Dossier

Improvising through wires--making telematic music: Jason Robinson at TEDxAmherstCollege

The speaker argues that networked music, or telematics, offers possibilities for global, low-impact collaborations across physical limitations, illustrating this with a 2013 virtual concert spanning 3,000 miles and concluding that improvisation is fundamentally a form of socio-linguistic co-creation.

## Speakers & Context
- Unnamed speaker, who has been involved in "improvising through wires" for nearly 15 years.
- The speaker is part of a growing International Community of Music Makers exploring "telematic music," "networked music," or "distributed performance."
- The speaker served as the local coordinator for the "virtual tour 2013," a three-day event.
- The event paired an ensemble in La Jolla, California, with three other distant ensembles.

## Theses & Positions
- Telematics enables musicians to perform together in real time across multiple venues without the costs or environmental impact of air or automobile travel.
- Networked music allows collaboration involving musicians and audiences in different countries with restrictive travel and Visa policies, or even incarcerated/institutionalized individuals.
- Improvisation, when viewed abstractly, is a form of "knowledge production aimed at making sense of our embodied and imagined relationships to one another and to the world."
- For the speaker, improvisation is wholly contextual; it is a "form of in the-moment real-time critical thinking decision making that takes place in specific musical contexts."
- Telematics ultimately reveals more about our "embodied In the Flesh experiences as human beings" and our "need for True connection to one another for empathy" than it projects into science fiction.

## Concepts & Definitions
- **Telematics music/Networked music/Distributed performance/Net music:** Terms describing the practice of musical collaboration using specialized audio and video networking technologies across multiple sites.
- **Improvisation (Broad Definition):** Creating something in the exact moment of delivery, devoid of pre-planned structure.
- **Improvisation (Speaker's Definition):** A "form of in the-moment real-time critical thinking decision making that takes place in specific musical contexts."
- **Fat Beat:** A concept experienced during a networked performance, representing "an expanded feeling of the beat that was a composite of real time and latent sounds."

## Mechanisms & Processes
- **The Virtual Concert Mechanism:** Multiple audiences and multiple stages participate simultaneously in one event, with musicians performing in real time across distributed sites.
- **Audio Networking via jacktrip:** This open-source freeware allows "multi-channel full quality uncompressed audio networking between two or more locations on the internet."
- **Soundwire Research Group (Stanford):** Initially discovered that sending sounds and reflecting them back created a feedback loop whose frequency was determined by the physical distance between the network nodes.
- **Latency:** The "time delay inherent in all networked communication"; the time for data to traverse fiber optic cables.
    - Theoretical speed limit: Speed of light.
    - Practical threshold: **50 milliseconds** acts as a special kind of threshold where performers feel they can or cannot play in synchronous time together.
    - Aggregated latency: Increased by hardware like "ethernet switches, audio interfaces, computer processors, even amplifiers."
- **Performing with Latency:** The local audience hears the local performer's real-time sound combined with the "slightly latent sounds of the remote performers."

## Timeline & Sequence
- **Circa 2000:** Stanford University Professor Chris Cha and a small team received an NSF Grant to develop audio technologies for the internet, establishing the Soundwire Research Group.
- **(Unspecified Date):** Discovery that echo frequency was determined by network distance, leading to the development of audio networking software.
- **Last April:** Speaker served as the local coordinator for the "virtual tour 2013."
- **Performance Window:** The event featured collaborators at locations spanning approximately **3,000 miles**.

## Named Entities
- **La Jolla, California:** Location where one ensemble performed for the virtual tour 2013.
- **Hampshire College:** Location of the speaker, featuring the speaker, Marty Erick, and Bob Weir.
- **University of California in San Diego:** Location of the collaborating flutist, trombonist, pianist, and bassist.
- **Chris Cha:** Stanford University Professor involved in the original audio networking research.
- **Soundwire Research Group:** Group established at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
- **Martin Erick:** Named collaborator at Hampshire College.
- **Bob Weir:** Local percussionist collaborator at Hampshire College.
- **Nicole Mitchell:** Collaborating flutist.
- **Michael Deson:** Collaborating trombonist.
- **Myra Alford:** Collaborating pianist.
- **Mark Dresser:** Collaborating bassist.
- **AJ Heble:** Friend who provided insights regarding dissonant notes having social/political implications.
- **Charles Kyle and Steven Feld:** Authors of the 1994 book *Music Grooves*.

## Numbers & Data
- Latency threshold: **50 milliseconds**.
- Approximate latency in the project: "slightly more than **50 milliseconds**."
- Distance covered by the virtual tour: **3,000 miles**.
- Audio quality transmitted: "five channels of uncompressed full quality **48 K** audio in both directions" (**10 channels** total).
- Year of critical work: **1994** (Kyle and Feld book).
- Year of virtual tour: **2013**.

## Tools, Tech & Products
- **Specialized audio and video networking technologies:** Technologies that "far surpass the quality of audio and video inherent in those systems."
- **jacktrip:** An "open-Source freeware" used for audio networking; enables "multi-channel full quality uncompressed audio networking."
- **Soundwire:** The research group focused on audio on the internet.
- **Fiber Optic Cables:** The physical medium for data transmission.
- **Audio Interfaces, Ethernet Switches, Computer Processors, Amplifiers:** Various pieces of equipment that increase overall system latency.

## References Cited
- *The Fierce urgency of Now*: A book by George Lipit, Daniel Fishin, and AJ Heble discussing the ethics of co-creation.

## Counterarguments & Caveats
- The "second no" (the theoretical one) regarding whether the concert sounded the same at both locations has more theoretical implications than the first "no" (differences in equipment configuration/acoustics).
- The technical setup adds cumulative latency beyond the theoretical speed of light delay.

## Methodology
- **Virtual Performance:** Pairing an ensemble in one physical location (Hampshire College) with distant ensembles across three other locations for a 3-day event.
- **Audio Capture:** Sending "five channels of uncompressed full quality 48 K audio in both directions," totaling ten channels.
- **Monitoring:** Routing audio to "Stage monitors or inar monitors... so that the local performers could hear and interact with the sounds of the remote performers."
- **Analytical Framework:** Using latency measurements and observed "fat beats" to analyze temporal synchronization in networked performance.

## Conclusions & Recommendations
- Telematics illuminates what it means to be a "physically embodied socially situated artist."
- Improvisers are uniquely positioned to advance the possibilities offered by telematics because of their focus on "interactivity listening and co-creation."

## Implications & Consequences
- Telematics forces a re-evaluation of artistic connection, presenting the field not as a "projection into a science fiction future of disembodiment and virtual reality," but as a means to enhance human empathy and connection.

## Verbatim Moments
- *"distributed across multiple venues by some parent magic"*
- *"for nearly 15 years I've been in a manner of speaking improvising through wires"*
- *"a tour in which they remained in the same place each day while the location of their collaborators changed"*
- *"all of which relied heavily on improvisation"*
- *"jacktrip enables multi-channel full quality uncompressed audio networking between two or more locations on the internet"*
- *"the frequency of that feedback loop was determined by the physical distance between the two Network nodes"*
- *"The local audience in Amorist for example hears the sounds the realtime sounds of the local performers being combined with the slight slightly latent sounds of the remote performers"*
- *"we each individually had to decide where we were going to place our rhythms in relationship to the recurrent beat"*
- *"we started to refer to this as a kind of fat beat as an expanded feeling of the beat that was a composite of real time and latent sounds"*
- *"improvisation is wholly contextual"*
- *"Improvisation can be seen as a kind of interaction or as a form of listening or as a form of co-creation or as social activity"*
- *"telematics tell us more about our embodied In the Flesh experiences as human beings"*