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Leonardo Music Journal
Volume 9 (2000)
Power and Responsibility: Politics, Identity and Technology in Music
with Compact Disc
PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS: Leonardo Music Journal is a print journal, published five times a year. Leonardo is edited by Leonardo/the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and published by the MIT Press. Subscriptions and individual issues can be ordered from the MIT Press.
ONLINE ACCESS: Access to electronic versions of journal issues is included in subscriptions to Leonardo. Visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/LMJ and click on "Electronic Access" for information. Copies of individual Leonardo articles can be downloaded for a fee.
Introduction
pages 1-2Power and Responsibility: Politics, Identity and Technology in Music
by Nicolas CollinsSECTION 1: RESPONSIBILITY
COMPOSER'S NOTEBOOK
pages 3-4Grassroots
by Krystyna Bobrowskipages 5-12
Faust Music On Line (FMOL): An Approach to Real-time Collective Composition on the Internet
by Sergi JordáABSTRACT: Collective creation and the production of open and continuously evolving works are, according to the author, two of the major and more appealing artistic breakthroughs the Internet can offer to composers and creators in general. In this context, concepts such as authorship and copyright will necessarily have to evolve and adapt to a new reality. The author discusses an Internet project for real-time collective composition commissioned by La Fura dels Baus, which has been used for the soundtrack of La Fura's play F@ust 3.0.
pages 13-18
Making Music on the Web
by William DuckworthABSTRACT: Cathedral is one of the first extended works of music and art created as a web site. On-line since June 1997, it includes both acoustic and computer music, live webcasts and newly created virtual instruments. The author discusses the conception and development of the site, and outlines future plans for a 48-hour web concert in 2001. Cathedral may be visited at http://www.monroestreet.com/Cathedral/home.html.
pages 19-22
Free Enterprise: Virtual Capital and Counterfeit Music at the End of the Century
by Mark TrayleABSTRACT: How does a piece of computer network music reflect the virtual economy of the late twentieth century? Was the "open-form" music of the 1960s a bedfellow of organizational science? The author conjectures about the nature of distributed composition and the socioeconomic implications of its application in a composition for networked credit card readers.
pages 23-28
Talking Drum: A Local Area Network Music Installation
by Chris BrownABSTRACT: Talking Drum is an interactive computer network music installation designed for the diffusion of cyclically repeating rhythms produced by four electronically synchronized instruments separated by distances up to 50 feet (16 m). The reverberant character of the performance space and the distance-related time-delays between stations combine with the speed and rhythms of the music to create a complex, multifocal mix that audiences explore by moving independently through the installation. The software uses Afro-Cuban musical concepts as a model for creating an interactive drum machine. It implements a simple genetic algorithm to mediate the interaction between pre-composed and improvised rhythms.
pages 29-34
BMB con.: Collaborative Experiences with Sound, Image and Space
by Justin BennettABSTRACT: The author outlines the history and methodologies of the Netherlands-based audio/visual performance group BMB con. He discusses the trio's approaches to audience relationships, technology and collaboration, and attempts to describe the nature of the sound of BMB con.
pages 35-42
Reunion: John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Electronic Music and Chess
by Lowell CrossABSTRACT: The author chronicles his involvement in Reunion, a 1968 collaborative performance featuring John Cage, Marcel Duchamp and Teeny Duchamp, with electronic music by David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, David Tudor and Lowell Cross. After addressing some misconceptions about Reunion, the author outlines specific details about the conditions surrounding the performance and the sound-distributing chessboard he built, then offers an interpretation of the event.
SECTION 2: IDENTITY
COMPOSER'S NOTEBOOK
pages 43-44
Marx Bro.
by Daniel Goode
pages 45-52
Beyond Asian American Jazz: My Musical and Political Changes in the Asian American Movement
by Fred HoABSTRACT: The author addresses the interconnection between making revolutionary Asian American music and the conditions for its development as contextualized by the ideological and political orientation from the Movement and its organizations. He discusses his own musical and political development as a leading revolutionary Chinese/Asian American artist.
pages 53-62
Global Village, Local Universe
by Rajmil FischmanABSTRACT: In this article, the author presents a personal view of his compositional identity as an instance of one of the innumerable possible outcomes within a civilization that has become global and individualistic at the same time. The author situates identity within the context of historical, political and social backgrounds and examines it from the point of view of the mechanics of its realization, social function and reach, and cultural baggage -- including musical influences from various traditions, technology and science.
pages 63-68
Music, Language and Environment
by David Dunn and René van PeerABSTRACT: Interviewed by music journalist René van Peer, the composer and sound recordist David Dunn discusses the sound work he has done in natural environments, his motivations for doing this work, and the thoughts and theories he has developed from it. Most of these works are unique events created for a specific time and location or for specific circumstances. In these events, the sounds generated by the players set up interactions with their immediate surroundings. Soundscape recordings are another aspect of Dunn's work. His work in different natural and cultural environments has enabled him to research areas where music and language intersect.
pages 69-76
Symphony Orchestras and Artist-Prophets: Cultural Isomorphism and the Allocation of Power In Music
by William OsborneABSTRACT: The Vienna Philharmonic is the paradigm of the symphony orchestra. No other orchestra in the world has been so intimately involved with the composers and cultural developments that have defined the genre. Despite recent protests against the orchestra, it still excludes women and visible members of racial minorities based on its belief that gender and ethnic uniformity give it aesthetic superiority. The Vienna Philharmonic thus provides an interesting case study for the allocation of power in Western art music. In this article, the author documents the orchestra's ideologies and relates them to a general theory that the allocation of power in artistic expression is often culturally isomorphic with the larger values of the society in which that expression occurs. He then discusses how cultural isomorphism affects concepts of power allocation in the modernist and postmodernist mind-sets.
COMPOSER'S NOTEBOOK
pages 77-78Parma Manifesto
by Frederic Rzewski
SECTION 3: TECHNOLOGY
pages 79-88Facing the Music: Perspectives on Machine Composed Music
by David CopeABSTRACT: The author describes some of the processes required in creating Experiments in Musical Intelligence, a computer program for the simulation of musical styles. He then outlines many of the problems listeners face when attempting to deal with successful output from such programs. These problems involve redefining terms, debating human- versus computer-creativity and, ultimately, grappling with the meaning of music. This discussion includes an example from the computer-composed opera Mahler. The author argues that such music should be considered integral to mainstream human-composed music since it results from a collaboration between humans and the machines they have created.
pages 89-94
Exploring the Self Through Algorithmic Composition
by Roger AlsopABSTRACT: The author discusses his views on musical composition in the late twentieth century, focusing on the influence that communication and computer technology have had over his pursuit. He goes on to describe his use of computer-based algorithmic composition and how this particular approach enhances and refines his understanding of his own musical self-expression. He describes four computer algorithms, used in recent compositions and improvisations, that reflect his particular musical interests.
pages 95-102
Change Over Time: Responsibility and Power in the Midst of Catastrophe
by Ann WardeABSTRACT: After outlining a background of catastrophe theory and its links to musical composition, the author presents a manifestation of those links in the form of a "catastrophe machine" -- an interactive musical system in which abrupt changes in computer-generated sound processing are dependent upon performers' sensitive control of acoustic instruments. She then discusses notions of power and responsibility as they stem from a specific realization of this system, Berubah.
pages 103-106
The Cultural Role and Communicative Properties of Scientifically Derived Compositional Theories
by Dante TanziABSTRACT: The role of science in the processes of musical creation is justifiable as a method of formalizing knowledge used for expressive purposes. The understanding of musical phenomena, however, should not be reduced to cognitive aspects or entrusted to a purely descriptive iteration; certain creative functions of musical composition go beyond the many degrees of control offered by the technologies of knowledge. The necessity of comparison with the cultural orientation of an audience, sometimes considered secondary by some, must remain integral. Our interest in qualitatively new creative and intellectual acts must not abandon the dialectical character of musical communication, which involves, among other things, a shared linguistic universe.
pages 107-114
Improvising Machines: Spectral Dance and Token Objects
by Greg SchiemerABSTRACT: The author examines the evolution of a system he developed for the creation of two compositions, Spectral Dance and Token Objects, against a backdrop of other composers who have built their own electronic systems. This provides a window on the gradual transformation that has taken place in the way music has been created over the last three decades.
pages 115-120
The Aesthetics and Technological Aspects of Virtual Musical Instruments:
The Case of the SuperPolm MIDI Violin
by Suguru GotoABSTRACT: The author discusses how his critical stance against conformity in computer-based interactive art eventually led him to create his own instrument as a way towards individual artistic sensitivity and thought. He first outlines the development and creation of a virtual musical instrument, the SuperPolm, aswell as its technical points. He then addresses the relationship between gesture and music and the variety of human perceptual experiences that may occur during a performance on a virtual musical instrument. Finally the author presents the background of the SuperPolm's development and discusses cultural and technological aspects of interactivity.
pages 121-122
WEB ARTICLE ABSTRACTS
Ownership and Control of the Creative Process in the Composition and Performance of Electroacoustic Music
by Peter ManningDe-composing Opera/Re-composing Listening: John Cage's Europeras
by David RyanInformation Systems Development and Music: The Exploration of a Parallelism
by Sasan RahmatianThe Diaries of Jim Horton
by John Bischoffpages 123-137
CD COMPANION
CD Companion Introduction: Power and Responsibility: Converted to Streaming Between Machines
by Guy van BellePower and Responsibility: Conversations with Contributors
by Guy van Belle et al.Users' Manual for the Leonardo Music/Media Journal Machine
by Guy van Bellepages 138-154
1999 Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal Author Index
(See also
Leonardo Music Journal Reviews
Clive Bell, Robert Coburn, Carlos Palombini, Rene van Peer, on the LMJ website. Due to space limitations, the Reviews section intended for LMJ9 was cut from the issue.)
Updated 12 October 2005
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