Send A Message

Send a Message
by
Conor Barry
Music Technology BSc, Queens University Belfast, 2012
Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the
Degree of Master of Arts, Media Arts
School of Music, Theatre & Dance
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
April 25
th
, 2014
Approved by:
______________________________________________________
Assistant Professor Michael Gurevich, Thesis Director, Performing Arts
Technology
______________________________________________________
Associate Professor Andrew Kirshner, Thesis Committee Member,
Performing Arts Technology
______________________________________________________
Professor Stephen Rush, Thesis Committee Member, Performing Arts
Technology
______________________________________________________
Assistant Professor Seth Ellis, Thesis Committee Member, School of Art
and Design
Date Degree Conferred: May 2014

Table of Contents
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i: Pievious telematic peifoimance woik ............................................................................................ SS
ii: Pievious Installation Woik ................................................................................................................. 4u
iii: Noith Ameiican Nusic ......................................................................................................................... 47
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List of Figures

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iii
Acknowledgements

This thesis project would not have been possible without the following
collaborators:
John DArcy, Daniel Buckley, Morten Marius Apenes, Grete rbu, Ben Purdy, Nota
Tsekoura, Cory Levinson, Glaute Fleisje, Olan Stephens, Michael Speers, and Lugh
ONeill.
Thank you all for your engagement, enthusiasm, patience, and creativity.

Thanks to Macklin Underdown, not just for the web-design expertise within
this project, but also as a sounding board for ideas, and more importantly your
generous friendship over the last two years.

To Michael Gurevich for your guidance and expertise throughout my education in
Belfast and Michigan. Beyond your assistance as my thesis director, you have
influenced my education more than anyone and set me on a confident path for
future research.

To my thesis committee members Stephen Rush, Seth Ellis, and Andy Kirshner for
their articulate feedback and productive criticism.

iv
I am grateful for the unconditional support from my family into my bizarre
endeavours into music technology. Some day I will be able to explain what I do. A
heartfelt thanks to Rachel as we embark on another culturally confused adventure
to the west coast.

To Sile OModhrain for her mentorship, and Jason Corey alongside the PAT faculty
as a whole for enabling the life changing experience of studying at the University of
Michigan.

To Simon Alexander-Adams and Eric Sheffield, your friendship and immense
creativity alongside the wider PAT community are the reasons I woke up each day
with excitement and purpose to discover what we could make next.

To Linda Knox and Eleanor Schmitt for making somewhere like Design Lab 1 exist.

To Siles Lab crew especially Esthir Lemi for her support in finding collaborators for
this project.

Dave Schroeder for the Inst-Int experience. Felipe Hickmann, Gascia Ouzounian,
Paul Stapleton and those from SARC.

To Ann Arbor, Belfast, and Dublin. It is wonderful to have many places that one
can call home.
v
Abstract

Send a Message is a telematic sound-art installation, featuring 8
telephones located in various cities in the United States and Europe. The
microphone feeds from each location are transmitted to the other telephones at
the speed of sound. The work was developed through the lens of telematic music
performance, the practice of performing live from separate geographical
locations via telecommunications. A primary concern of telematic music
practitioners is the loss of tangible presence and connectedness between
performers and audience members. While Send a Message does not attempt to
rectify these issues for performance purposes, it uses them as a starting point to
explore what it means to be connected to and communicate with other humans
who are located in distant places. Through re-inserting the speed of sound into
long distance communications, all of the participants can exist in their unique
geographical locations whilst still being a part of a shared acoustic environment.
The written component to this thesis provides a historical review of telematics
and sound art, as well as an overview of the origins and process behind Send a
Message.

vi
Introduction

In November 2010, I was in the audience of a telematic performance at the
Sonic Lab in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Telematic performance is the term used for
live performances that feature (most commonly) musicians located in separate
geographic locations. Performers can be heard in all participating locations near-
simultaneously via the use of high-speed Internet. As an undergraduate student at
the Sonic Arts Research Centre, I had attended many such concerts and often found
myself disillusioned by the work of my peers within the medium. Arriving early, I
witnessed the concert organisers in panic as the network link with one of the
locations had failed. To the right of my aisle seat, a projection screen turned on and
a row of chairs appeared beside me, displaying an audience trickling in to take
their seats. As a life-sized figure on screen took their seat beside me, I chanced a
wave to a camera and quickly received a wave back. How are you? I asked.
Good, good. Very cold a German accent replied. As the finishing touches were
being applied on stage, I sat with Belfast to the left of me, and Hamburg on the
right - a seamless portal that allowed me to interact with those on either side. I do
not remember anything about the concert itself other than the shared experience I
had with the other audiences from afar. We shared grimaces at feedback,
occasionally made awkward eye contact, gave appreciation to soloists, and
exchanged farewells at the end, as if leaving a new friend at a bus stop.
vii
It was the first time I realised the real potential within telematic
performance. For me that potential laid not solely within the ability to perform with
others from long distance, but rather the opportunity to create shared experiences
with others in performance settings. For once the dissatisfying disconnect that is rife
within telematic performance was cured through connecting the audience, rather
than focusing on the performers.

Felipe Hickmann, one of the co-ordinators of the concert in question,
NetCoMeDia,
1
subsequently explained how the audience screens were carefully
considered. It took three days for them to align the projectors on either side of the
audience in order to achieve the natural line of sight between the venues. The
result of this attention to detail inspired me to delve into telematic performance
myself and explore more lateral approaches to Internet-based music performance.
During my first year at the University of Michigan, I was a member of the Digital
Music Ensemble, whose focus in 2012 was on network performance. The creative
atmosphere within this class led to the fruition of a number of performances that
took novel approaches to the practice.
My interest in sound-based installation art has also flourished during my
time at the University of Michigan. Inspired by the work of my peers, and the
accessibility of platforms such as Arduino, Processing, MaxMsp, and
OpenFrameworks, I began to explore the medium under the guidance of Michael
Gurevich and Sile OModhrain. Installations such as Leave a Message, Message

1
Queens University Belfast, Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music
viii
Box, and Katie Dont Go explored my curiosity with the powerful and profound
nature of simple, brief, spoken messages when they are placed in a particular time
and space for anyone to digest.

This thesis combines these two threads of my work, as I begin to refine what
I see now as an area to which I wish to devote future research. I believe we can
improve the nature of long distance collaboration, communication, and creative
practice through reinstating the tangible aspects of geography and physical space in
an attempt to prevent the fragmentation of ones presence on the network. I see
Send a Message as the first of a series that begins to address this issue by exploring
how using the natural speed of sound as the pace of transmission can allow
participants to contribute to the network from their unique geographical locations.
It provides insights into the nature of instant communication, the manner in which
we interact over long distances, and the true scale of our planet as our messages
travel across the globe at their true pace.
1
A Brief History of Telematic Art and Sound Art

"Telematics enables tiemenuous aitistic fieeuom. It peimits the aitist to libeiate ait
fiom its conventional embouiment in a physical object locateu in a unique
geogiaphic location. Telematics pioviues a context foi inteiactive aesthetic
encounteis anu facilitates aitistic collaboiations among globally uispeiseu
inuiviuuals." Euwaiu A. Shanken
2

I: From Telegraph to Radio
Theie aie vaiious teims foi the piactice of connecting peifoimeis anu aitists
fiom uistant locations foi live peifoimance. Foi peifoiming live music via
communications, teims incluue telematic peifoimance, netwoikeu peifoimance,
tele-music, iemote music, multi-location peifoimance, iemote peifoimance, net-
music anu a plethoia of othei aiiangements.
In this thesis, I will iefei to telematics; the combination of computeis anu
telecommunications.
The piactice of peifoiming music telematically between uistant locations has
become a piimaiy ieseaich focus foi music technologists in the last 1u oi so yeais.
Numeious expeiimental peifoimances have exploieu the meuium's potential to
achieve telepiesence, the sensation of being elsewheie thiough the means of

2
Edward A. Shanken, introduction to Roy Ascott, Telematic Embrace: Visionary
Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness (Univ of California Press, 2003),
53.
2
communications technology. While the newfounu capabilities of the Inteinet
pioviue an exciting fiontiei foi live music peifoimance, the ielationship between
music anu communications uates back much fuithei, as fai as the 187us. The iuea of
6&4&9%&.&-?& can be uateu back to the eailiest telephone conceits fiom the late
18uus, wheie listeneis coulu have the illusion of being piesent within the auuience
of a uistant conceit hall. Communications technology can also cieate viitual
enviionments. Rathei than telepoiting one's piesence to a uistant location, useis
can exist within a vast web of inteiconnecteu noues, the combination of which aie
capable of suppoiting an enviionmental stiuctuie of theii own. Such a system was
fiist exploieu in Nax Neuhaus' K$N4"? H$9942/ which we will uiscuss in uetail latei in
this papei.

