So now I get to do the fun part which is to introduce our keynote speaker Helen Thornton Helen ten is that who is the co-director of new radio and Performing Arts Inc She's the founder and producer of the national weekly radio series new American radio which ran through most of the one nine hundred ninety S. the founder and producer of turbulence dot org which is one of the most important internet websites for Internet art in the world and somewhere dot org And she's the co-founder with Joanne Greene of some amazing blogs network performance and network music review and she also edited a book networked a networked book about networked art in two thousand and nine she's also a writer a sound composer and a radio producer and her work has been aired internationally over the last thirty years she has an incredible career and a wonderful experience and more time to keynote speakers for this year's whack she was the very first person that came up because we really wanted to bring this this amazing historical perspective that Helen has and her experience as an artist as a curator on the internet for so many years and through other network media before that. And she said no when we asked her So we asked again and we asked again and we asked again and finally we convinced her to come and we were just so thrilled that she's here today so please welcome help and so on. Jason thank you haven't done for probably the last three years and I found that now everyone's From what I am talking I lose my voice which is kind of any experience but it will return. This happens and I'll try to stay away from the mike when I clear it. OK this talk consists of two intersecting narratives The first started is about my personal journey toward a career in sound and radio are. A long journey punctuated by frequent starts stops and fresh beginnings The second is about my founding of a not for profit new radio and performing arts and its two major programs new American radio and turbulance. New American radio was a series of weekly programs by American and international artists that aired on The National Public Radio Network from one nine hundred eighty seven to nine hundred ninety eight. Founded in one thousand nine hundred six turbulance dot org is a twenty year old archive of over two hundred twenty network to artworks and real time network performances. I'll discuss a few of turbulences early works including my own and shows the movement away from traditional literary and musical forms toward genuine networked practice the vulnerability of creative work in the in the digital present will become obvious. By the end of my talk I hope to impart the idea that learning is a lifelong endeavor the privilege or the lack there of is not always a predicator of outcomes the technologies can be breathtakingly innovative but also frustratingly restrictive when they're not under your control and that it is imperative especially in a rapidly changing world that you remain light on your feet sensitive to what is new open. Into discovery to the chance occurrence that will allow you to see things freshly and direct or redirect your journey so here's the first part some personal stuff. I'm not an academic I have no musical training beyond the forced piano lessons of my childhood. I was born and raised in Wynnewood Pennsylvania. A suburban community west of Philadelphia I attended private schools it was assumed that I would go to college complete my education return home marry into an acceptable family and raise four healthy children as my mother had. But it wasn't that simple. I was not a happy child forced into too too often and into too many roles I didn't want too many clothes I didn't want where I was in constant conflict with my mother who wanted me to be a lady whatever that was. Music helped I listened to the popular music of my time music of the late thirty's and forty's. I've stayed awake to hear the bluebird of happiness be like I hold your head up song by John Pierson played every night on the Philadelphia station. I've sort of the finale of Racine is William Tell Overture along with the hoof beats of the long of the Lone Ranger's great horse over. I was a robust singer during piano practice leaving my mother and father to wonder what they were paying for the first piece of classical music I own was strong tongue poem till it inch bagels Mary pranks a gift from my grandmother now and again my father played Wagner piano. In my early teens a neighbor introduced me to rheumatic opera when I was quite sure I had the. House to myself I would allow myself to feel the full full force of the musical experience lying on my stomach in the living room music turned up listening often taking part bellowing the passion the anguish the swelling hope of romantic opera. My high school yearbook read Helen flooring and hope springs eternal in the human breast. I went to Wellesley College as my mother and her sister had done before me it was beat to be the last predictable predictable choice I made. Well there I imagined a future in medicine. Until real flesh and blood medicine dear kind of derailed me from that. That I reimagined my future is one of the few women in the Protestant ministry and switched my major to biblical history. Following graduation I spent a year as a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Only to realize Nope wrong again. I compiled the index for a book by anthropologist Margaret Mead I became a copy editor at G.P. Putnam's I was hired and fired by two small magazines I went freelance as a writer researcher and yes that was finally right. With the relaxation that decision brought a took a course at New York University where I read and fell in love with the eighteenth century English comic novel I married wrong again I went back to school to graduate student in English literature I divorced good decision I took