Online Orchestra placed significant demands on its conductor, with a role that included rehearsing and directing remote musicians over the Internet. This article presents a firsthand reflective account from the conductor of Online Orchestra, including details of trials, rehearsals and the final performance. Practical considerations such as conducting technique, visual framing and ensemble seating are considered, as are reflections on conducting in a latency-rich environment. This leads to the conclusion that many traditional approaches to conducting apply in telematic performance, and the suggestion that there is significant scope for musicians to learn and grow in ability when making music online.Telematic performance has vast potential to enable music that has previously been impossible. On the Internet, musicians can simply disappear or pop up out of nowhere, 1 in a way that they cannot in traditional, offline performance; or sounds might be re-routed so as to appear in one node but not in others, for example. This offers whole new territories in which and with which composers can work. However, the history of telematic performance is somewhat dominated by improvisation (see Rofe et al. 2017a), and this implies a more egalitarian ensemble than the traditionally hierarchical 'orchestra'. In essence, improvised music is an ongoing re-negotiation of the roles played by the musicians, and this is far more akin to the quintessentially distributed quality of networks than orchestral music, in which instrumental sections, under their leaders, play prescribed roles in relation to one another, all under the direction of a conductor, who interprets a composer's score. At the outset of the project, these background issues posed questions to the technologists, composers and performers of Online Orchestra, and the collaboration between these groups has been crucial in achieving online orchestral performance.
Early trialsIn the early stages, as we explored various network structures and their implications for composition and performance, we varied approaches to conducting, exploring a range of hand signals that might work well in an online environment. As shown in Figure 1, trials were undertaken with four musicians, located in different rooms that were connected over the network. Improvisatory 'conduction' proved to be particularly effective from the