The teim 6a4a:16"b$& fiist appeaieu in a biief iepoit entitleu "L'Infoimatisation ue
la Socit" wiitten in 1978 by Simon Noia anu Alain Ninc.
S
The uocument is a iepoit
to Fiench Piesiuent valiy uiscaiu u'Estaing conceining Fiance's technological
soveieignty amiust the intiouuction of computei netwoik systems by IBN. They
uesciibe telematics as the "spiinging to life boin of the maiiiage between
computeis anu communications netwoiks, which culminate in the aiiival of
univeisal satellites, tiansmitting images, uata anu sounus."
4
The uocument is an
echo of Naishall NcLuhan's piophetic uesciiptions of an electionic netwoik that
seives as an extension of humankinu. While NcLuhan's vision of a global village lays

3
Simon Nora and Alain Minc, Linformatisation de la socit: rapport M. le
Prsident de la Rpublique (Seuil, 1978).
4
Ibid., 13.
3
piomise to an iuealistic integiateu community,
S
1S yeais latei, Noia anu Ninc look
upon the now iealiseu capabilities of telematics anu see similai potential, but also
expiess concein as to how IBN coulu monopolise the infiastiuctuie, anu peihaps
piohibit such a uecentialiseu netwoik. The implications of how uistiibuteu
netwoiks may uevelop, Noia anu Ninc aigue, uepenus gieatly upon the mannei in
which the Fiench people anu society choose to use the meuium.

The concept of tiansmitting music acioss long uistances has existeu as long
as telephony itself. Befoie the invention of the telegiam, expeiiments into the
electionic tiansfei of the human voice weie alieauy well unueiway. Chailes
Wheatstone, the English inventoi iesponsible foi the conceitina anu spectioscope,
publisheu a papei in 18S1 uesciibing his telephonic expeiiments. Amongst his
suggestions to oveicome the limitations of tiansmitting sounu was to uevelop an
aitificial voice that coulu iepiouuce the spoken message moie cleaily than wiieu
tiansmission woulu allow. 0sing the teim "telephone" he pioposeu plans foi a ioute
of soliu ious fiom Euinbuigh to Lonuon that woulu allow the tiansmission of voice
anu music.
6

The invention of the telegiaph in 1844 saw the fiist time a message tiavelleu
fastei than the messengei. Plans foi telegiaph-like uevices can be tiaceu moie than

5
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (MIT press,
1994).
6
Daniel P. McVeigh, An Early History of the Telephone 1664-1865,, Electronic
Publication, with the Help of Jean Gagnon, Daniel Langlois Foundation, and Don
Foresta, MARCEL, 2000.
4
9u yeais pievious as an anonymous wiitei (thought to be Chailes Noiiison)
suggesteu the use of one wiie pei lettei of the alphabet as a mechanism foi senuing
messages ovei long uistances. An electiifieu ball on the ieceiving enu woulu attiact
a piece of papei iepiesenting the lettei to iise into the inteipietei's view.
7
In 1774
a similai system uevelopeu by ueoiges Louis Lesage was capable of tiansfeiiing
messages between iooms.
8
A moie extieme use of electiicity to tiansfei messages
incluueu Salv y Campillo's suggestion foi each alphabetiseu wiie to senu an electiic
shock to a human that woulu in tuin shout theii assigneu lettei to an inteipietei.
Five yeais latei, Campillo ietiacteu this toituious foim of communication in favoui
of using fiogs' legs to spasm upon electiocution as the signifiei.
9

In the miu 19
th
Centuiy, the single wiie, Noise-coueu telegiam platfoim was
quickly auopteu, with ovei Su telegiaph companies opeiating in the 0niteu States
by 18S1.
1u
Buiing the yeai of its invention, a chess game between playeis in
Washington anu Baltimoie exhibiteu the iange of uses the new communication
uevice coulu offei.
11

In 1874, Elisha uiay uuiing his expeiiments into telephone tiansmission
useu oscillatois to iepiouuce sounus tiansmitteu fiom a miciophone. In one of the
eailiest electionic musical instiuments cieateu, he built a bank of eight oscillatois

7
Electric Telegraph, accessed April 9, 2014,
http://www.rochelleforrester.ac.nz/electric-telegraph.html.
8
CABINET // The Human Telegraph, accessed April 9, 2014,
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/sanchez.php.
9
Ibid.
10
HistoryWired: History of the Telegraph, accessed April 14, 2014,
http://www.historywired.si.edu/detail.cfm?ID=324.
11
NMSAT Vol. 1+2 PART 1!: " - 1964 Ancient and Modern History,
Anticipatory Literature and Technical Developments References, April 2011, 607.
5
that coulu be contiolleu with a two-octave keyboaiu. An announcement fiom a
conceit fiom Bighlanu Paik in Chicago on Bec 29
th
1874 stateu:
". |Aj unique anu extiaoiuinaiy featuie will be the fiist public exhibition of
Elisha uiay's Electiic Telephone, by means of which, a numbei of familiai
melouies, tiansmitteu fiom a uistance, thiough telegiaphic wiie, will be
ieceiveu upon violins anu othei instiuments, within the ioom."
12

uiay touieu the 0niteu States, exhibiting his Q1%:+-"? T&4&#%19, anu went on to
piouuce some of the fiist electionic music conceits using similai uevices.
1S
Fiom the
eailiest expeiiments into telegiaphy, long-uistance communications anu music have
been inextiicably linkeu. Inueeu fiom the pioneeiing eia of communications fiom
the 19
th
Centuiy iight thiough to the expeiiments at Bell Telephone's laboiatoiies in
the 19Sus, the uuality between music anu communications exemplifies the uesiies
of many to uistiibute anu peifoim music between uistant locations.

As telephone technology uevelopeu, long befoie the cieation of iauio, the
potential foi music to be heaiu anu peifoimeu in sepaiate locations was quickly
becoming a ieality. The fiist mention of what we now inteipiet as a telematic
conceit appeais in an auuiess Fiench novelist }ules veine gave in the city of Amiens.
W-& ]"44& ^G&14 took a satiiical euge on the state of Amiens at the time it was given in
187S, but also an insight into what the town might be like in the yeai 2uuu. A
passage fiom a tiansciipt of his speech uesciibes an "electiic conceit" happening in
Amiens, Lonuon, vienna, Rome, St. Peteisbuig, anu Beijing simultaneously. veine

12
Ibid., 727.
13
Ibid., 730731.
6
colouifully uesciibes how the fictional "ivoiy ciushei" of the futuie plays a note anu
the iemote pianos ieplicate the sounu fiom theii keyboaius.
14

A yeai latei in 1876, Alexanuei uiaham Bell spoke what aie commonly
acknowleugeu as the fiist woius tiansfeiieu by telephone. 12 uays aftei Bell's fiist
successful test, The New Yoik Times pieuicteu biight things foi the new technology:
"The telephone - foi that is the name of the new instiument - is intenueu to
convey sounus fiom one place to anothei ovei the oiuinaiy telegiaph-wiies, anu it
can be useu to tiansmit eithei the upioai of a Wagneiian oichestia oi the gentle
cooing of a female lectuiei. . When Nme. TITIENS is singing, oi Ni. TB0NAS'
oichestia is playing, oi a champion oiatoi is apostiophizing the Ameiican eagle, a
telephone, placeu in the builuing wheie such sounus aie in piocess of piouuction,
will convey them ovei the telegiaph-wiies to the iemotest coineis of the eaith. .
No man who can sit in his own stuuy with his telephone by his siue, anu thus listen
to the peifoimance of an opeia at the Acauemy, will caie to go to Fouiteenth stieet
anu to spenu the evening in a hot anti ciowueu builuing."
15

Foui months latei, Bell playeu Yankee Booule on a pailoui oigan in Boston,
wheie afteiwaiu a New Yoik baseu opeiatoi ieplieu by telegiaph the name of the
tune to valiuate its tiansmission.
16

14
Jules Venre, Une Ville Ideal, accessed March 25, 2014,
http://jv.gilead.org.il/zydorczak/ideal-pl.html.
15
The Telephone, New York Times, 8.
16
Catherine MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell - The Man Who Contracted Space
(Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1928).
7
Fiom 1877, the same yeai as the intiouuction of the coloui oigan anu the
playei piano, telephone conceits giew in populaiity. The fiist long uistance
telephone conceit featuieu Fieueiick Boskovitz peifoiming fiom Philauelphia,
wheie a solu out Steinway Ball in New Yoik ieceiveu the piano solo via Elisha uiay's
Baimonic Telegiaph, which is inteiestingly noteu by the Baily uiaphic "is applicable
alone to the tiansmission of instiumental music. Piofessoi Bell of Boston is the
inventoi of the appaiatus foi tiansmitting the tones of the voice."
17

0vei the next uecaue, many telephone conceits weie aiiangeu acioss the
0niteu States to exhibit the potential of the iemaikable technology. As
philanthiopists puichaseu telephones to tiansmit the opeia to theii beusiues,
18

moie entiepieneuiial minus saw the monetaiy potential of bioaucasting theatie to
the public. Clment Auei hau 8u telephone tiansmitteis placeu acioss the stage of
the Paiis 0peia, wheie in vaiious hotels, cafs anu othei venues listeneis coulu pay
Su centimes foi five minutes aii-time via "Thtiophones". These uevices also
featuieu the fiist two-channel steieophonic playback mechanism, as a paii of
heauphones was useu to ieceive what Auei calleu "N"-1$%"?41% 1$G$"6"+-." This
unique appioach to ieplicate the tiue theatiical expeiience alloweu listeneis to

17
Anticipatory Literature and Technical Developments References, 756.
18
Edward Fry, an avid Opera goer had the Academy of Music in New York
transmitted to his bed as he occasionally joined in the applause. Armstrong, W.G.
(1884). A Record of the Opera Philadelphia. (pp. 174-176). Philadelphia : Porter &
Coates.