a job as a waitress and earned enough for an ocean voyage to England and a year as special student at Oxford University there I tutored an English comic novel with John Bailey. Who is our a smirk docs husband I wrote my own novel was awful and I returned nearly penniless to the US I spent the following year with a friend in a cottage on schoolies mountain in New Jersey no insulation no heat no running water I cut wood carried water cooked over the fireplace and in the few daylight hours I had left I tried to write. A year of that when I accepted an offer from one of the summer residence in the area to manage the local him and I settled into a more comfortable rural life in a small tenant house on a very large farm with a dog a cat two pigs two sheeps and chicken. I grew vegetables I hunted deer and ran the Long Valley him which was not an inn at old by the way it was a tavern. All this before that particular evening in the mid one nine hundred seventy S. when my journey turned toward a career in sound actually began by then I was fifty years old. A note on the seventies it was a time when our telephones were attached to our houses when we tend to walk upright with our own or immediate environment when duce came on the radio and in print at specified times when we still sang spontaneously with one another and most of us knew nothing whatsoever about the Internet. At the same time a number of things familiar in our current media environment were initiated in one thousand nine hundred new one Intel brought out the first microprocessor starting the evolution of the home computer in April one thousand nine hundred eighty three Martin Cooper of Motorola transmitted the first cell phone call in one thousand nine hundred ninety six Apple computer company was founded. And two years later the apple to the first mass marketed personal computer was launched. On the significant evening to which I have already referred I was at home sick. A New York friend who summer nearby dropped in declaring she had just a thing to make me feel better and she gave me a small white pill a most extraordinarily small white pill which I mean he swallowed thinking it was medicine within the hour as I tried to sleep my thoughts began to wrong time they continued to rhyme throughout the night and well into the next day to become the frog Ghost the first of three verse stories featuring animals I had owned as Morel the an Afghan hound prove he could tours a basset hound and Tristram kept a black and white tuxedo I had bought for two bob in Oxford and brought home with me on an ocean liner that's the way we traveled the ocean lungs. On From the color of road the story begins stands a dismal abode its gables and turrets are warm while its parapet railings with their own pain to pay of things have a look distraught and for mourn and so on for thirty six pages. In the late seventies when I no longer lived in Long value but had moved north to a farmhouse near to one to Pennsylvania and was earning my living refinishing antique furniture the frog colored Ghost would be made into a play and performed for children in the towns of to Wanda Mansfield and Wells borough. It should have music I have no dyed in the world who said it but from those four those four words the frog hollow goose began its transition from a book. Musical theater and I my journey into. My search for someone to compose and write the music was a no winner two women did eventually agree to compose the music but now they were them were willing to write it down and both however were willing to to be recorded and so I bought a copy of Rolling Stone magazine found an ad for the Don does sound studios in Red Hook New York attended the workshop had my first lessons in recordings and my first experience with a sense of synthesizer. What happened to me. That's me at fifty and that's the synthesizer right here left. The dungeon studio was full of E M L What are the ones a synthesizer produced between one nine hundred seventy two and one nine hundred eighty two with its four also later architecture multimode filter and elaborate patch control the one zero one was one of the most flexible of the portable patch synthesizers available at the time well not as well known as C R part of the movie it played a significant educational role in the burgeoning elect the electrification of music at that time and in my career I played it like to have rented one and I took it home the A.V.M. L. would provide the sound for my very first composition a colossal thunderstorm for the frog hall of ghost and it would be central to all my songs work. In the years to come. I was not interested in note. My interest from the start list with the ambient mind space I could create using the E.M.L. also leaders and later with the sound environments that in themselves told stories I bought a four track Teac and began collecting sounds for use in my environments and acting as my own narrator inserted several of my print stories into them. I worked with other artists as well creating compositions for the young Evelyn garde dancer dancers choreographers Bill T. Jones and our new Zane and for other artists working at the experimental television center in nearby Binghamton New York. And I contacted National Public Radio about my work their answer was No and they weren't particularly nice about it. Here my memory kinds of fails way somehow or other in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine I was invited I think by independent public radio producer Larry Joseph some to the Airlie seminar on the art of radio in Quantico Virginia of all places it was an event that brought together two hundred public radio producers reporters editors executives and foreign broadcasters. There I boldly describe the frustration I had experienced with my early efforts to gain access to public radio airwaves and I played a very simple stereo work one of my very first compositions dream sequence to. This takes about two minutes if you get tired you know. The scene she says dream. There is a saying that his wife. Has the same. Issue with shaking with me shaking. Me. As you straight to. See. There is a with. Most of. Us. See. This is. Missing. And investigation that's to tell the police the hospital staff and students. Will see us. And speak to the listener with hundred has such a dissimilar to switch to reason. And to feel that he is sorry for feel. Free. To my complete surprise as the work came to an end it was kind of a wildly enthusiastic response expected to be slammed I suppose because I had criticized N.P.R. heavily before I played it and instead N.P.R. was buying my work which was totally astonishing there are other rewards as well Peter they are brought home a highly esteemed Pioneer stereo features that Senator Frye's Berlin Germany had attended the conference he heard and praised my work and shortly thereafter he would invite a group of N.P.R. producers to a workshop at Sunder fries parted on where he hoped to teach them how to produce sound rich documentary work one place remained open and I got it I got a place and it was at center Fry's Berlin in one thousand nine hundred eighty one that I met regain a buyer an independent documentary producer and director assistant who would introduce me to European radio work and later as associate producer of The New American radio series share with me the struggle to articulate the goals of an American radio art series and the effort to raise the money. I returned to New York lived in. In the loft on the Bowery for a time continued to create sound works for the Bill T. Jones an army Zane Dance Company and for other young dancers at the same time I came to know many of New York's new music composers and to participate in the concerts and festivals of their Then very active music scene but I wanted access to radio for my work and for the work of other artists. And so in July nine hundred eighty one I founded the not for profit organization new radio and performing arts and a year later with a five hundred one c three and have begun soliciting funds from the government and private foundations we were lucky. We secured enough funds to produce a series of six half hour programs in one thousand nine hundred six with a somewhat larger ground we produced a series of thirteen works in one nine hundred eighty seven and then the big one one hundred fifty six thousand dollars from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for a fifty two part series really was not enough but it was very exciting our future in the public system seemed very rosy indeed but no wrong again. The one nine hundred sixty seven Public Broadcasting Act had described public radio as unique programming responsibility as providing alternative programming but it is and this is a quote programmes which would probably not survive in the ratings oriented commercial system but which were perceived to be of value to particular audiences where I thought we would fit in just right unfortunately there had never been a satisfactory public policy about how to support noncommercial educational broadcasting and P.R. needed money they were in fact very deeply in debt. Enter audience research and consultants with backgrounds in commercial radio. In July one thousand nine hundred eighty nine George Bailey of walrus research tested listener responses to eight C.P.B. funded series among them some you probably know marketplace fresh air. And new American radio. New American radio placed last among the test programs we had been caught and what somebody called the scientism of consultants. An effort to increase their audience numbers and thereby bolster their incomes N.P.R. and its affiliate stations were link wishing to claim to public service that represented Public Radio's reason for existence and were first focusing instead on transforming their operations into consistent marketable products justified by commercial market research. The inevitable happen quickly not just to new American radio but to other art programs our initial station Kerridge had been acceptable two years later it had declined shockingly under has more stations under pressure first from C.P.B. and its consultants declined the series in favor of programs whose audiences would bring in more money. We persisted new American radio did not go away it remained on air as a weekly national series for ten years until nine hundred ninety eight. By one thousand nine hundred eight however the number of stations airing the series had declined into the single digits funding to have declined and with us our ability to pay artists for new work after some serious discussion we brought the series to a close but not before we had launched turbulence. I want to backtrack now to nine hundred ninety five for a minute. Turbulence came into existence in one thousand nine hundred five because Harris skiable the young music student who had created work for New American radio took me to his studio and using Mosaic the browser of choice and ninety five showed me the internet and talked to me about its promising future. A big yes the decision was immediate or almost immediate. This was clearly the way to go now that new American radio was on the wane we began talking to interested friends and courage in them to create for this new miscommunications medium so long to nine hundred ninety six twenty million Americans had access to the Internet Netscape was now the Web's most popular browser sixteen megabytes of RAM was a big deal a very big deal Google was born in January turbulence launched in May. I'm going to show you a picture of something. I did want to show you new American what the new American radio site looks like just for a second because it's still up. And if