STUDIO REPORT: DIGITÓPIA AT CASA DA MÚSICA
Rui Penha,
Paulo M. Rodrigues

Fabien Gouyon,
Luís Gustavo Martins
Carlos Guedes

Álvaro Barbosa

Casa da Música, Porto
University of Aveiro

ruipenha@ua.pt
prodrigues@casadamusica.com
INESC Porto
Porto, Portugal

fgouyon@inescporto.pt
lmartins@inescporto.pt
ESMAE
INESC Porto
Porto, Portugal

carlosguedes@mac.com
CITAR
Portuguese
Catholic University

abarbosa@porto.ucp.pt
ABSTRACT
Digital music making is evolving dramatically with
today's increasing availability of free music software
and musical content. Digitópia, a platform for
collaborative music creation recently started at Casa da
Música, Porto's main concert venue, addresses how
these trends can affect generalized music creation and
music software design, promote social inclusion, and
lead to the emergence of multicultural communities of
music makers/lovers. In this paper, we report on the
musical activities conducted in the first months of
existence of Digitópia, and highlight some
developments for the future.
1. INTRODUCTION
Some of the most interesting recent developments in
music are related to the fact that ordinary computers and
mobile devices acquired capabilities to make, record,
store and spread music, while becoming available to a
greater number of people. An “active relationship” with
music is nowadays within the reach of people that did
not go through the process of formal musical education,
due to an increasing number of software applications
that allow creating and making music in a friendly and
intuitive manner. We are witnessing a true worldwide
revolution in the way we create, perform, spread, listen
and learn music. The project Digitópia - Platform for the
Development of Digital Music Communities - aims to
explore these surges of development in a facility
implemented in Casa da Música´s main entrance hall,
which will contribute: 1) to develop music and creativity
amongst a range of ages and social conditions, and
mostly amongst youth; 2) to foster the development of
free music software; 3) to promote social inclusion, and
lead to the emergence of multicultural communities of
music makers/lovers; 4) to promote free musical
content.
2. CASA DA MÚSICA
Casa da Música was conceived to mark the festive year
of 2001, when the city of Porto was European Capital of
Culture. A remarkable building designed by Rem
Koolhas was created exclusively for musical purposes,
both in the area of presentation and public fruition and
in the field of artistic education and creation. The
project was to make this building the house for all
music, setting itself within the city’s urban renovation
process and within a network of cultural equipment at a
local and worldwide level.
Casa da Música is an institution with an inventive and
wide cultural project that promotes the national and
international musical scenario. Within this role, it
encompasses a wide range of areas, from classical music
to jazz, from fado to electronic music, from the great
international productions to more experimental projects.
It has two main concert halls, several rehearsal rooms,
as well as many public spaces and facilities and it has
already become a landmark in Porto´s architectural
landscape. Casa da Música has three resident
instrumental ensembles – the Orquestra Barroca Casa da
Música (Baroque orchestra), the Orquestra Nacional do
Porto (Porto National Orchestra) and the Remix
Ensemble. Together, they provide an answer to the
needs of a vast repertoire reflecting four centuries of
musical creation and are equally an incentive for
contemporary music creation.

Figure 1. Casa da Música – Porto, Portugal.
2.1. The Education Service
“Knowing. Hearing. Making. Creating” is the
conducting line of the vast programme of the Education
Service of Casa da Música which is developed
throughout the year, presenting activities ranging from
short time experiences to long term projects. The
possibilities to create and learn within a continuously
renewed schedule are manifold, and include workshops
in many areas of music making, interactive exhibitions,
concerts, training sessions, conferences, amongst others.
The Education Service of Casa da Música develops
activities exploring both the conventional grounds and
those that involve technological innovations, and
consistently takes music into other areas and arts.
Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference ICMC 2008 — Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast

The programme is planned to serve a wide range of
audiences of all ages and social/cultural backgrounds,
from babies to senior citizens, from music experts to
amateurs, from families to schools, including groups
with special needs. The Educational Service of Casa da
Música also represents a great social inclusion and
intervention project, and a substantial part of its effort is
devoted to community projects.
2.2. Digitópia
Educational activities with computers were amongst the
first to be offered in a regular basis since the beginning
of Casa da Música in 2005, with HyperScore [1] being a
case of success among schools that would come for a
workshop experience with this software. In 2007, a new
trend was initiated and a set of programs developed on
purpose by Rui Penha opened the perspectives of
musical experiences with computers into new areas. At
around the same time, a series of discussions was
initiated with partners from universities and research
institutions in Porto, namely the Institute for Systems
and Computer Engineering of Porto (INESC Porto), the
School of Music and Performing Arts (ESMAE) and the
Portuguese Catholic University (UCP), addressing the
issues of providing a broader access to digital music
making within informal contexts and contributing to the
development and spreading of free software. It was
within this framework that the idea of creating a
Platform for the Development of Communities in
Creating Digital Music was conceived.
It was decided that UCP, ESMAE and INESC Porto
would collaborate with Casa da Música in a project that
would have its visible face as a centre installed in the
main entrance hall at Casa da Música. This centre would
be open for free use by anyone. It would also be used in
CyberSom workshops (with schools during the week
and general public on Saturdays) according to a
predefined schedule. It was later decided that during
three or four hours in the day (16h00-19h00 on week
days or 16h00-20h00 on weekends and holidays), an
assistant would be available to explain and introduce the
project, as well as to help people dealing with the
computers and software. The profile of these assistants
is quite broad, ranging from young composers or
advanced music students to digital musicians without
formal musical training.
The centre was to be equipped with computers and all
the equipment associated to music making within the
concept of “home studio” or “desktop musician”. These
computers should be representative of the available state
of the art for regular use and the software to be installed
should favour, in the first place, the use of reliable free
software with a wide range of capabilities for music
making. It was also considered that some commercial
programs could be present in order to fulfill occasional
requirements unavailable in an easy to use package
within the free software realm. Finally, in order to
maintain the coherence of all the spaces in Casa da
Música, and to make the space attractive, special
attention was given to the layout of this centre.
Digitópia opened in late July 2007 and we describe next
the experience we had so far. In the last part of this
article we also analyze some further developments.
3. GOALS
At the conception of Digitópia, the partners outlined a
group of goals, compiled in a document entitled “Para
um Manifesto Digitópia” (Towards a Digitópia
Manifesto). These goals focused three main areas: 1)
music making; 2) the establishment of communities
around music making and, to a lesser degree, music
software development; 3) the promotion, use and
development of free software and content for music
making. Right from the beginning, however, it was
decided that neither of these goals should be in any way
“enforced” on the surrounding community. Instead,
Digitópia would be all about creating a fertile
environment for musical experiences and catalyzing the,
otherwise ideally autonomous, establishment of
communities.
3.1. Music Making
The main goal of Digitópia is to capture everyone’s
attention to the growing fact that computers have
nowadays the power to help anyone fulfil their own
musical ambitions, regardless of their previous musical
experience and formal education. Digitópia provides
selected tools, from the basic loop-based sequencer all
the way to some fairly advanced software for sound
sculpting, and know-how, in the form of personal help
from the assistants, documentation (both written and
multimedia) and workshops, but visitors are
nevertheless free to use the resources as they deem fit to
best achieve their musical goals, whatever the genre or
degree of complexity they require.
3.2. Establishing Communities
From the beginning, Digitópia was conceived as an
inviting nest for the establishment of communities of
computer music making. Ideally eclectic in their nature
and social realms, it was thought that these communities
would grow mostly around specific events at Casa da
Música – e.g. the “Clubbing” nights or the
contemporary music concerts – or at specific times, also
related with the personal experience of the assistant
assigned to each schedule.
3.3. Towards Musical Freedom
In Digitópia, a special focus is put on free or open
source software and freely available musical content.
Particularly, the majority of the software in use follows
the principles defined by the Free Software Foundation1
or by the Open Source Initiative2. Similarly, most of the
musical content is made available under a Creative
Commons (CC) license3. These licenses leverage the

1 FSF - http://www.fsf.org/
2 OSI - http://www.opensource.org/
3 http://creativecommons.org/
Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference ICMC 2008 — Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast

free and flexible exchange of software and content
among users and software developers, promoting
collaboration and the creation of groups or communities
of interest around music and musical technologies.
Furthermore, Digitópia intends to invite acclaimed
artists performing at Casa da Música to leave their CC
licensed “musical autographs” (e.g. short sound clips,
loops, musical “licks”) that could be freely used by all
Digitópia users and visitors as source material in their
own musical projects.
4. FACILITIES
4.1. Space
Digitópia is located in the main entrance hall of Casa da
Música, a space of great visibility and “unavoidable” by
people that pass by regularly, since is close to the ticket
office and main entrance. The connection between the
areas is large enough to clearly establish Digitópia as a
public area, yet adequately secluded, so visitors can feel
at ease experimenting computer music making
sometimes for the first time. The space is large enough
to comfortably accommodate twelve similar stations –
with two seats each, divided in two long tables facing
each other – and has natural light.