8
follow the movements of peifoimeis anu gain a sense of uepth in such a mannei
that the Thtiophones weie a populai success until the auvent of iauio.
19

Befoie the 192us, theie was no methou of amplifying electiical signals,
meaning telephone useis hau to place the ieceiveis next to theii eais. In the late
189us, Thauueus Cahill, an Ameiican inventoi, sought a way to bioaucast music via
telephone lines anu be iepiouuceu louu enough foi an auuience of listeneis to heai.
Rathei than bioaucasting musical peifoimances much like the Thtiophone,
Cahill's expeiiments into the use of electiic motois anu inuuction coils to cieate
synthesiseu tones iesulteu in the tiansmission of louu, auuible signals via telephone
lines. Featuiing SS long iheotomes (much less that the 4u8 his patent oiiginally
uesciibeu), magnetic coils inuuceu electiical cuiient baseu on the pioximity of
iaiseu bumps in the cylinueis. A cylinuei's iotation speeu coiiesponueu to the
funuamental auuible fiequency, with each auuitional bump on the ciicumfeience of
the tube iaising the pitch an octave. Seven sections of each cylinuei pioviueu a
seven-octave iange foi each note value, with 12 cylinueis cieating a chiomatic scale.
Nanipulating the uistance of the coils fiom the cylinueis coulu cieate uynamics. The
fiist public conceit of Cahill's "Telhaimonium" in 19u2 featuieu a giamophone-like
amplification cone aiounu the telephone's ieceivei wheie the auuience locateu
"many miles away" heaiu the 7 tonne piototype peifoimeu fiom Cahill's factoiy.
2u

Cahill latei offeieu telephone subsciiptions to hotels, museums, casinos anu wealthy
inuiviuuals who uesiieu to have the Telhaimonium's "Nuzak"-like seivices pipeu to

19
20
Ibid., 795.
9
theii telephones. The synthesisei, similai in stiuctuie to a pipe oigan, was a pie-
cuisoi to the electiic Bammonu oigan, which benefitteu fiom the amplification of
electiical signals, gieatly ieuucing the physical foim factoi the Telhaimonium
iequiieu.
21

Wiieless telegiaphy technologies uevelopeu in the 188us anu 189us paveu
the way foi what we now know as AN iauio. Reginalu Fessenuen maue the fiist
wiieless auuio tiansmissions in 19uu anu six yeais latei, the fiist bioaucasts of
music on Becembei 24
th
, 19u6 with a ienuition of c Q+42 >"#,6. Eaily iauio
expeiiments focuseu on two-way tiansmission foi communication puiposes, iathei
than the one-way bioaucasts we associate the meuium with touay. Initially
uevelopeu with maiine communication in minu, many of the eaily uemonstiations
of iauio's capabilities occuiieu in Navy shipyaius. Lee ue Foiest, one of iauio's
foiemost innovatois (anu also quite fonu of music in his spaie time), was
peifoiming tests of wiieless telephone sets foi the 0S Navy, using phonogiaph
iecoius as the souice mateiial. Accoiuing to his peisonal account:
"Nuch to my suipiise, many wiieless amateuis anu piofessional opeiatois
inteicepteu anu enjoyeu these test tiansmissions. They came to look foi these
'piogiams.' Anu quite natuially, the iuea of mass communication occuiieu to me,
wheieby attiactive music anu inteiesting talks might be placeu on the aii, thus

21
Journal of Australasian Theatre Organ Studies - First Unit Organ, accessed April
9, 2014,
http://theatreorgans.com/southerncross/Journal/Centenary%20of%20the%20Electro
nic%20Organ.htm.
10
cieating piofitable uemanu foi wiieless equipment by those uesiious of listening
in."
22

At the time of these iauio expeiiments, Be Foiest listeu anothei featuie of the
iauiotelephone upon ships; the piovision of "music anu othei foims of
enteitainment to passengeis tiavelling on the passengei vessels."
23

II: Art at a Distance

Fiom 19u9, iauio technology establisheu itself within naval opeiations as a
two-way communication system, anu the one-way bioaucast foimat flouiisheu as an
enteitainment foimat foi the public thioughout the 2u
th
centuiy.
Rauio offeieu a meuium capable of stietching acioss lanumasses supplying
iich anu uiveise content. Foui uecaues pievious to NcLuhan's piophetic
uesciiptions of a global village, Russian poet velimii Chlebnikov saw iauio as a
platfoim that coulu have fai ieaching consequences foi cieating a woiluwiue
community. Chlebnikov's uocument "The Rauio of the Futuie" fiom 1921, uesciibes
how waves of "human knowleuge will ioll acioss the entiie countiy into each local
Rauio station, to be piojecteu that veiy uay as letteis onto the uaik pages of
enoimous books, highei than houses, that stanu in the centei of each town, slowly

22
"The Story of Lee de Forest," Electrical Experimenter, December, 1916, p 561 quoted
in - NMSAT Vol. 1+2 PART 1!: " - 1964 Ancient and Modern History,
23
De Forest Music on Shipboard to Entertain Passengers," Electrical World, January,
1907 quoted in Ibid.
11
tuining theii own pages.. These books of the stieets will be known as Rauio
Reauing-Walls!"
24
Chlebnikov also pieuicteu iemote ait exhibits wheie paintings
fiom capital cities coulu be uisplayeu in the small towns - annihilating uistance.
While highlighting the potential foi a netwoikeu web, capable of point-to-point
communication, "The Rauio of the Futuie" shows how the establisheu foimat of one-
way tiansmission coulu leau to a centialiseu piopaganua tool, wheie "the shoitest
inteiiuption of the tiansmission of the (main) Rauio (station) will cause a mental
ciisis of the whole countiy, (anu) will cause a timely loss of consciousness."
2S

The conceins weie ieinfoiceu by Beitolt Biecht's 19S2 essay "The Rauio as
an Appaiatus of Communication." Biecht suggests a ieveision fiom Rauio as a tool
of uistiibution to a foim of communication:
"The iauio woulu be the finest possible communication appaiatus in public
life, a vast netwoik of pipes. That is to say, it woulu be if it knew how to ieceive as
well as to tiansmit, how to let the listenei speak as well as heai, how to biing him
into a ielationship insteau of isolating him."
26

While iauio woulu play a cential iole in the uevelopment of sounu ait
piactice in the 2u
th
centuiy, the piomise of a communicative netwoik that alloweu
one to cieate oi collaboiate without being physically piesent iaiseu questions foi
the futuie of ait. As these questions weie being askeu, new meuia theoiists weie
also ponueiing the authenticity of an ait object that is a iepiouuction of the oiiginal.
In "The Woik of Ait in the Age of Nechanical Repiouuction" (19S6), Waltei

24
Ibid., 1163.
25
Ibid.
26
Bertolt Brecht, The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication, Brecht on
Theatre, 1932, 5153.
12
Benjamin suggesteu that theie is a uepieciation in the "auia" of an ait object once it
has been iepiouuceu.
27
}ohn Bewey's "Ait as Expeiience" states, "When aitistic
objects aie sepaiateu fiom both conuitions of oiigin anu opeiation in expeiience, a
wall is built aiounu them that ienueis almost opaque theii geneial significance,
with which esthetic theoiy ueals."
28
}ust as a phonogiaph is one step iemoveu fiom
the musician, communications enableu the oiiginal aitist to be one step iemoveu
fiom theii woik.

0ne of the eailiest explicit uses of communications in the geneiation of a new
aitwoik was Lzlo Noholy-Nagy's T&4&9,+-& K1"-6"-#.. Accoiuing to the aitist:
"In 1922, I oiueieu by telephone fiom a sign factoiy five paintings in
poicelain enamel. I hau the factoiy's coloui chait befoie me anu I sketcheu my
paintings on giaph papei. At the othei enu of the telephone the factoiy supeivisoi
hau the same kinu of papei, uiviueu into squaies. Be took uown the uictateu shapes
in the coiiect position."
29

In a fitting tiibute to the compiomises that aie unfoitunately often inheient
to the piactice of telematic ait, whethei Noholy-Nagy actually useu the telephone at
all in this instance is still a mattei of uebate.
Su

S1
Regaiuless of whethei Noholy-

27
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
(Penguin UK, 2008). 1936
28
John Dewey, Art as Experience [1934], ALA Booklist 30 (1980): 272.
29
L. Maholy-Nagy, The New Vision and Abstract of an Artist (New York: George
Wittenborn, 1947), 79.
30
Krisztina Passuth, Kisztina Passuth, Moholy-Nagy (New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1985), P. 33. (New York: Thames and Hudson,, 1985).
31
Eduardo Kac, Aspects of the Aesthetics of Telecommunications, in International
Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques: ACM SIGGRAPH
13
Nagy uiu inueeu use a telephone oi not, the question of owneiship anu physical
piesence suiiounuing an aitwoik cieateu via communications hau been iaiseu.

