it to our server on
the website you can of course browse these

in list format you can search them
filter them with different criteria.

But then you can also go and
look at a map here.

So all these markers represent things
that were recorded in this case

in San Francisco.

And so that's another way to explore this
stuff but it also becomes an interface for

remakes seeing the images all small here
but you might see a little blue line here.

It's kind of traversing the space.

I just drew that free hand on there.

I'm drawing different points.

And so when I then hit play I
hear a remix of the sounds that

are near that path that I'm walking
across they get hands they get filtered

based on their proximity to my past.

It's like I'm taking a virtual walk so
I'll play.

Now it is a virtual walk along the Atlanta
beltline ridge of project and so

this is traversing about a mile and a half
of the belt line and fifteen seconds

and there's a few other features
it has to which all skip over for

now but then like I said You can also
explore these into your own working

environments on this is a performance that
took place physically on the belt line

by another music technology along
Travis that sure at the end of June and

after a month long period during which

it lands were invited to recording
a tribute sounds along the belt law and

Travis collected all those are about two
hundred sounds brought them into his own

performance environment into thirty minute
performance every sound you hear here it

was recorded on the belt line contributed
by someone using our mobile phone app

he processes them a lot he loops some
he manipulates them but it all started

it was recorded on the belt line I'll
just play a minute of this performance

and there's a quick taste of what that
was like so as I kind of hinted up.

We organized.

Presentations of urban remakes around
specific events or festivals or

initiatives.

To try to create density of sounds in our
database to make it really interesting

interesting and and
useful to explore and we mix.

So we did an event in San Francisco we
collaborate with wide Memorial Church

working with the constituencies they
serve in the Tenderloin District of

San Francisco to document that
neighborhood and I work for the local D.J.

who remakes the sounds.

We did the beltline work which
I've already spoken about.

We did a collaboration with Woodruff Arts
Center Atlanta Public Schools last summer

also using some stuff that Gil
developed to have them work

record a record about eight hundred sounds
around the Woodruff Arts Center campus and

the surrounding environment and

then they used different tools
to construct performances using

using that data the sounds of it captured
and we're looking at some some more.

It's extremely exciting events in two
thousand and eleven with this project.

I thought I'm going to wrap up now
because I know I want to leave

some time for questions.

I was pretty a slide sites to get in my
office yesterday and I wanted some like

nice concluding quote and I saw on my wall
there was this quote that was on a holiday

card that Tom Galloway sent out in two
thousand and five or two thousand and

six as is by Kurt Vonnegut and I thought
this really speaks a lot to my Or just

a cracked is a the end is cut off here so
I will just read it is practicing an art

no matter how well or badly is a way to
make your soul grow sing in the shower

dance to the radio tell stories write
a poem to a friend even a lousy poem.

So you as well as you possibly can get an
enormous award you have created something

I mean that's why I went into music and
became a composer sure but

it's also I think why I continue to
write music is that I'm trying to create

context in which people can practice the
art of music whether they have the study

of years of experience or whether they
just like to sing in the shower or

anything in between and
ways they can create collaboratively and

I can get involved in a process of
engaging with my audience not just saying.

This is what I want to say to say
what can we discover together.

There's a lot of people that
contributed to all these projects so

I want to throw them up on a slide.

I appreciate all of their support and if
you want more information about my work or

any of the stuff that I didn't
get a chance to talk about today.

My lavs website is distributed music that
got ticked at edu or of course the Center

for Music Technology what's the take
that he has more information about

all of the amazing music technology
research going on interest tech.

Thanks I'll open up to questions.

Yes right right

right right.

Yes yes I wrote a random
number generator largely for

testing purposes but
one of the beta testers of the site

kind of asked me about it and I decided to
leave it on and this is actually points.

So some some of them sounded kind of
random and yes most of them sound like

they were thought through pretty well and
one of the ways to most easily and

quickly distinguish the random from
the nonrandom is that if there were fifty

different little fragments that
were available in a given context.

A lot of times people would only use
five or ten of them or they would only

use five or ten them for most of
the piece and then at the very end.

They'd like suddenly go off in a different
direction to create different gestures and

I so so it didn't.

Most of them did not seem
like these random walks and.

But this points to a larger question the
reason that random number generator was

was ultimately basically an option
like an auto generated feature and

it's hidden very deep in there because
I don't people to default to it.

