Know-Nothing Network Music

Abstract

This conference is, to my knowledge, the first national or international meeting specifically focused on the practice of computer network music. When I first started making music using computer networks over twenty years ago, my collaborators and I within what became “The Hub” assumed that this technique of sharing data within a band of computer musicians was so obvious an idea for exploring the potential of this new medium that it would quickly become widespread. In fact, it’s only recently become common enough that a couple of dozen practitioners from Europe and America can come together to discuss the differences and similarities of their practices. In this paper I briefly describe the kinds of ensemble interactivity I have used in playing network music over the years. The most significant aspect of this work for me is the new kind of ensemble relationship it achieves between its players. Ensemble relationships in music represent sociological patterns within the culture they arise from. Thus computer network music may be seen as an experimental practice that seeks, among other things, to create new forms of social interaction that include the embedded mechanical behaviors of computers used as musical instruments. The problem that arises within this practice that still needs to be resolved is to invent ensembles that embody the kind of “decentralized system of free association” that Chomsky envisioned for society. As our music, along with our society, becomes more mechanized, we need to develop a musical aesthetic that avoids forcing musicians to act as cogs in the machine, but will rather enable them to collaborate creatively and imaginatively in new ways, coordinating their thoughts and behaviors in real-time, which is the social purpose intrinsic to the practice of playing music together.