you go. What you can see here it's all. This some. It's actually says full length works in that space there and if you click on that it will take you to a page where you can download up to I think there one hundred one hundred twenty words from the series on that site somewhere dot org. Well. This is closest I could come to finding something that resembled. The first turbulence. Home page. All the all the logos moved in the for home page and they ran down the center with a little brief description but it was black you know Black was a big deal at that point. Few people shared music in one thousand nine hundred sixty files were too big and the dial up modems to slow quick time Adobe shockwave Java real audiophile were available and all supported Audioboo five of the six first turbulance works actually used them. The first version of Real Audio Player had been introduced in April nine hundred ninety five and was one of the first media players capable of streaming media over the Internet and it was this capability that Eric shifter and I took advantage of when creating north country for the turbulence launch. Emerging Media are largely imitative. Rooted in the past they reflect inherited forms of thought and experience well the power of the new medium is in the words of Henry Jenkins latent but invisible suppressed ignored or not well enough understood to overcome the power of the familiar the power of continuity. North Country was an amalgam of my past originally written on a typewriter for the printed page it deals humorously with identity and boundary issues but it also traces back to my studies in the eighteenth century English comic novel and most specifically to my love for Laurence Sterne's the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy gentleman. Read recreated by me for radio in one nine hundred ninety five north country was complete with narration and a full sound tracked both recorded in professional studios really recreated for the one nine hundred ninety six web narration and soundtrack had to go there wasn't sufficient bandwidth to present other one and its entirety and still maintain a reasonable download time for decent sized graphics. And then there was the real audiotape layer and this is what happened as a viewer the first thing you saw was a metafile on your desktop this file gave the location of the real audio files and invoked the real player to play the files back then the real audio download began popping in over the top of the page with a visual reminder that the download was taking place. And the real Audioboo had made it possible this was followed by a box that gave information about the artists in the title of the piece and provided yet another reminder that you were using a real audio product. You had to click on your browser to get rid of all this advertising. This was one thousand nine hundred six commerce at work just an early example of what would become an increasing number of very successful attempts by businesses in the corporate world to monetize everything on the web and in the process to interfere with the continuity of the narrative experience you might have had. But real audio was the only streaming technology in one thousand nine hundred ninety six. A year later John Nielsen a composer musician and programmer created radio steer for turbulence unlike North Country radio steer was for and about the Internet and in its own way it was precious and of our future involvement with the Internet as viewers rather than as participants. Radio Steere was an M.B. and entertainment device based on the synchronous delivery of motion imagery music sound and live radio. There were several sites on the web at that time the streamed live police scanner all audio through Real Audio John appropriated them drawing them in is a central part of his work no longer a creation of the artist alone radio stare was the first art work on turbulence that appropriated materials in real time from outside the work thus introducing chancer indeterminacy live events over which the artist had no control here's what it looked like it opened with this image of radio tower against the night sky a few lone beeps could be heard the view then panned upward and the tower disappeared another screen opened this one positioned you the viewer in the front seat of a vehicle driving down a street lonely road in the middle of the night occasionally you'd pass a radio tower at the same time the browser downloaded a quick time it e-file its music behind a slow steady drum rhythm with mellow synth pads. It was intentionally bland and repetitive with only an occasional pause and drum fill. Simultaneously and perhaps most importantly the browser opened up the real audio player to receive the live stream from a police scanner site. Instructions on the page told you to turn off the lights and relax. In other words the overhyped idea of interactivity so characteristic of the time would not apply here wrapped in the night you experience the music and the radio voices your only choice was to sit back and listen. Radio stare remained active for three years what happened. Well radio stare stare depended on quick time Flash and real Audioboo and on the relatively new ability with with brow of web browsers to receive and play these media types. In two thousand Real Audio locked out all media types except the one that was created to play that is the real audio player grab take grab at the computers or you card to play it's stream and block out all the other players from playing the Mitty could no longer be heard the author's intent could no longer be real. Proprietary software was soon to become the norm all code other than H.T.M.L. would soon become a page impossible for artists to copy and difficult to hack. We had had that privilege prior to this where all code was open to us and we could use. A year after