The telematic music system: Affordances for a new instrument to shape the music of tomorrow

Abstract

New digital technologies enabled the Virtual Reality movement in the 1990s, which led to the euphoric belief that we could virtually teleport ourselves to a distant location with such great realism that we would lose our awareness of the enabling technology. Especially in the particular case of music collaborations, however, it has meanwhile become clear that this goal is unreachable because of the unavoidable transmission latency over long distances and other secondary factors. This article explores how we can create new and better design goals for telematic music collaborations by treating telematic systems as a new class of musical instruments. From this viewpoint, the creation of new art forms for the new medium becomes a central challenge, in addition to the development of better telematic technology. In particular, the new works need to focus on the affordances that the telematic system introduces, not just circumnavigate current system limitations. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.