Is that you saw from that video on.

Takes to create four measures of music
using This is something you know most of

the people that I correspond with the kind
of winners of our contest with the times

and spent many many hours just
creating a minute of music and

that's great that they want to engage with
it that long but what I'm looking for

in the future with these kinds
of interfaces It's create more.

Hierarchical modes of interaction where if
I want to I can just decide things measure

by measure or perhaps I can even delve
down another level decide things note by

note there's also a level above
the hierarchy where I might say well I

want to start here and twenty measures
later I want to end up here and

I want to draw the contour
of how I want to get there.

I'm just going through all the squiggle is
what I want to get there and then maybe

an algorithm looks at that concert looks
at the starting any point in duration and

fills in those details and
I can see what it came up with and

I can say well you know I don't
like that measure right there.

I want to change that one.

I want to change that one.

And so on but it's a way of kind of
quickly generating some material and then

editing it and working with it from there
and I think that that's a really important

powerful thing I want to explore in
the next iteration of this this project.

Is how to create these
hierarchies of interaction and

then it's not random at all but

it gives you an easier way to get into
generating kind of longer form pieces and

starting to work with them and
edit them mostly

she thought it was great she.

I mean she is a pianist that plays
exclusively music of the twentieth and

twenty first centuries so she's
really open to this kind of stuff and

that's going to commission me.

I told her what I wanted to do and

you know she had a chance to run away and
she didn't.

It was it was really interesting for
her because it provided this

new way to connect to her audience is that
even if she went to recital you know she's

hearing a recital at some random venue in
New York and as often happens the concert

promoters don't bother to put any
of this information on the dance or

people just kind of show up and
they're expecting.

A regular piano piece she you know
she gives verbal program notes

on the stage a lot for all of her
music and her performances and so

she described this whole process and
then people can say well this was a really

interesting piece I want explore more of
it and go to the website afterwards and

get some of their way to
kind of engage with this so

much with contemporary music we go into
your performance we hear a piece once

it may not even exist on
a recording it's easy for us to get

to have the single experience of listening
to a piece and especially considering

music it's it's hard to really get things
on the first listen a lot of the time.

So this this gives a context and a reason
to kind of motivation to go back and

take a second look and look at this
from a different perspective and

it helps you really understand what is
Jenny doing as a performer here what were

the contributors doing and create
these versions that she's performing.

How did this all play together and now
what can I do what can I do differently.

So she really like that
aspect of it particularly

just in the way she could connect with
their audiences you to question to

you

that

as you

know

me so well.

Well first I'll answer this question all
their ship I think this is an old project

by surgery.

You're done.

He's actually will be here
in February music online

is one of the early clobber
a composition project.

Yes where up to four people could
kind of collaborate to create four

trucks in a one minute electrocution
composition this eventually ended up being

used is incidental music in theatrical
context that was the original

motivation was also released on a CD and
different so I don't think he made

very much money off of this but
the model he had was very interesting.

He was he was extremely concerned about
people getting not just getting credit for

what they had done through this site but
also getting paid the royalties that

were entitled to them even if those
royalties are like ten cents or

whatever and my solution was I
don't want to deal with money so

I just made everything
free in this case but.

So.

So he tracked everything and you know when
a road to check came from the CD company

he would divide it one hundred ways and
pay everyone for it.

And there's a new article in our music
journal that the dress is this at some

length and I think that it's it's
amazing that he did that and

it shows the respect that he had
first Quite a very diverse and

it's certainly a model I look back
to a lot in terms of making money.

When these kinds of.

When these kinds of things
get turned into things for

commercial potential It's usually.

How can we use this to
promote a big name artist.

So I get these calls every once
in a while and I'm sure you.

I know you have done some of these
things before where you know.

If people are going to
remakes the music of T.

pain or you know remix the soundtrack
to Glee or something like that.

You know through an i Phone app and
share those remakes is with each other.

Ultimately the goal of that is not that
people are going to sell these remakes is

that they've made all of their goals
that they're going to buy the next T.

Pain album or go to the pain concert or
the watch the next episode of Glee on T.V.

or something like that.

And so that tends to be the financial
model that I've seen has

been most successful is that these
are these are hopes to get people engaged

just like I was talking about with you.

Liz I hope to get her audience in gauging
the music that she's playing with

these are hopes to get people
back to the original content and

it's kind of supporting But the concern.

My concern about how that kind of matches
with these Thetic manifesto I laid out

today is that that kind of loses the
original intent of the cooperation that

it's no longer really about these products
and getting remakes but it's about

this original this original thing it's
all kind of pointing back to the original

it might work there really is not an
original definitive version of anything.

I don't really C.D.'s of these things
because what would the CD have on it.

So.

So I think there's
commercial potential but

at least in my little world
of experimental guard.

Music.

I think that there's a mismatch
between the commercial potential and

in the aesthetic origins of the work.

Sure.

So we're asking them really.

So with walk we did I think for

trial runs in the year leading up
to its premiere at Georgia Tech.

You know some of them were very small and
disastrous and some of them were very

you know fairly close to the final
thing and we asked we talked to people.

I mean we experiment.

We just looked at and
assess to experience what was happening.

We also talked to people and

got feedback and then at each
of the performances we gave out.

We had a Q. and A discussion afterwards
were it's not just an opportunity for

the audience ask us questions but
it was an opportunity for us to ask them

questions and we had a written survey that
everyone filled out and in fact between so

we did five performances in Miami and
for the premier and.

And then four additional performances in
San Jose about seven months later and

we need dramatic changes between
those two performances and

I took this slide out from this
deck in the interest of time but.

I had those survey
results side by side and

reforms is every question we
asked in terms of how much did

you understand how much do you feel
you are contributing to performance.

How much did you feel
connected to the musicians all

things like that there are ten or
twelve questions like that and

the metrics on every every
single one except one.

Which has another explanation and

went up some of them significantly as
much as fifteen or twenty percent.

So that's how that's how
we address those questions.

Well I'll go even more
in general than that for

you which is the visualization is critical
and hoping to illustrate what's happening.

Sonically and the visualization that we
had in the initial performance was very

beautiful but it was very abstract and it
was very difficult to understand what was

happening in the visualization we
ditched that entire visualization for

the next performance and one that
would look much more like the music

notation there was like a stylized
version music notation.

Actually it's in one of those
slides I didn't mention it but

it's going to go back now but it should
much more clearly what was going on and

we got much more positive responses and
a lot of people specifically comment about

visualization as helping them
to understand what's going on.

Luke.

More.

It was mostly non musicians
who were using it and

it was mostly musicians who won
the contests and I think that that is

perhaps makes a lot of sense that they
brought some knowledge of composition and

formal structure and phrasing with the.

Inability to work the material
that a casual user might not.

I think we're looking at
me like we're out of time.

No.

Yeah.

Sure.

So that that option does
exist in one of the eight

where there are there's there's
two layers in the left.

It's actually the not split by hands
there it's complicated but but

there's one layer there's
a lot of repeated rhythmic.

And that.

You can you can repeat
those as much as you want.

So you can sit but you can't stretch
it because there are very specific

rhythms and if you stretch them
weird things would start happening.

But then the other layer are just chords
that are placed kind of spatially So

those chords can be any duration
that you specify them to be and

then they just get stuck on
the score in an appropriate place.

It's a it's a complicated question because
it's not just something exists in the in

the digital realm as graphics Corbet has
to resign ends up being printed out and

readable music notation and.

So it's something that where these kinds
of options existence are limited degree

with this piece and I saw that in
the eighty's where those options existed

more were the ones where I think that
the most interesting and varied result.

Came out from the contributors and so

again that's something I think is really
important to focus on writing for

and again to come up with some some
more powerful strategies for translating

between more freeform things that might
get done in a graphical interface

on a graph or notation back to something
that's more interesting that Asia and

I work with those tools in the context
of other projects I think it's a it's

a solvable problem but it's one that's
still on the To Do list for right now.

Right.

Sure you know it's just a coincidence
of the pieces that I happen to share.

There is actually some of my he says that
it was spoken voice exclusively there

on the first interactive pieces I
ever did was a telephone call and

piece where people were asked to say
their favorite Shakespeare quotation.

And then that was manipulated turned into
a kind of piece of music on credit and

there's other pieces I've done that
they focus on envoy says Well Scott.

So here is yours

and you

might respond your children.

Sure this is

it sounds fascinating let's
talk offline about it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.