radio Steere to musician composers just to go over and Scott Rosenberg and I would go on to use real audio streaming technology in three own line networked music performances our goal was to encourage musicians and not for profit music organizations to develop and explore digital networks as spaces in which real time performances. Could occur we began. This. Kind of how art art happens where it happens. We began with harvest works in New York City the center of contemporary music at Mills College California and an office space in New York where Jesse Scott and I were in one thousand nine hundred eight with an impressive list of musicians. Some may be familiar to you pulling all of various Sheli hers Jim proved lazy among them we produced three performances feedback loosens connections and spaces they were successful performances live streams from all three locations came together and were auto bolt participants and to enter at listeners our hope however had been the assembled talent would start to open their performances to the unpredictable late in. Sees unlimited bandwidth challenges of real time interaction but they didn't their interest was making music with their friends. This preacher Peter trial of observed taken just as music these pieces are nothing new this time I think Lee They essentially recapitulate the familiar acoustic proces taken as a whole however they represent a new movement in Electronic Arts and electronic music what they attempt to do technically is facilitate live interaction between musicians in different places they also add graphical elements Furthermore the output is potentially a little bowl to anyone on earth with an Internet connection Well good for us but it is difficult and time consuming as it was for us to set up an office space each time we want and I wanted to do it produce a performance and to train in experienced engineers we wanted something more out of the experience. Never got it it it took another nine years actually before John Roche a Philadelphia artist and Willie whip the designer and teacher took on one the problem of the problems that had been in existence before and created for turbulence a Windows platform the simultaneous translator which made the delays and fluctuations of the Internet visible and a lot of will so that the Internet could become a collaborator for anyone creating their own sound mix. But that was to wait for some time. And then in two thousand and three we commissioned Georgia Tech's own Jason freedom. To create a work cold in period a period G. nag were aural ization for Nutella. Unlike previous auto audio prog. Well you know projects scuse me nags musicians could be heard at any talk and the composer was not Jason but the software he wrote for the user to download to her devout desktop and the Search Search Engine she used to find the file she wanted to hear the software drew on music files stored on the file sharing site Gnutella and turned the process of searching for and downloading M P three files into what Freeman cold chaotic musical collage all user had to do with type one or more search terms Internet which then scanned the new telephone network for matching M P three S. and began downloading them as they were downloaded Freemans software began playing the material with the multiple songs or snippets of songs weaving back and forth over one another or in succession a new. Composition was created Here's an example of. This. Not. Slow. Yeah. That. Was not going to play the whole thing. Do you all know about Napster and what happened with Napster. I think yeah most you do anyway. A new tell I was one of the many peer to peer file sharing protocols that emerged in the wake of Napster. But Nutella was eventually overtaken by other peer to peer file sharing services and since snagged depended on that active community of file sharers on the Gnutella network it had as Gnutella do so here we have another work that can no longer be used on site however if you want to go and listen there are good examples I remember on the site. Of. In concluding as I'm going to have to come on. I would like to describe a similar work were called Direct graphic dynamo which launched on turbulence in two thousand and five and this one brings me back to my literary roots. Two thousand and five now over one hundred twenty six million American adults are now on. The internet and your net Google was experiencing phenomenal growth three former Pay Pal employees employees had launched You Tube file sharing and social networking sites like Live Journal and My Space had merged. But no one knew what a tablet was or could even imagine the wide variety of innovative apps that would become available for smartphones. At this time there were at least six narrative works on the terrible turbulent side all interactive some more so than others but none of the writers had drawn material from a platform outside of their work in real time until we commissioned Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett to produce graphic dynamo. Graphic dynamo is a live action comic strip I'm going to bring it up in a minute it takes a while to get itself going but out of described what happens first it's a lot of action comic strip made up of one web page that contains three rectangular frames all the same size these three panels are superimposed on a larger rectangular shape decorated with a blue and white pattern reminiscent of Roy Lichtenstein spend a dollar it's every one to five seconds three different images from the web are located are loaded asynchronously in real time into the strip. Text fragments authored by Armstrong load randomly into the speech panels and thought bubbles. Together the images and the sentence fragments create a strange dislocated sense and expectation in the viewer sometimes complete all this with each other sometimes in complete