Networked Music: collaborative creation and musical performance under information networks

Abstract

The discussion about the musical potential of computer networks has arisen inside the academic context in 2000. Since 1990, with the aid of interconnected technologies, music performers and composers have been fostering the construction of collective participation environments in which networks are used as music platforms. The concept of Networked Music has been defined as a group of practices of creation and performance that purposedly incorporates information networks to establish collaborative music activity. Furthermore, the interest in computer networks relies in the transformations of digital technology, in particular, the change from a personal computational model to a distributed and ubiquitous one. In this new model, interconnected computer resources are favored in the expense of processing ones. This research proposes a theoretical survey of the Networked Music repertoire and an analysis of collaborative creation and music performance projects in two realms: on the one hand, projects that reach a global scale by means of wide area networks (e.g. the Internet); on the other, projects that use local computer networks to create music performance environments. As a result, this research aims to identify the transformations, needs, and problems of musical composition in the context of computers networks.