III: Networked Artistic Collaboration

The potential of a ue-centialiseu communication netwoik foi the puiposes of
aitistic piactice outlineu by Beitolt Biecht initially founu its ioots not thiough
wiieless tiansmission but "Nail ait." In the late 19Sus anu eaily 196us Ray }ohnson
began expeiimenting with Nail Ait as a platfoim to collaboiate iemotely with othei
aitists in a non-tiauitional foimat.

92 Visual Proceedings, vol. 1992, 1992, 4757,
http://telematic.walkerart.org/telereal/kac_kac.html.
14

!"#$%& () *+,-.+-/ 012) 31"4 5%6 7 89,&:&%1
J=

A gioup of expeiimental aitists giew fiom the piactice, nameu "The New
Yoik Coiiesponuance School" (sic), exchanging uiawings anu collages often using
the Suiiealist &Lb$"."6& ?+%9.& technique to examine the potential of the meuium.
The piactice extenueu beyonu inteinational boiueis, ieaching aitists in iemote
aieas in othei continents. Piioi to the foimalisation of the Fluxus movement,
ueoige Biecht, an Ameiican aitist famous foi his Event Scoies, useu the postal
seivice netwoik to shaie event scoies to fiienus.
SS
Image anu text-baseu long
uistance aitistic collaboiations evolveu alongsiue uevelopments in technology such

32
From Ray Johnson - Mail Art & Ephemera - Art - Ray Johnson Estate, accessed
April 9, 2014, http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/art/from-ray-johnson/works/3/.
33
Ascott, Telematic Embrace, 56.
15
as fax machines anu satellite netwoiks. The 198S woik, @1 K4"..$%& G$ T&L6& fuithei
exploieu the natuie of what its cieatoi Roy Ascott calleu "uistiibuteu authoiship."
34

Naue possible thiough a ueuicateu netwoiking seivice foi a collection of aitists
calleu 50T`cd, @1 K4"..$%& G$ T&L6& featuieu 11 contiibuting authois fiom aiounu
the woilu to cieate a tii-lingual faiiy tale naiiative, inteispeiseu with poetiy, ASCII
ait, anu the occasional technical assistance iequest.
35

The Inteinet as we know it touay is ieplete with aitistic collaboiations, yet
the familiai foimat of senu-wait-ieceive akin to Nail Ait is still the piimaiy methou
of geneiating cieative woiks acioss long uistances via e-mail, foiums, clouu baseu
stoiage oi asynchionous online uiscussion. As in-biowsei ieal-time collaboiative
platfoims begin to appeai anu matuie, concuiient online collaboiation will soon
become anothei tool available to a new geneiation of aitists. Fuithei examples of
eaily satellite anu netwoikeu baseu ieal-time collaboiative expeiiments will be
ievieweu latei in this papei.

IV: Sound Art and Space

Telematic peifoimance anu netwoikeu sounu ait iaise new questions
iegaiuing the ielationships between sounu anu space. Eaily expeiiments into

34
Edward A. Shanken, introduction to Roy Ascott, Art and Telematics: Towards a
Network Consciousness, ) Telematic Embrace-Visionary Theories of Art,
Technology and Consciousness, London, Univeristy of California Press Berkley and
Los Angeles, California, 1984, 186200.
35
Ascott, La Plissure Du Texte, n.d. The full transcript is worth a look through.
Available from http://alien.mur.at/rax/ARTEX/PLISSURE/plissure.html
16
spatialisation alloweu composeis to shape sounu in physical space much like a
sculptoi woulu shape clay with hei hanus. This newfounu plasticity of sounu
motivateu a geneiation of aitists to exploie the ielationship between sounu anu
aichitectuie thiough the foim of sounu-ait installations. Expeiiments into
telecommunications within sounu ait thiough piojects such as Naiyanne Amachei's
\"62 @"-F. anu Nax Neuhaus' K$N4"? H$9942 extenu this inteiaction of sounu anu
aichitectuie beyonu a single acoustic space, iesulting in spatialisation on a
potentially global scale. To unueistanu the impoitance of sounu ait piactice anu its
ielationship to telematics, we must look to its oiigins, fiom the tuin of the 2u
th

centuiy.

The Futuiist manifesto "The Ait of Noise" is commonly iefeiieu to as the
founuing uocument of noise-ait, an oiigin point of sounu ait anu sounu installation.
Luigi Russolo's "Intonaiumoii" biought the sounus of his newly inuustiialiseu
suiiounuings into the context of music peifoimance. Nachineiy intiouuceu an
entiiely new sonic palette to the human eai that ovei the next centuiy woulu slowly
infiltiate the conceit hall. It was the aiiival of magnetic tape iecoiuing in the late
194us that woulu pioviue the catalyst foi sounu ait. Nusical time coulu be
tianslateu to the physical length of tape, anu the affoiuable meuium was also
malleable enough foi composeis to expeiiment with cutting anu splicing sections
togethei.
Finuing its oiigins in the Rauiouiffusion Fianaise stuuios in Paiis, Pieiie
Schaeffei's "uioupe ue Recheiche ue Nusique Conciete" embiaceu the intiouuction
of tape within theii compositional expeiiments. 0nuei the instiuction of Schaeffei,
17
}aques Poullin uevelopeu the "Pupitie u'Espace" in 19S1, the fiist multichannel
auuio uevice uesigneu to spatialise auuio.
S6
Foui tiacks of tape weie pie-assigneu to
ueteimineu speakei outputs, with one tiack capable of being spatialiseu in ieal time
by manipulating a hanu helu tiansmittei coil positioneu between foui laigei
ieceivei coils aiiangeu to ieflect the position of the speakeis.
S7

Thiee uecaues pievious to Poullin's invention, Eugai vaiese composeu
^-6a#%14&., which accoiuing to a lectuie he piesenteu in 19S9 was ". conceiveu foi a
spatial piojection. I constiucteu the woik to employ ceitain acoustical means which
uiu not yet exist, but which I knew coulu be iealizeu anu woulu be useu soonei oi
latei."
S8
It wasn't until 19S4 that vaiese hau the oppoitunity to piesent a spatialiseu
woik. Va.&%6. featuiing 2-channel tape, 14 winu instiuments, S peicussionists, anu
piano was piesenteu as pait of a moie conseivative music piogiamme at the
Thtie ues Champs-Elyses. The spatialisation was only appaient to those listening
at home howevei, as the fiist steieophonic iauio bioaucast. In conjunction with
Rauio Fiance, two auuio feeus weie tiansmitteu on sepaiate iauio fiequencies.
Listeneis hau to gathei a paii of ieceiveis tuneu to these fiequencies to expeiience
the piece.
S9

36
Georgina Born, Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private
Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 75.
37
Daniel Teruggi, Technology and Musique Concrete: The Technical
Developments of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales and Their Implication in
Musical Composition., Organised Sound 12, no. 3 (2007): 213231.
38
John Strawn, The Intgrales of Edgard Varse Space, Mass, Element, and Form,
Perspectives of New Music 17, no. 1 (October 1, 1978): 139.
39
Gascia Ouzounian, Sound Art and Spatial Practices!: Situating Sound Installation
Art since 1958, January 1, 2008, 58.
18
Acioss the Atlantic, the 5:&%"?1- K%+[&?6 C+% 3$."? C+% 31#-&6"? T19&
pioneeieu the use spatial auuio in composition. Between 19S2 anu 19S4 the seminal
woiks of e"44"1:f. 3"L by }ohn Cage, ^-6&%.&?6"+- ^ by Noiton Feluman, anu c?6&6 by
Eaile Biown all expeiimenteu with octophonic spatialisation. Piactitioneis fiom the
84&F6%+-".?,& 3$."F school weie also uelving into spatial auuio, most notably
Kailheinz Stockhausen with M&.1-# V&% *$-#4"-#&. Taking a seiial compositional
appioach to spatialisation, Stockhausen aiiangeu sounus to tiavel aiounu auuience
in clockwise anu countei-clockwise movement. 0iiginally composeu foi five
channels, the technology was not available foi the piece to be piesenteu at its 19S6
piemiei in moie than 4 channels, so a sepaiate tape playei was situateu on centie
stage.
40

As uevelopments in spatialisation within music began to matuie, the piactice
of placing sounus in space leu to moie thoiough consiueiation of aichitectuie anu
the influence of the acoustic enviionment upon the listenei's expeiience of music.
Site-specific musical conceits began to appeai anu expeiimental composeis began
to not only piesent sounus in space, but also expeiiment with iepiesentation of
uislocateu spaces outsiue of the conceit hall within theii compositions.

