Networks, we are told,
give us new possibilities. They change the way we communicate, the way we work.
It is currently changing the way we make music. But does it change the music
itself? An interesting test of any new medium is to see not only how it affects
process, but also how it affects product - the end result.
If we are given a new
musical instrument, we have the desire to make a new kind of music. The the
computer was an example of this. So was the electric guitar. And the
piano-forte. We can think of the Internet in this way, but to do so, we need to
think about how it can be used to make a music that has never been heard
before. If we use these new means to simply play music that we know already,
then we are resisting the potential change of paradigms the new media offer us.
Certainly the piano was used to play pre-existing music, as was the computer.
But these ways of using these new instruments did nothing to expose their true
character. My hope in network music is to find the personality of the web.
The net is said to break
down barriers of distance and time. It brings people together. To me, instead,
it hilights just how valuable time and distance are. If we are to use networks
for convenience, to allow distant musicians to play together, then I would
prefer to have the inconvenience of traveling to a far away place. If we
attempt to play traditional music over the net, musicians will first complain
about the time delay. So then an essential quality of the network becomes a
problem. I would prefer to respect this character of the net, and conceive of a
type of music that uses the delay to advantage. After all, no one ever
complained about the long reverberation time of a cathedral. It is not a
problem, it is acoustic. So I propose: can we think of IP packet delays as a
network acoustic that defines this new space in which we play?
By applying this
perspective, we find some potential inversions. The net is used for
productivity to make work go faster and to make people feel closer. With
network acoustic, sound travels slower, and with transmission quality, people
seem really far away. So in this way, we use the network not to eliminate
barriers of time and distance, but to
understand and respect how far away a person really is. We begin then to
appreciate the miracle of performing with someone over distance and through
time.
By working in this way,
we start to create a new music, netmusic. This music should have its own sound
like no other music. So when this music is recorded and listened to out of
context, it should have a quality that identifies it as netmusic. This is the
joy of making a new music, an unknown music. And in doing so, we rediscover the
foundations upon which all music is based: tenets of time, touch, sight, and
communication.
Atau Tanaka
Tokyo April 1999
Originally published
in the catalogue from the Festival du Web, 1999, Webart, Paris, following a
concert of live MP3 streaming/remixing between Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo, with Atau
Tanaka, Pita Rehberg, Zbigniew Karkowski, Farmers Manual, i.d. http://www.webbar.fr