Abstracts
MONDAY NOVEMBER 22
The Network Performing Arts Scene
During this presentation we will provide a brief overview of Internet2, with an emphasis on performing arts applications utilizing Internet2 and its global partner networks. Project highlights will include master classes, auditions, rehearsals, multi-site performance events, and HD broadcast quality extension of live performance to remote audiences.
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Useful Concepts for Network Performance
This presentation provides an overview of strategies for performing interactively over the network. The talk focuses on various aspects of cueing over the network and the technologies used to deal with the inherent latency of the network medium. The presentation is based on more than six years of practice-based research in the field of network music performance with collaborating nodes scattered all around the globe. It focuses on the activities of the NetVs.Net collective, a group of musicians who only perform over the network as well as on the work of networked performers, the Jakson4s.
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What About the Sound? – Audio Issues in Sound-Critical Video-teleconferences
Most current video-teleconference (VTC) systems are not designed to handle the audio frequency-content needs of sound-critical sessions like musical and dramatic performances. Even the few systems that can accommodate these needs usually ruin the sound quality by applying speech-specific echo control to the audio. This presentation will discuss the many issues related to audio in sound-critical VTCs where the quality of the sound is of utmost importance. Techniques will be shown, described, and explained that allow VTC participants to remove echo from their sessions while maintaining full audio fidelity. Part of the session will include a demonstration of EchoDamp, the new echo-control software written specifically for the musical VTC environment.
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Current tools used in Networked Music Performance
This workshop offers participants a set of hands-on sessions along with a presentation of the most used audio, video and messaging technologies used by the NMP community to interact over the network. The workshop covers technologies and products such as JackTrip, the Master Cue Generator (MCG), an interactive NMP tool built with Max/MSP and various techniques to display network cues in multi-site performances. The workshop will be linked live to another site in order to demonstrate and discuss paradigms inherent to NMP.
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DVTS Overview
During this session an overview of DVTS (Digital Video Transport System) will be given including its history, components and specifications, bandwidth requirements, and broad adoption and uses in the global performing arts community.
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Live Master Class & Lighting Issues with NWS
The New World Symphony, America’s only full-time orchestral academy, prepares gifted graduates of prestigious music programs for successful careers in orchestras and ensembles. As part of their instruction, our orchestra members or “fellows” receive mentoring from the foremost musicians around the globe, both in-person and through various forms of hi-bandwidth video conferencing applications. This demonstration of an online master class utilizes an application called DVTS, which streams and receives raw DV-formatted audio and video at rate of 30 Mbps. The important question of lighting will also be covered during this session.
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TUESDAY NOVEMBER 23
Real-time analysis of non-verbal expressive and social signals in networked performances
This lecture presents research activities at Casa Paganini on real-time systems for networked interaction and communication of non-verbal expressive and social behavior, in the framework of the EU Culture 2007 Project CO-ME-DI-A. Examples of networked interaction based on the real-time analysis and communication of non-verbal expressive and social signals (e.g., entrainment, dominance) in the EyesWeb XMI platform are introduced, in the framework of the recently developed new version of the networked installation An Invisible Line of Corrado Canepa and Andrea Cera. Perspectives on future developments and on the impact of this research in artistic as well as in ICT projects are also discussed.
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Sound Spatialisation over the Network Using Ambisonics
The fast evolution of the Internet and digital audio networking technologies has strongly influenced a wide number of domains, including entertainment, broadcasting, and music performance. The limiting factor is typically the available bandwidth of the network; hence, a trade-off between audio quality, network latency and transmission bandwidth has to be made. To enrich networked audio applications with a surround sound experience efficient multi-channel audio transmission formats and coding technologies are required. Ambisonics has, in recent years, become increasingly important for capturing and reproducing 3D surround sound. This talk gives a brief introduction to Ambisonics theory and discusses its applicability as a scalable format for networked streamed audio.
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LOLA : Presentation and Hands on Session
In this session we will present LOLA, the “LOw LAtency videostreaming system” that has been designed to minimize the audio/video latency to a level which allows remote musicians (and other performing arts people) to interact in real-time even if at a long physical distance. We will describe the implementation and requirements of LOLA, its future developments, and challenges. A full LOLA installation will be available, and we will demonstrate it live, with two pianists, one at IRCAM and the other at a remote site, playing together. We will also play with the LOLA environment parameters, to see how they influence the interaction for the musicians.
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What Codec for What Sound Quality ?
This presentation provides an overview of available audio codecs and focuses on their use in a networking situation. We will cover topics such as audio quality, encoding time, stream bitrate, as well as how to adapt settings so as to acheive the best compromise between latency and quality depending of the needs of a particular event.
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Controlling Echo in the Musical Video-Teleconference
This session will feature demonstrations of proven techniques for controlling audio echo in a video-teleconference (VTC) without compromising the sound quality. Issues of microphone and loudspeaker selection and placement as well as strategies for optimizing the VTC room will be presented and demonstrated. The session will also include a demonstration of the free software application EchoDamp, the new audio mixing and echo control software designed specifically for musical video-teleconferences on advanced, high-performance networks. (Attendees are strongly encouraged to request a license for EchoDamp (http://echodamp.com/getechodamp.html) in advance of the conference so that they may have it installed to use during the presentation.)
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Conference XP: Presentation and Hands-On Session
In this session CXP features will be described in details, together with a comparison with other systems (e.g. DVTS, LOLA, etc.). A full installation will also be available and a session with remote partners will be established to give a live demonstration of its features. During the hands-on session, we will play with CXP configurations, to see the various possible setups, and check their effect with the collaboration of the remote partners.
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DVTS: Hands-on Session
In this session we will implement the deployment of a DVTS installation. Participants will practice in installing, configuring and running DVTS hardware and software, both in Unicast and Multicast mode, and in Standard Definition and High Definition resolutions. We will also show the most common problems and issues which can happen, learn to identify them and apply proper troubleshooting and fixes. (Participants should have with them their own laptop – Windows XP is suggested – and their DV camera to derive the most benefit. This is a real “hands-on” session, be prepared to handle cables, plugs, etc.)
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WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 24
Networking: Technical state of the art
The network is a set of infrastructures and services that need a successful integration in order to provide the expected user experience. This presentation will be an overview of the major recent technical developments in the field, related to the numerous opportunities for present or future usages of networks. It also will be pointed that networks themselves are continually evolving by taking new forms. Emphasis will be placed on the necessary coming and going between the vision of the network engineer and the one of the user. The first is always aiming to meet the needs of the second but in order to develop innovative applications; advanced users must also understand networks in their most technical aspects.
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Networking: Artistic State of the Art
1) Caotica_Lex – a Case of Distr-active Artwork – a Distributed
Approach to Interactivity in Visual Arts
We will present an overview of the evolution of artistic creation in net systems from netart to modern times, while asking such questions as: is it possible to go beyond the “beyond the interface”? This will include an overview of the network as the key point interface and substrate for a new frontier of arts in the age of ubiquitous networking with an examination of the phenomenology of modern instruments for visual and conceptual arts.
2) Terza prattica: un troisième espace pour la musique electroacoustique? (*)
In music history the space becomes an element more and more important both in composition (interior space) and in performance (exterior space); the network extends and makes more complex the idea of musical space, enhancing the sense of composition, the performance praxis and their relationships.
(*) Terza prattica: a Third Space for Electro-acoustic Music?
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Presentation of NetTrike
NetTrike is a composition for two pairs of performers, two performing choreographers, two sound-plates, surround sound plus two video loop generators. This work is an extension of a previous work V-trike and is the result of a collaboration among Christine Gaigg, the media artist Winfried Ritsch, the dancers Veronika Zott and Max Fossati, and the choreographer Alban Richard.
During the performance the choreographers on stage are sampling the performers both visually and sonically. The performers then react to the resulting loops thereby creating a complex feedback system. Exchanging the sonic and video loops via a network matrix further increases the complexity of this interaction. The score itself is mainly made up of extensive charts defining all the durations and qualities of the different loops used in the piece, including the modulation processes resulting in the jittering of the audio and visual loops.
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Presentation of Zoom-Up & An Invisible Line
Zoom Up is a distant dialogue between two musicians – one in Graz, the other in Paris – connected by a stream of digital data over the network. The illusion of proximity brought about by the streaming technologies contrast with the fictional character of the sounds that are the basis of this dialogue.
The technical setup of Zoom Up functions like a four handed instrument. The two instrumentalists play the same program, a computer version of a “prepared piano” that evolves over time as the score is played. Sometimes the sounds become uncomfortably dissociated with the sounds and gestures we normally associate with the piano.
The setup thus allows narrowing or amplifying the distance between the performers. Sometimes they appear to play in the same place; sometimes they seem too distant joined and by a tenuous link that becomes almost invisible; sometimes so near that the performance is lost in the small movements of the hands.
An Invisible Line, based on and idea by Corrado Canepa, is a collaborative project between IRCAM (Paris), Casa Paganini (Genoa) the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (Hamburg), that investigates the interconnection between human expressive full-body movement and gesture analysis as well as sound and interface design for creating shared networked social experiences. This project was implemented in the form of a two-site installation where the participants will interact so as to “get tuned together” (or “de-tuned”) via the machine’s observation of their gestural behavior.