K+g:& h4&?6%+-"b$&, the iconic laige-scale multimeuia woik by Eugai vaiese,
bioke giounu on the fiontieis of site-specific sounu installation anu auuio
spatialisation. As pait of the 19S8 Biussels Woilu Faiie, acclaimeu aichitect Le
Coibusiei was commissioneu to uesign a space that woulu showcase Philips

40
Smalley, Gesang Der Jnglinge, 10 11.
19
Coipoiation's technological auvancements. Le Coibusiei alongsiue aichitect-
composei Iannis Xenakis cieateu a stiuctuie maue fiom a seiies of extiuueu
hypeibolic paiaboloius containing multiple piojectois, contiollable lights, anu
between Suu anu 42S louuspeakeis.
41
Now that vaiese hau the tools he uesiieu to
cieate spatialiseu compositions, he useu the new technology to its fullest extent in
the eight-minute composition. Nine sepaiate channels of spatialiseu auuio weie
achievable with the auvanceu multi-tiack tape system uevelopeu specifically foi this
woik. The :$."b$& ?+-?%g6& composition iealiseu vaiese's long helu ambition to
cieate tiuly spatialiseu music in a way that both engulfs anu suiiounus the listenei.
Sounu as an acoustic phenomenon ielies on space foi its manifestation. The
new capabilities of spatialisation gave composeis a newfounu capability to gieatei
sculpt a sounu in space, enhancing its ability to inteiact with aichitectuie, anu
allowing listeneis to ueteimine theii listening expeiience thiough movement, thus
inteiacting with the piece. Besigneu as an 8-minute loop, K+g:& h4&?6%+-"b$&
alloweu visitois to move fieely thioughout the space, the spatialiseu auuio giving
each inuiviuual a unique sonic expeiience. As the woik of vaiese anu otheis moveu
towaiu locating sounu in space iathei than time, sounu installation, as Nax Neuhaus
woulu uesciibe it in the late 196us, hau become a ieality.
While the oiigins of sounu installation aie ueiiveu fiom the founu sounu
piactices of Cage anu Schaeffei in the 194us anu the eailiei noise-ait piactices of
the futuiists, The "Netwoikeu Nusic anu Sounu Ait Timeline" uatabase euiteu by
}ime }oy justly incluues a uesciiption of St. Naik's basilica fiom 1S2S neai the

41
The number of speakers varies widely between sources. See Ouzounian, Sound
Art and Spatial Practices, 60.
20
beginning of its timeline.
42
The unique acoustic featuies of the chuich alloweu
composeis to expeiiment with echoes anu ieveibeiation in theii compositions. By
situating choiis in multiple locations aiounu the chuich, composeis exploiteu these
acoustics to cieate some of the eailiest spatialiseu woiks that uelibeiately enacteu
the aichitectuie of the space into theii compositions. Site specificity is an essential
component of sounu installation as a meuium, uue to its symbiotic ielationship with
aichitectuie.
The woiks that establisheu the meuium of sounu installation as an
iuentifiable piactice by Nax Neuhaus inciteu "an integiation of the visual anu sonic
aits."
4S
The eailiei founu sounu compositional piactices took eveiyuay sounus anu
piesenteu them in a musical foimat. In contiast, eaily examples of sounu
installation took sounu anu placeu it geogiaphically in oiuei foi them to be founu.
Neuhaus establisheu himself eaily in life as a piominent contempoiaiy music
peifoimei anu peicussionist. Bis lateial appioach to inteipieting musical sounu is
exemplifieu by his sounu woik @^HT8>. In his own woius:
"I began my caieei as a musician woiking in a spheie of music wheie
uistinctions between composei anu peifoimei weie beginning to uisappeai. I
became inteiesteu in going fuithei anu moving into an aiea wheie composei anu
peifoimei woulu not exist."
44

42
43
Brandon LaBelle, Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum,
2006), 151.
44
Alain Cueff, Max Neuhaus: The Space of Sound, Artscribe International 71
(October 1988): 6667.
21
Neuhaus' fiist sounu installation V%"S& ^- 3$."? featuieu seven iauio
tiansmitteis tiansmitting on uiffeient fiequencies locateu alongsiue a half-mile
stietch of ioau in Buffalo, New Yoik. The expeiience one hau of the installation
uepenueu on theii choice of iauio fiequency, uiiection of tiavel, speeu, anu even the
weathei. The uiivei's expeiience of the aitwoik is manifesteu thiough theii actions.
Neuhaus woulu take usei paiticipation in his woik one step fuithei with
K$N4"? H$9942 in 1966.
"By mixing calls - listeneis' sounus anu noises, feeubacks - coming in to ten
telephones, Nax Neuhaus combineu a iauio station with the telephone netwoik anu
cieateu a two-way public auial space twenty miles in uiametei encompassing New
Yoik City wheie any inhabitant coulu join a live uialogue with sounu by making a
telephone call. 0sing technology he hau constiucteu himself, he was able to mix calls
coming in to ten telephones in the stuuios of the WBAI iauio station in New Yoik in
uiffeient ways anu then bioaucast this melange of listeneis' sounus anu noises.
0nce the listeneis who calleu in hau switcheu theii iauios on, he playeu with the
feeuback this piouuceu anu bunuleu sounus fiom intioveiteu anu extioveiteu
calleis togethei."
4S

As composeis such as Cage anu Stockhausen expeiimenteu with telephones
anu iauios within live peifoimance anu compositions, Neuhaus' K$N4"? H$9942
changeu what an inteiactive woik of sounu ait coulu be. In his accounts of the woik,
he explains how the combination of telephones, "a two-way viitual space in the
auial uimension," anu bioaucast iauio cieateu "a viitual auial space in which a laige

45
Jrme Joy, ed., NMSAT Vol. 3+4+5, April 2011, 89.
22
numbei of people can be at the same time."
46
Within this expeiimental aitwoik,
Neuhaus expanueu sounu installation's ielationship with its suiiounuing
aichitectuie anu enviionment, so that sounu coulu exist in multiple uislocateu yet
connecteu acoustic enviionments.
Be woulu fuithei uevelop this concept with 01G"+ >&6 in 1977. In this
iteiation, Neuhaus cieateu what he uesciibeu as "a sounu-tiansfoimation 'box' that
was liteially fifteen hunuieu miles wiue by thiee thousanu miles long with five ins
anu outs emeiging in Washington."
47

Fiom 1967 to 198u, piolific sounu aitist Naiyanne Amachei useu similai
techniques to Neuhaus in ielocating sounus to uistant places via communications.
Rathei than using listenei submissions as souice mateiial, she coupleu sepaiate
physical enviionments by piping the ambient sounu of a location to anothei. 0f hei
woik, she noteu how "the sounu was alive anu it came thiough high quality
telephone lines - people always thought I was playing a cassette. It was just haiu foi
them to iealize at that time that this was actually live sounu."
48
Amachei's woiks ie-
integiate the ielationship between aichitectuie anu sounu, with each ioom in hei
exhibition \"62 @"-F. i(_== (1967) pioviuing a uiffeient sounuscape being
tianspoiteu in fiom afai. Amachei uesciibes:

46
Max Neuhaus and SOUND DESIGN, The Broadcast Works and Audium, in
Zeitgleich: The Symposium, the Seminar, the Exhibition, 1994, http://www.max-
neuhaus.info/audio-video/Broadcast_Works_and_Audium.pdf.
47
Ibid.
48
Joy, NMSAT Vol. 3+4+5, 94.
23
"An entiie builuing oi seiies of iooms pioviues a stage foi the sonic anu
visual sets of my installations. Aichitectuie especially aiticulates sonic imaging in
'stiuctuie-bouine' sounu, magnifying coloi anu spatial piesence as the sounu
shapes inteiact with stiuctuial chaiacteiistics of the iooms befoie ieaching the
listenei."
49

The capability of communications to tianspose locations, people, anu sounu
making objects to othei places leu to many conceptual aitwoiks that fuithei
exploieu the necessity of the aitist to be physically piesent in the foimation of theii
aitwoik. An exhibition at the Chicago Nuseum of Contempoiaiy Ait entitleu 5%6 N2
T&4&9,+-& paiu tiibute to Noholy-Nagy's T&4&9,+-& K"?6$%&.. Aitists ielayeu
instiuctions via telephone to galleiy attenuants who hau to iealise theii
uesciiptions of theii aitwoiks, without "veibal exchange, uiawings, bluepiints oi
wiitten uocuments."
50
While aiguably, the telephone was mostly useu in these
instances as a substitute foi wiitten notes oi piesent veibal communication anu
thus uiu not fully exploie the attiibutes unique to the meuium, the ueuicateu
exhibition featuieu woiks that connecteu attenuants to uistant stiangeis
51
, anu also
the aitists themselves.
52

49
Maryanne Amacher, liner notes from Sound Characters, New York Tzadik
Records,1998 found in LaBelle, Background Noise, 172.
50
UbuWeb Sound!:: Art By Telephone, accessed March 31, 2014,
http://www.ubu.com/sound/art_by_telephone.html.