Figure 2. Digitópia - showing one of two tables, with
six of twelve stations.
4.2. Equipment
Each of the twelve stations is based around an Apple
iMac computer (2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 Gb of RAM
and 17 inch display) running MacOs X Tiger. Each
station has two headphones and all the computers are
connected via a 1 Gbit Ethernet network. Each station
has one a midi controller, chosen from: M-audio O2 two
octave midi keyboard, Korg padKONTROL pad
controller and Korg K61P five octave midi keyboard
(four units of each kind).
Some additional hardware is available to use at
Digitópia, namely six Edirol R-09 field recorders, four
self-powered speakers and one plasma display. Othe
hardware is available on request, for workshops or
special projects, from Casa da Música’s own production
department.
4.3. Software
The available software in each computer is divided
between two different kinds of user accounts: the first,
free and open for all, was prepared to be as easy as
possible to navigate through the different possibilities
and shows a limited set of programs; the second is an
account unique to each visitor that requests one, thus
being completely configurable by the user.
The guest account was configured with different
wallpapers that change automatically as the user waves
the mouse pointer over the icons of the applications,
presenting the software’s capabilities. This account was
also configured to self-reset after some time of
inactivity, so each new user finds an uncluttered and
clean user interface. Apple’s iTunes is always open and
users are invited to leave all their musical creations on
its library, so they can be shared through the network.
Políssonos (a midi sequencer based on polygons),
Narrativas Sonoras (an audio sequencer based on
granular synthesis) and Digital Jam (for networked
improvisation) are the main software titles created for
Digitópia [2]. Other applications, available on all
accounts, include: Audacity1, Ardour2, HighC3, DPS024,
Pompiloop5, Spear6 and Tapestrea7. Some commercial
audio software is also installed: Apple GarageBand,
Propellerheads Reason and Ableton Live.
The following programming environments are also
available: miniAudicle8, Processing9, Pure Data10,
SonicBirth11, SuperCollider12 and the commercial
Cycling’74 Max/MSP.

Figure 2. Two young users composing with Políssonos
on a guest account.

1 http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
2 http://ardour.org/
3 http://highc.org/
4 http://www.notam02.no/DSP02/en/index.php
5 http://www.pompiloop.com/
6 http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/
7 http://taps.cs.princeton.edu/
8 http://audicle.cs.princeton.edu/mini/
9 http://www.processing.org/
10 http://puredata.info/
11 http://sonicbirth.sourceforge.net/
12 http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/
Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference ICMC 2008 — Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast

5. RESULTS
After the first months of activity, Digitópia has already
begun to enter the routines of some users, most of them
youngsters. Some of them have reported great musical
experiences and a few went on to develop new musical
listening and experimentation habits after visiting
Digitópia.

Figure 4. Teenagers are the main group of Digitópia
users.
The establishment of communities of computer music
creation around Digitópia has also begun, albeit slower
than expected. The absence of a dynamic Internet
presence, capable of connecting users outside of
Digitópia, and the excessive isolation of each user,
caused mainly by the use of headphones, have been
identified as plausible causes for this.
An area we believe we have achieved a considerable
success is on the development of interfaces for musical
experimentation. The instant gratification attainable
when using music software like Apple’s GarageBand
has been somewhat absent from the open source world.
In everything that we implement in Digitópia, from a
granular synthesizer to a network improvisation system,
a great deal of time and care is spent developing the user
interface, a process that has undoubtedly granted
Digitópia some users less accustomed to computer
music making.
6. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The main future development of Digitópia will be the
expansion of the concept outside of Casa da Música,
both in the real and virtual world. We are currently
launching the premises for a Digitópia web interface,
strongly coupled to the original network at Casa da
Música and capable not only of connecting users beyond
the physical space at Digitópia, but also of sharing all
the content created – and, specially, the tools to create it,
including the Digitópia software – to new users around
the world. Several institutions have already stated their
interest in offering a Digitópia-like space within their
services. The Digitópia web interface should thus
provide all the resources and knowledge necessary to
implement similar facilities in other places, at the same
time connecting them all in a broader community of
computer music making.
Some ongoing research also includes the creation of
interfaces for spatialization, network improvisation and
musical expression, namely of individuals with different
kinds of disabilities.
7. CONCLUSION
Digitópia fulfils an important role in Casa da Música´s
educational programme and is expected to have an
impact well beyond its actual location. We believe we
created an interesting resource, that is producing results
within its initial aims but also providing experiences and
tools that are already changing the approaches we have
in other areas of creating and making music with
schools or communities. Above all, we believe this an
interesting idea that will grow and develop further and
we look forward to share our experience and results
with those interested in contributing to facilitate the
access of a wider range of people to musical discovery.
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the invaluable
collaboration of the Digitópia assistants – David Miguel,
Filipe Lopes, José Alberto Gomes and Nuno Peixoto -,
without whom the project couldn’t have reached so
many people, with quite diverse backgrounds, ages and
nationalities. We also would like to thank the people at
Casa da Música’s IT department - with a special
mention to Nuno Guedes -, our sponsors and Porto
Digital, who lent us some of the equipment and software
used. Also precious has been the enthusiasm and
support of some researchers who visited Digitópia, such
as Roberto Bresin, Bruce Pennycook and Martin
Kaltenbrunner, amongst others.
9. REFERENCES
[1] Farbood, M., Pasztor, E. and Jennings, K.
“Hyperscore: A graphical sketchpad for novice
composers'', IEEE Computer Graphics and
Application, Jan-Feb, 50-54, 2004.
[2] Penha, R. “Towards a free, open source and
cross-platform software suite for approaching
music and sound design'', under revision, 2008.
Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference ICMC 2008 — Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast