Network Performance last week: Basel, New York, Hayward,CA

[Scot Gresham-Lancaster <sgresham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 I just participated in a performance last Thursday in Basel Switzerland at the
Hyperwerk Multimedia lab, from my studio in CSUHayward in
California, with networking technology that might be of interest to you.

We used Robust Audio Tool ( RAT ).
This  technology that allows for transferring audio between
distant locations.  It is capable of 32k
sampling at 16 bits with 70 ms of delay.  My friend Bill Thibault, who is  Basel
on
sabbatical until July, turned me on to it. We also used
Bill's excellent video to midi Grabbo software, as well as Mike Berry's MIDInet.

"MidiNet" is Mike Berry's robust software that
he developed for the last Hub performances and Chris Brown's network
performances of last year and then has graciously given to the world.
You need 500 bps or better at both ends
to make all this work.

Sam Ashley was in New York telling one of his stories over the phone.
Kathryn Gresham-Lancaster was reading poetry in the studio in Hayward.
A butoh dancer, Irene, was in Basel creating new midi information
by way of  Bill's video to midi Grabbo software under BeOS .  I got Sam's
voice over the phone  in Hayward, and midi from Basel via "MidiNet" from
Bill's software. I  messaged ( via max ) the "music" part with my signal
processing
of Sam and Kathryn and sent it back to the hall in Basel as a stereo audio
stream via RAT. There Bill used some custom software on his Darla card
under BeOS to move my squawks an gronks and the text pieces around
the 8 channels in the performance space. Believe it or not it went off without a
hitch.


We used the video conferencing tool VIC and Hotline for communication
between sights and to get slightly delayed images and chat from the
performance site for coordination and cues.


The combination of RAT, VIC, and hotline were invaluable in
the rehearsal process and made it possible. We worked over a month
to pull this off, by the way.
I really felt like George Jetson or something.
After one rehearsal, they broke out beers
from the fridge in Switzerland and I asked for one, but we are not there yet.

I have been involved in doing these geographically dislocated pieces
for about 15 years now and they always seemed a little pointless, just sort
of "gee whiz" on a certain level, but this time it seemed like a really
legitimate
way of working. Before the Local Area Net of the HUB seemed to yield
some much more interesting pieces than the pieces we did between sites.
I go in to depth about this in an article in the Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 8
for those who are interested. Anyway, with this new software and configuration,
it was a whole new world. Very flexible and not so overwhelmingly technical
that the musical aspects of the work were lost to the technology process.

Our next step is to perfect the MP3 streaming side of this so we
can do that point to point. We worked on that but had to settle
on RAT for this gig.

Anyone interested in collaborating on future ventures, drop me a line.
Paying gigs are especially appreciated ;-)

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Scot Gresham-Lancaster                           scot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MB1525a                                          ph: 510-885-3150
CSUHayward                                       fax:510-885-3461
Hayward, CA  94542

             <WWW    http://listen.to/scot  >     New Music Specialist


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