Audio Delivery and Territoriality in Collaborative Digital Musical Interaction

Abstract

This paper explores the design of collaborative musical software through an evaluation of the effects different audio delivery mechanisms have on the way groups of co-located musicians work together in real time via a software environment. Ten groups of three musically proficient users created music using three experimental interfaces. Logs of interaction provide evidence that changing the means of audio delivery had a statistically significant effect on the way users worked together and shared musical contributions. In addition, interview transcripts indicate a number of experiential differences between the audio delivery configurations. The findings and design guidelines presented in this paper are intended to inform future systems for musical collaboration, and also have implications more broadly for the design of multiuser interfaces for which sound is a fundamental component.

Co-Sounding: Fostering intersubjectivity in electronic music improvisation

“…In line with Fencott and Bryan-Kinns’s (2010) findings on privacy and awareness in collaborative music, we found that even in a ‘less-territorialised’ setting, each player would intuitively concentrate on a personal set of interface features. This might reflect an interiorised model of the individual instrument, and it might also be related to the physical distribution of the interface features.…”

“…Further exploration of collaborative agency on the Reactable has been undertaken by Marley and Ward (2015). Fencott and Bryan-Kinns (2010, 2013) developed collaborative software design scenarios on the laptop. Ramakrishnan, Freeman and Varnik (2004) have explored distributed, real-time, collaborative instrument design.…”

Discovering Creative Commons Sounds in Live Coding

“…Offering a performer-only audio output (via headphones) would be an option to allow the live coder to test the new incoming sound before launching it. Although this feature has been explored in collaborative musical interfaces (Fencott and Bryan-Kinns 2012), it would not favour the flow of process music and the surprise factor brought by MIRLCa, where the live coder shapes the new incoming sounds that emerge unexpectedly. This connects with the remix culture already anticipated with dub music and what it meant to dub a track, 'as if music was modelling clay rather than copyright property' (Toop 1995: 118).…”

A Real-Time Score for Collaborative Just-in-Time Composition

“…They were designed as notational elements themselves, but could be used as an ‘extra channel’ of non-musical communication between performers as well. Spatial organisation refers in part to providing both some public (shared) and private (not shared) space on the display where participants work (Fencott and Bryan-Kinns 2010), which is incorporated in the design of the Anticipatory Score by making only the score itself public, not the sections of the display where sounds and drawing modes are selected and parameterised. The concept of ‘mutual modifiability’, where participants can alter each other’s contributions, is supported through a ‘copy and paste’ operation that works on gestures contributed by any coperformer and is a kind of direct collaborative engagement through the notation system that exploits and communicates mutual awareness.…”