I owe much thanks to all of my supervisors (Roy Ascott, John Matthias & Brian Eno), as well as to my colleagues in the Planetary Collegium and at Indiana University, Bloomington.

If you want the thesis and all of the supporting media files (3.7GB), download the version at UPlymouth’s PEARL system. Otherwise, the text is available as a PDF from this website, and many supporting files are linked from the Thesis Online Documentation page.

After you’ve read the thesis (all or part of it), please come back to this site and leave a comment. I am very curious to hear what others think about what I’ve written, and I welcome compliments and criticism alike.

My chapter ‘The Composition-Instrument: emergence, improvisation and interaction in games and new media’ appeared in the book From Pac-Man to Pop Music: interactive audio in games and new media, edited by Karen Collins in 2007.

This chapter is now available by permission of the Publishers of ‘The Composition-Instrument: emergence, improvisation and interaction in games and new media’, in From Pac-Man to Pop Music: interactive audio in games and new media, ed. K Collins, (Aldershot etc.: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 103-123.Copyright © 2007.

Download the PDF

Citation:
Herber, N 2007, ‘The Composition-Instrument: emergence, improvisation and interaction in games and new media’, in From Pac-Man to Pop Music: interactive audio in games and new media, ed. K Collins, Ashgate, Hampshire; Burlington, VT.

Deadline for Proposals: 1 April 2011

The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio is under contract at Oxford University Press.

Through a collection of chapters on interactivity in music and sound, the book is meant to offer a new set of analytical tools for the growing field of interactive audio.  A series of related questions drive the book: What makes interactive audio different from non-interactive audio?  Where does interacting with audio fit into our understanding of sound and music in media? Where is interactive audio heading in the future? And how do we begin to approach interactive audio from a theoretical perspective?

It is our belief that interacting with sound is fundamentally different from just listening to sound. The physical agency and control of interactivity adds a level of engagement and involvement with sound that alters the way we experience sound in games, interfaces, products, toys, environments (virtual and real) and art. There are considerable consequences of interactivity when it comes not only to audience, but also to practice, distribution, tools, and copyright law.

We encourage proposals that raise questions and explore new theories about how scholars and practitioners can approach interactive sound. A handbook chapter should make new and original arguments in a new piece composed specifically for the handbook.   It may be a survey what you believe to be the essential issues and questions in the field and offer a contemporary critical analysis of these.

Potential topic areas include (but are not limited to):

• Composition theory and practice (including improvisation, music-based games, virtual worlds, mobile music)
• Sound design theory and practice (including sounds, interface, branding, web, sound art, interactive spaces, virtual worlds, toys, pinball)
• Voice interaction
• Mixing, implementation of interactive audio
• Playback and distribution systems
• Interactive audio tools (composition, synthesis, note tracking, etc.)
• Distribution, copyright and legal issues

Submission details: Chapter proposals of about 500 words and short bio (name, affiliation) in English to be submitted by April 1, 2011 to the editors at one of the email addresses below. Please address any questions or queries to the editors at one of the email addresses below.

Decisions will be made by June 1, 2011. Upon acceptance, full guidelines will be furnished. Completed chapters of about 6000 words are to be submitted by June 1, 2012.

Editors: Karen Collins (collinsk@uwaterloo.ca), Bill Kapralos (bill.kapralos@uoit.ca) and Holly Tessler (h.tessler@neu.edu)

I wrote a paper “Dérive en Mille Sons” for the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. It has just been re-published as “Dérive entre Mille Sons: a psychogeographic approach to mobile music and mediated interaction” in Technoetic Arts: a journal of speculative research. Much thanks to journal editor Roy Ascott, publishers Intellect, and Guillaume Ansart for his help with a more precise title translation.

Abstract: Dérive entre Mille Sons (Drifting in a Thousand Sounds) is a musical work that uses mobile media technology to artistically examine the relationship between music and the listener. Contemporary media technologies, be they at work, home or in your pocket, emphasize playback. These devices are designed to facilitate the storage and retrieval of pre-made media assets. This work leverages the processing capabilities that rest dormant within these technologies. Drawing from the writings of Guy Debord and the situationist/surrealist practice of the dérive, ‘drifting’ becomes a metaphor for instrumental performance in which the openness and emergence of interactivity is articulated through sound, as music.

Technoetic Arts requires a subscription. Check to see if your library has online access or print copies of the journal. My original Spark paper is available online.

MP3 sample of a Dérive recorded in July 2010

“I think (Ebert) is hung up on this romantic idea of art. His conception of art is still in the 19th century, and if he were to update that, he might consider his experiences as a chess player to be somewhat of an art experience.”

“You can’t say the music is art, the visuals are art, but the story is not, or any mix like that, because the experience of playing the game that comes out of the participation is something that you as a player are directly responsible for.”

Full article by Brad Sanders: http://idsnews.com/news/weekend/story.aspx?id=77655

This talk was given:
Thursday, Oct 07 / 2010
12-1 pm
IDAH Conference Room, Wells Library E170D

Download the slide deck.

12►

IOGraph “…is an application that turns mouse movements into a modern art.” All mouse movements are captured as trails and all points of rest as circles. Large circles represent the places where the mouse sat for longer periods.

I’ll continue to expand this gallery as writing continues, as it must.

Thank you Ali, Doug, and J for hosting a great festival in February! The Spark media producers have since been busy editing the festival documentation. It’s not like being there, but a these videos offer a decent tip of the iceberg. During the public tour of the Regis Center I gave a short talk on Sound Garden to provide attendees and other artists with an idea of what was happening in the skyway.

After Spark, I recorded Sound Garden at different times of day with all of the sounds that had been “planted” during the festival. These MP3s are titled by the time at which the recording was made. Due to differences in ambient light, temperature, air movement, and human presence at various times of day, each recording has something unique to offer.

Play 03-08-2009-1500.mp3
Play 03-09-2009-0000.mp3
Play 03-11-2009-1500.mp3
Play 03-18-2009-1200.mp3

The Syncretic Sense

4 April – 24 May 2009

Plymouth Arts Centre

The first UK retrospective exhibition of the pioneering cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, curated in collaboration with i-DAT (Institute for Digital Art and Technology, University of Plymouth).

Long before email and the internet, Roy Ascott started using online computer networks as an art medium and coined the term telematic art. Since the 1960s he has been a pioneer of art, which brought together the science of cybernetics with elements of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Pop Art. Parallel to his artwork, Roy Ascott is a highly acclaimed teacher and theorist of art pedagogy.

This exhibition explores the influences and rhetoric of Roy Ascott’s work, mapping the impact, history and development of technology and looking to the future of Web2 and Second life. Roy Ascott sees telematic art as the transformation of the viewer into an active participant in creating the artwork, which remains in process throughout its duration.