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Christian wrote: > >The video conference concept has been long sought after in the business >world, in order to setup realtime meetings between your office in LA and >your London branch. I guess in many ways, it shares a lot of similarities >with network music jamming, i.e. it has to be pretty much realtime and be >effective at communicating ideas and repsonses. I see these systems >advertised in the BA BusinessLife magazine all the time and I have often >wondered whether this technology has been subverted or used creatively ever? Derek: Well I guess that is what we're doing but ultimately it will primarily be used in the business contexts that you've described. In fact when we get commmercial sponsorship for these events it is not because the technology can be sold to artists for the kind of uses that we are making of it but because of the potential to excite business users about the capability. We are combining technologies. We use video conferencing simply for relaying visual images which lag slightly behind the audio for which we use prorietry ISDN audio transmission hardware; and for the Carl Craig/4 Hero projects we added in software for sharing MIDI information. Christian: >Also, the excercise of 'jamming' or improvisation, be it over the internet >or on stage, still relies on various elements that make it good. They tend >to be decent musicianship and compositional knowledge, a good level of >technical skill and an ability to understand a certain amount of unspoken >communication. So when musicians jam over the net, how do these aspects >of improvisation come into play? > Derek: Musicianship - hmmm. Well we are working with pretty competent musicians. As for the conventions of "jamming", these projects allow us to investigate these issues. It's one of the reasons the musicians we work with are keen to participate. The important thing to remember about unspoken communication during a jam is that most of it is contained within the music/playing. This issue is also one of the two factors influencing our positioning of the large screens and the cameras in an attempt to create good, comfortable visual contact between the musicians. Christian: >Aware of the high quality technology being used, is the quality of >resulting music still any good? Would it have been more rewarding for the >audience if Carl Craig had been flown over to Nottingham specifically to >jam with 4hero, or was it exciting enough because of the techno/cultural >experiment and the implied expansion of club space? > Derek: As I've mentioned elsewhere we are using propietry hardware normally used for transmiting radio programmes and studio takes from one location to another (non realtime), so the audio quality is at CD standard. Anecdotally, the result has often led to confusion caused by the inabilty to distinguish between the sound from one venue or another. This problem has happened on two projects when we've used the connection to facilitate a DJ programme consisting of DJs from both locations palying individually for both crowds - a DJ staring at his idle decks wondering what's going on! If, therefore, the issue of reward is related to sound quality, then it is not an issue but yes, the immediate and post event feedback we get is that the events are more than "exciting enough because of the techno/cultural experiment and the implied expansion of club space". As to musical quality well it goes back to the proficiency of the musicians and the preparation I talked about in my reply to Andrew Deakin. Check out the Club 21st Century web site for a video clip of Samhain in a couple of weeks.