51
Robert Houts contribution featured 26 telephone numbers, linked to the letters
of the alphabet. A person namerd Arthur with the appropriate alphabetical
surname was chosen from cities beginning with the same letter (e.g. Arthur Bacon
from Baltimore). Gallery attendees were then asked to call the number and ask for
Art. Adriana de Souzae Silva, Art by Telephone: From Static to Mobile
Interfaces, Leonardo Music Journal 12, no. 10 (October 2004).
24

V: Node Networks

The 197us saw the auvent of computei netwoiks anu the foimation of
Inteinet piotocols (IP) that aie still in use touay. The fiist tiansmission of auuio via
IP took place between the 0niveisity of Southein Califoinia anu the Nassachusetts
Institute of Technology in August 1974.
SS
While this technology woulu iequiie moie
time to uevelop in oiuei to peifoim bi-uiiectional ieal-time tiansmission, satellite
technology was alieauy capable of this acioss long uistances. Bowevei the
piohibitively high cost of satellite communications inhibiteu its use by expeiimental
aitists anu was piimaiily ieseiveu foi wiue-scale television bioaucasts.
0nueistanuing the potential of satellite tiansmission, two sepaiate gioups of aitists
in the 0niteu States leu inuepenuent piojects in the hope of using the meuium foi
simultaneous inteiactive tians-continental collaboiations.

52
Dennis Oppenheim had the museum call him once a week to ask his weight.
53
RTP: Historical Notes, accessed March 31, 2014,
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/rtp/history.html.
25

!"#$%& =) >1-?2 @&A". B4&C6D C%+: >&A E+%F 9&%C+%:"-# 14+-#."G& 1 %&9%&.&-616"+- +C
31%#1%&6 !".,&% "- H1- !%1-?".?+
I<

H&-Gj0&?&"S& H16&44"6& >&6A+%F was a pioject leu by Liza Beai anu Keith
Sonniei in 1977. In collaboiation with NASA, they utiliseu the expeiimental CTS
satellite in a 2-way tiansmission between New Yoik anu San Fiancisco. Within a two
anu a half houi bioaucast that uiew "almost 2S,uuu" spectatois, aitists uiscusseu
the meuium anu peifoimeu impioviseu uances anu music, inteiacting anu
iesponuing to the incoming viueo anu auuio stieams.
SS

Two months latei, the H16&44"6& 5%6. K%+[&?6 k 5 H91?& A"6, -+ M&+#%19,"?14
`+$-G1%"&. leu by Kit ualloway anu Sheiiie Rabinowitz, also hau a successful tians-

54
Send/Receive Satellite Network | Art and Electronic Media, accessed March 31,
2014, http://www.artelectronicmedia.com/artwork/sendreceive-satellite-network.
55
Liza Bear, Send/Receive Phase I and II Documents: 1977, Send Receive
Satellite Network 1977, February 8, 2009,
http://sendreceivesatellitenetwork.blogspot.com/2009/02/sendreceive-phase-i-and-
ii-documents.html.
26
continental peifoimance.
S6
At a uistance of thiee thousanu miles apait, 4 uanceis,
two in Naiylanu anu two in Califoinia, co-oiuinateu theii movements via scieen
uisplays at each location.
S7

These two piojects in many ways laiu the founuation foi the foimat of
contempoiaiy telematic peifoimances. The split-scieen iepiesentation of uistant
peifoimeis alongsiue issues such as latency anu signal ueteiioiation iemain
common featuies to this uay. Thankfully the uemanuing technological iequiiements
of satellite technology have been simplifieu foi enu useis thiough the uevelopment
of the Inteinet. ualloway anu Rabinowitz woulu go on to cieate fuithei satellite-
baseu aitwoiks, incluuing Q+4& "- H91?& (198u) that exchangeu viueo feeus between
two stoiefionts in New Yoik anu Los Angeles. Life sizeu images of people on the
othei coast leu to spontaneous inteiactions between passeis by:
"The aichival footage shows gioups staiting to foim in both places tiying to
figuie out wheie the images aie coming fiom anu what's going on, anu at the same
time some people initiate shoit gieetings acioss the link to get to know the othei
ciowu. The enviionment staits to waim up quickly as people stait clapping,
shouting anu waving at each othei, while some inuiviuuals exchange peisonal
uetails about themselves anu theii jobs to stiangeis in each city, much to eveiyone
else's amusement."
S8

Woiks such as Neuhaus' K$N4"? H$9942 anu 01G"+ >&6 sought to cieate
aitificially laige viitual acoustic netwoiks by using technology to expanu upon

56
57
58
27
geogiaphic constiaints. Q+4& "- H91?& howevei useu technology to iemove
geogiaphic constiaints entiiely in attempting to cieate a poital between the two
stoiefionts. These two woiks exemplify the contiasting appioaches taken by aitists
when using telecommunications. While most contempoiaiy telematic peifoimances
attempt to achieve telepiesence between peifoimeis using techniques akin to Q+4&
"- H91?&, the capability to cieate viitual netwoiks has been ielatively unuei-
exploieu.

!"#$%& J) K&+94& #16,&% 6+ &L9&%"&-?& M144+A12 1-G 01N"-+A"6OP Q+4& "- H91?&
IX

The fiist gioup focuseu on netwoik-baseu music featuieu Noithein
Califoinians }im Boiton, Tim Peikis, Rich uolu, anu }ohn Bischoff unuei the guise
T,& @&1#$& +C 5$6+:16"? 3$."? \+:9+.&%.. 0sing KIN-1 miciocomputeis the
membeis piogiammeu theii computeis to cieate geneiative music.
6u
Bata woulu
then be tiansfeiieu via a netwoik to the othei membei's computeis, influencing
theii output. Peifoiming fiist in Naich 1978, the gioup continueu netwoik music

59
Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole in Space, Text on Website:
Http://www. Ecafe. com/getty/HIS, 1980.
60
Thomas B. Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology
and Composition (Psychology Press, 2002).
28
expeiiments until 198S. Latei iefoiming as T,& Q$N with a mouifieu line-up
61
, the
gioup pioneeieu the use of uata tiansfei foi ieal-time musical collaboiation ovei a
netwoik.
62

The fiist telematic collaboiations acioss the Atlantic useu text as the aitistic
meuium. Renowneu telematic aitist Roy Ascott oiganiseu T&%:"-14 5%6, a thiee
week long expeiimental computei confeiencing event in 198u between 7 locations
in the 0S anu 0K. This platfoim woulu infoim futuie piojects incluuing the Ais
Electionica-commissioneu T,& e+%4G "- =< Q+$%./ which featuieu aitists acioss the
woilu that contiibuteu via telephone anu computei netwoiks. This highly
ambitious pioject oiganiseu by Robeit Auiian was plagueu with technical pioblems
yet still fuitheieu the envelope as to what was possible.
6S
The effoits piimaiily
baseu aiounu the I.P. Shaip netwoik leu the path foi ARTB0X, a platfoim ueuicateu
foi aitists to expeiiment with netwoiks, gieatly ieuucing the cost of access to such
tools. ARTB0X (latei ARTEX) pioviueu email communication, event listings, anu text
collaboiation tools foi the coie gioup of 1u aitists that utiliseu the platfoim
iegulaily.
64
The platfoim was useu foi the successful collaboiative text baseu
aitwoik @1 K4"..$%& G$ T&L6& mentioneu pieviously.

61
The six primary members were Mark Trayle, Phil Stone, Scot Gresham-Lancaster,
John Bischoff, Chris Brown, and Tim Perkis. Ibid., 218.
62
Franziska Schroeder, Dramaturgy as a Model for Geographically Displaced
Collaborations: Views from Within and Views from Without 1, Contemporary
Music Review 28, no. 45 (2009): 3.
63
Ars Electronica82 / THE WORLD IN 24 HOURS, accessed March 31, 2014,
http://residence.aec.at/rax/24_HOURS/.
64
29
Satellite tiansmission iemaineu the piefeiieu platfoim foi telematic tiansfei
of peifoimances up until the late 199us, anu most notably foi Nam }une Paik's laige-
scale multimeuia piece M++G 3+%-"-# 3%) c%A&44 in 1984. An oue to ueoige 0iwell's
novel fiom 1948, the piece was intenueu "as a libeiatoiy anu multiuiiectional
alteinative to the thieat poseu by 'Big Biothei' suiveillance."
6S