sync they are always moving always changing like the musical fragments now downloaded. There is no way to navigate the site. By pointing and clicking. Rather. Smorgasbord of visual fragments engages viewer interaction by asking the viewer to make meaning of the disparate elements is there a link between text and images between thought balloons and sentence fragments Is there a connection between frames is there in fact a story here all or most of you are simply submit to the discontinuity and occasional moments of seeming sense this is another work like radio stare oppression declaration of the way up the web will be become by two thousand and sixteen. What gets to it takes a little while to warm up here. But you get the idea. From the time of its launch up from till two thousand and eight graphic dynamo used a real time feed from the social networking site Journal. Following an unknown period of time when the workload only pornography from Russia the artist's replace it with are as from flicker. Drawing on this flow of data streaming from the Web generated by people whose only apparent connection is their simultaneous use of a particular platform there uploading images graphic dynamos downloading them graphic Dunham Is it clear departure from the familiar hyperlink to narratives of one thousand nine hundred ninety six rather it's a networked experiment that challenges the viewer's expectations and presents as a comic strip that we're drowning in today. Freeman's work no longer functions. Armstrong and tippets is in danger. There from hackers the disappearance of the networking site or perhaps the development of a better but no longer compatible browser. As Brian Arthur writes in the nature of technology technology works with economic forces not with human dreams. The end well not quite. I'm eighty seven years old. Standing here I try to imagine how our experiences with technology yours and mine might be similar and what the future might bring for you can you can any of us for that matter imagine the technology landscape twenty five or fifty years from now. Well probably not. It's my guess that in your field or fields now you'll be searching out the next technological iteration of something I should say of something I probably know nothing about. And that your challenge will be to discover something new while surrounded by a global prolife proliferation of new technologies. Where you work on a closed proprietary technologies whose goal is to be first to market and edge out the composition. OK let the best product dominate but how in an increasingly stricture domain of walled gardens and closed systems how do you create the opportunity for discovery for that moment that chips into something new. I have only one see just like me now. Learn as much as you can not just about music composition or computer science but about the world about your world if you don't know for instance already. Discover how plants communiqué. With one another examine the increasing evidence for the extraordinary rich interconnectedness and directions of the sensory areas of the of the brain evidence that makes it difficult to say that anything is purely visual or purely ordered Shorey. Experience who are in your world learn about it and keep on learning remain open to the opportunities it offers find your own path stay light on your feet Thank you. Iran. But. I. Wouldn't predict where it would go. I think that. As technology is going to lead us unfortunately for a while. It is probably a question you should ask. Someone no large corporation. Yes. I was. One. Thank you thank you. Thank you. Question. Does that mean. It's going to. Work you. Did. This is a question that has come up since I've been to scum for such talked to Jason about it to other people about it where where whole the women go on. I don't know what the answer to it is it's pretty much of a male field. At this point. How do you. Encourage women until. You've got. I think to you know for for people who who are already involved to speak to women it would be a good. That idea. Can you really just talks to simply speak to a gathering of women that your call is your university. To encourage them to tell them that it's more fun than it looks. And for doing much teaching I would certainly encourage them to other than that I don't exactly know what to say. And I. Think. There's so much talk these days about innovations a buzzword you know I don't know about for a while that. Maybe the best recipe for patient is the lack of what you're saying and learn about things that don't seem a little purse and I want to give you just have to be suggestions or tips for how it's that kind of learning. Or for people in general and also for for educators is. Things that we hear her students Yeah I think you have to know about them first and the thing is that there are so many interesting studies going on that are beginning very slowly to reveal things about us that we haven't known. And the brain has been one of those areas that is had a lot of development. In understanding. You have to know about it first as an educator. And then you know make it make it nice and easy like I tried to do because when you start getting into those documents they're not all that. Easy but. Someone will write about. Them about the research this books are coming out all the time now. I don't know what else to say because you know unless you start reading about technology. You will become unaware you're unaware of. Of what should stilling and how it's governed the way we live than and change. A very very big factor in all of this. I mean if you start thinking about taking away our washing machines our automobiles and stuff like that and you put us back in the Middle Ages very rapidly technology has played a very very large part. In the development of all of our lives. Maybe we should talk about it. Illo.