While uata-baseu collaboiations such as the K41-&61%2 >&6A+%F pioject fiom
the 1986 venice Biennale,
66
anu moie playful expeiiments such as T&4&9,+-"? 5%:
e%&.64"-#
UR
fuitheieu expeiimentation with netwoik collaboiations, the biggest
shift in the telematic lanuscape was the intiouuction of the Inteinet2 ieseaich
pioject in 1996.
68
While the Woilu Wiue Web was alieauy coming to fiuition at this
stage, a consoitium of univeisity-baseu ieseaicheis that sought to auvance Inteinet
technology maue huge impiovements in netwoik speeu anu capacity.
69
While
Inteinet2 was iestiicteu to mostly univeisity campuses, the ueuicateu
infiastiuctuie was capable of the ieal-time tiansfei of uncompiesseu auuio. Foi the
lattei pait of the 199us, NIBI uata tiansfei platfoims such as >&6*1: anu 0&.0+?F&6
alloweu Inteinet baseu musical collaboiations, but it woulu not be until the new
millennium that the potential of Inteinet2 was hainesseu by musicians. In
Septembei 1999, ieseaicheis at Ncuill 0niveisity tiansmitteu a musical

65
66
Planetary Network - Venice Biennale 1986, accessed April 1, 2014,
http://alien.mur.at/rax/UBIQUA/.
67
Telephonic Arm-Wrestling V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, accessed
April 1, 2014, http://v2.nl/archive/works/telephonic-arm-wrestling.
68
For a detailed overview of pre-Internet2 telematic performances, the NMSAT
database Vol. 3+4+5 features thorough documentation of experiments and
concerts. http://locusonus.org/nmsat/
69
30
peifoimance fiom Nontieal to New Yoik using uncompiesseu multichannel auuio.
The iesult was an uninteiiupteu tiansmission with S seconus of latency.
7u
The
SounuWiie ieseaich initiative leu by Chiis Chafe at the Centei foi Computei
Reseaich in Nusic anu Acoustics at Stanfoiu 0niveisity began expeiimenting with
uniuiiectional ieal-time auuio tiansfei expeiiments the same yeai, soon moving to
localiseu netwoik expeiiments that achieveu bi-uiiectional tiansfei of auuio with
less than 1 seconu of uelay.
71
The ieseaich gioup exhibiteu theii woik at the SC2uuu
confeience in Ballas in Novembei 2uuu. Even aftei inuucing viitual netwoik
congestion, they achieveu two-channel bi-uiiectional tiansfei of auuio fiom Ballas
to Palo Alto with uelay times that gave one "the impiession of speaking oi singing
into a laige echo chambei."
72

Latency iefeis to the uelay time inuuceu by tiansmission uistance anu
netwoik iouting uelays between locations. While tuin-taking speech inteiaction can
be unaffecteu by uelays as laige as Suums
73
, ensemble music peifoimance which
ielies on synchionous ihythmic inteiaction iequiies a much shoitei uelay time.

70
Aoxiang Xu et al., Real-Time Streaming of Multichannel Audio Data over
Internet, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 48, no. 7/8 (July 1, 2000): 627
41.
71
Chris Chafe et al., A Simplified Approach to High Quality Music and Sound
over IP, in COST-G6 Conference on Digital Audio Effects (Citeseer, 2000), 159
64.
72
Ibid.; Greg Wood, i2-News - I2-NEWS: Real-Time CD Quality Internet Audio
Demonstration Wins SC2000 Award - Arc, accessed April 15, 2014,
https://lists.internet2.edu/sympa/arc/i2-news/2000-12/msg00000.html.
73
Jan Holub and Ondrej Tomiska, Delay Effect on Conversational Quality in
Telecommunication Networks: Do We Mind?, in Wireless Technology (Springer,
2009), 9198.

31
Stuuies by Chafe, Cceies anu uuievich have shown the thiesholu of "playability" to
be between SS anu 66ms.
74

In puisuit of uncompiesseu bi-uiiectional auuio tiansfei with minimal
latency, SounuWiie's effoits leu to the uevelopment of *1?FT%"9. The tuneable
application allows useis to balance quality anu speeu, anu has become the most
populai system foi telematic music conceits to this uay. The majoiity of telematic
peifoimances touay featuie }ackTiip hanuling auuio tiansfei, with sepaiate viueo
confeiencing applications such as Skype, uoogle Bangouts, anu Confeience XP
pioviuing less uetaileu visual feeuback to peifoimeis anu auuience membeis. Raw
viueo uata often iequiies fai moie banuwiuth than is commonly available thus
iequiiing compiession upon tiansfei as well as uecompiession upon playback.
vaiious compiession foimats (oi encoueis) inuuce uiffeiing but often substantial
amounts of latency. As accompanying viueo is often a seconuaiy concein foi
telematic music peifoimance, the platfoims listeu above aie among the most
commonly useu uespite theii "lossy" compiession techniques. This is laigely uue to
theii ieauily accessible inteifaces anu simplifieu technological iequiiements.
75

74
Chris Chafe, Juan-Pablo Cceres, and Michael Gurevich, Effect of Temporal
Separation on Synchronization in Rhythmic Performance, Perception 39, no. 7
(2010).
75
For a detailed analysis of online video transfer (albeit from the pre-Skype era) see
Dapeng Wu et al., Streaming Video over the Internet: Approaches and
Directions, Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Transactions on 11,
no. 3 (2001): 282300.
32
As cuiient ieseaich stiives to ieuuce the pioblematic issues of tempoial
sepaiation
76
uue to the inheient uelays of online uata tiansfei,
77
the potential foi
netwoikeu sounu installation ait, as a ielatively new ait foim, is iife foi exploiation.
In an inveision of NcLuhan's uesciiptions of netwoikeu meuia acting as an
outwaiu extension of the bouy, peifoimance aitist Stelaic attacheu electiical muscle
stimulants to his bouy which in tuin weie actuateu by web-baseu activity. "Pings,"
the inteinet equivalent to the sonai baseu uistance mechanism, tianslateu the
iounu-tiip tiansmission times fiom IP auuiesses accessing the website into
electiical impulses that causeu Stelaic's bouy to convulse.
78
Pings weie useu by
Chafe as a testing mechanism to juuge iounu tiip times of packets uuiing his
expeiiments into low-latency auuio tiansfei. By mapping the iounu tiip time to a
sonifieu pitch (the longei the ping, the lowei the pitch), Chafe piesenteu this
sonification of the net as a stanualone installation piece in 2uu1.
79
This physical
manifestation of web baseu activity goes beyonu web-baseu ait piojects such as
Neuhaus' 5$%1?4&
YZ
, anu the multituue of iecent BTNLS web-baseu aitwoiks that
utilise the moie poweiful giaphical anu auuio piocessing capabilities available

76
Chafe, Cceres, and Gurevich, Effect of Temporal Separation on
Synchronization in Rhythmic Performance.
77
Juan-Pablo Cceres and Chris Chafe, Jacktrip/Soundwire Meets Server Farm,
Computer Music Journal 34, no. 3 (2010): 2934.
78
Stelarc - Ping Body | Art and Electronic Media, accessed April 1, 2014,
http://www.artelectronicmedia.com/document/stelarc-ping-body.
79
Peter Traub, Sounding the Net: Recent Sonic Works for the Internet and
Computer Networks, Contemporary Music Review 24, no. 6 (2005): 45981.
80
Jason Freeman et al., Auracle: A Voice-Controlled, Networked Sound
Instrument, Organised Sound 10, no. 3 (2005): 221.
33
touay. Atau Tanaka's M4+N14 H6%"-# (2uu1) fuitheis this concept by connecting two
1Sm long steel cables via the Inteinet, wheie "the netwoik is its iesonating bouy."
81

VI: What Lies Ahead

Bue to incieases in commeicial banuwiuth piovisions anu impioveu netwoik
iouting technologies, one can expect low latency auuio anu viueo tiansfei to fiee
itself fiom the iestiictions of ueuicateu ieseaich netwoiks anu make its way into
homes anu venues. Issues such as the loss of tangible piesence via co-locateu
netwoik peifoimance can potentially be auuiesseu thiough the Inteinet becoming
moie physical, placing inteiactions within tangible objects iathei than behinu
scieens. Bevelopments in mobile technology have cieateu a new geneiation of
inteiactive ait woiks, wheie usei paiticipation neeu not iely on physical
inteiaction. Foi inteiactive ait piojects wheie gioup paiticipation exists thiough
inteiacting via SNS oi smaitphone applications, we aie ueveloping expectations
that these pocket sizeu poitable tools can have a gieat influence on the physical
woilu aiounu us. With context awaie technologies we aie not only becoming moie
connecteu to each othei, but also to oui enviionments. Installation ait anu
paiticulaily sounu installation bases its expeiience on the ielationship between the
ait object, its enviionment, anu those within that enviionment. As web technology
allows us to expeiience uistant events thiough scieens anu speakeis, one might

81
Atau Tanaka and Bert Bongers, Global String: A Musical Instrument for Hybrid
Space, in Proceedings: Cast01//Living in Mixed Realities, Fraunhofer Institut Fur
Medienkommunikation, 2001, 17781.
34
expect that futuie technologies will collapse the uistance between us anu uistant
enviionments anu objects, thus allowing us to have a physically piesent ielationship
with netwoikeu ait woiks.

35
Send a Message
I: Precursors and Origins of Send A Message

As McLuhan argued, electronic media act as an extended nervous system
making us sensitive on a global scale. Thus, forms of social space and interaction
necessarily expand, bringing us in touch with a wider variety of communities
value systems, pools of information and data, and interactions. These conditions
inspire a range of artistic initiatives based on utilizing the very features of network
society: sound and its location, or point of origin are broadcast through digital,
network media extending forms of sound installation and performance into global
dimensions.
-LaBelle, Background Noise
82

i: Previous Telematic Performance Work

During my time with the Digital Music Ensemble (DME), directed by Prof.
Stephen Rush in 2012, the ensemble focused on the practice of network
performance. The rehearsal process in telematic performances is often stunted by
intense setups due to time consuming technological requirements. DME sought to
improve upon the practice through intense collocated rehearsals before embarking

82
LaBelle, Background Noise, 249.
36
on multi-location performances. Rehearsals began in a traditional format with
everyone performing within the same space. Once satisfied with the quality of the
performance, we relocated into separate spaces around the building and rehearsed
via microphone and speaker connections, with long cable runs stretching along
corridors. Later, we used Internet connections, with performers still in different
spaces around the building in order to replicate performance conditions closer to
the final telematic performances.
Through this process, the benefits of local coordination and organization as
well as the relationships that developed between performers through daily contact
greatly enhanced the quality of performances. One of the more practical findings
arising from this process was the importance of spatialisation of sound sources
upon reproduction. Performers found the experience more rewarding when the
other locations were represented via separate speakers. For instance in a three-
location performance, two speakers would be placed on either side of the
physically performing musicians in each location. The separation allowed
physically present musicians to greater comprehend who was performing and be
able to respond more appropriately through their musical gestures.
Representing the geographical locations of the distant performers via the
placement of speakers in the space further aided in distinguishing the origins of the
distant performers. For example, performers that were geographically located
Northeast of the physical performers would be represented by placing their speaker
in that respective position in the room. However in multi-location setups, this was
37
only helpful if the geographical locations were such that there was no more than
one location being represented from a similar orientation.
83

Less tangible factors such as the relationships between and familiarity with
the musicality of the performers within the group also aided the quality of
performances. These factors are often lost in telematic performances as the distant
performers rarely meet face-to-face and cannot develop the familiarity that is
undoubtedly important in building a bond between musicians. Meditations through
the lens of Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening practices added an additional, more
experiential factor to the groups musicianship.

Throughout the rehearsal process, it became evident that particular types of
compositions and scores were more suitable for telematic performance than others.
Rhythmic synchronicity between disparate performers is an issue within telematic
performance. Beyond simply the time it takes for a sound to travel from instrument
to microphone - the digitization of a signal, its subsequent transfer over the network
and re-synthesis combine to introduce a substantial delay that can hinder musical
performance. Much in the same way a telephone call with a long delay can cause
a conversation to become difficult, a delay between musical performers becomes
particularly problematic. Studies have shown latency intervals as little as 55ms can

83
For a thorough discussion of the advantages of spatialisation for remote streams
in live telematics performance, see Michael Gurevich, Dnal Donohoe, and
Stphanie Bertet, Ambisonic Spatialization for Networked Music Performance,
Paper Presented at The 17th International Conference on Auditory Display,
Budapest, Hungary, 1.
38
have drastic consequences in the accuracy of rhythmic performance,
84
with
variable latency proving even more problematic.
85

In order to overcome this issue where our web-based experiments created
time delays of ~50ms and up, we found that any rhythmic content in a piece that
requires more than one performer should situate these performers in the same
geographic location. Various compositional considerations can be made for the
performance of telematic music such as the use of drones, slow paced melodies, as
well as embracing the overlapping gestures that may occur in rhythmic sections
due to latency.
86

Some of our performances used chance procedures to create related
structures between separately located ensembles, thus removing the need for
careful listening yet still creating a cohesive performance (such as within
performances of Cages Four6). Throughout the rehearsal process, it was our
finding that open-ended graphic scores were the best received under the condition
that listening remained a primary concern to all performers, more so than detailed
interpretation of the score. A reinterpretation of these practices was presented as a

84
Chafe, Cceres, and Gurevich, Effect of Temporal Separation on
Synchronization in Rhythmic Performance, 9.
85
Chris Chafe and Michael Gurevich, Network Time Delay and Ensemble
Accuracy: Effects of Latency, Asymmetry, in Audio Engineering Society
Convention 117 (Audio Engineering Society, 2004).
86
Sarah Weaver, Latency: Music Composition and Technology Solutions for
Perception of Synchrony in ResoNations 2010: An International Telematic Music
Concert for Peace (New York University, 2011).
39
performance between University of Michigan, and CCRMA, Stanford as part of the
NetMusic2013 Conference.
87

A later series of compositions by DME that utilised the Internet as the
performing medium led to the creation of iaMan by Corey Smith. The piece plays
with the anonymity of Internet users in social media contexts but also the deeply
personal confessions and interactions that many users share online. The piece
features Smith projected via Skype into the concert hall from his bedroom. As he
recites a monologue filled with personal information, confessions, and feelings -
keywords from his monologue are searched on Monitter, a website that shows real
time tweets containing pre-defined search terms. As the audience listens to Smiths
personal monologue, they see a stream of incoming tweets that share some of the
same terms. The tweets range from unsettling to trivial, yet no single tweet gains
precedence. For example during a performance, the search term I almost died led
to results that shared seemingly genuine near-death experiences blended amongst
flippant remarks and gossip. A separate performer tweets lines of text from the
monologue and occasionally those tweets appear onscreen via Monitter. As the
audience gains privileged access to Smiths inner thoughts as he is being beamed in
online, the placement of his tweets in the context of the widely varying incoming
stream leads one to question the highly personal, yet detached relationship that we
have with the Internet.

87
Symposium Program & Schedule | Net-Music 2013: The Internet as Creative
Resource in Music, accessed April 9, 2014,
http://netmusic2013.wordpress.com/symposium-program/.
40
Despite the multiplicity of mediatised layers between the physically present
performers, the one-to-one virtual connection between narrator and audience, as
well as the embedding of the narrator within a larger web of online users, I believe
the piece still achieves a sense of liveness
88
due to its strong narrative with which
the audience can willingly engage.

ii: Previous Installation Work

In April 2013, as part of an interaction design class, I was tasked with
creating an interactive installation piece. At the time, the Duderstadt Center Library
was filled with University of Michigan students enduring the stresses of final
examinations, and I was concerned at the dramatic change in behaviour amongst
them. Despite all of the students experiencing the same exam stresses in the same
environment, there was little communication and no channel for conscious
reflection or emotional exchange. As part of my installation piece, I knew I wanted
to counteract this trend in some way, and provide some platform, no matter how
minimal, that might invite people to share how they are feeling with each other in
order to ease this unsettling atmosphere.
In order for this idea to work, I took into consideration the behaviours of
those I was looking to attract to this installation. Given the busy schedules of the
students, the installation had to be approachable at any time for conveniences

88
Liveness in the sense described by Philip Auslander in Liveness: Performance in
a Mediatised Culture, p.2, London: Routledge
41
sake. As people were having difficulty sharing their emotions and experiences face-
to-face, I wanted to create an asynchronous exchange for messages between
students. For this, I drew inspiration from religious examples such as the Jewish
holy site, the Western Wall, and the Japanese Shinto prayer walls, where people
leave personal messages to a medium in order for them to be received elsewhere.
The practice of leaving written notes within the cracks of the Western Wall dates
back to the 1800s. Interestingly, it has evolved alongside technology, with fax
machines and email allowing people to send prayers or requests to the wall from
home.
89
An online service even allows one to type messages within the browser.
The messages are then printed and placed on the wall, with thousands printed in
very small font each day.
90

As messages to the Western Wall are written as expressions of prayer and
self-reflection, anonymity (particularly as is readily achieved via the Internet)
enables one to share personal confessions more comfortably, even with the
knowledge that many people may read them. Such an example includes the candid
website Post-secret, an ongoing community art project where people mail in their
secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.
91
The submissions displayed
online range from the humorous to disturbing. The artistic natures of these
submissions also add an additional expressive element alongside the messages.

89
Joyce Shira Starr, Faxes and Email to God: At the Western Wall of Jerusalem
(iUniverse, 1999).
90
Place a Note in the Wall, Aishcom, accessed April 3, 2014,
http://www.aish.com/w/note/46615192.html. Aish.com
91
PostSecret, accessed April 3, 2014, http://postsecret.com/.
42
The human voice is capable of expressing extremely nuanced emotional
cues more efficiently and effectively than any other communication mechanism. I
was inspired by Pain Pack, a project by online media artist Ze Frank, as it displays
this capability of the voice in the recordings he collected. By posting a telephone
number online, people were asked to submit messages describing emotional pain
to an answering machine.
92
Receiving permission to publish six of these messages,
the audio was then heavily edited into percussive samples and released as a sample
library for musicians and composers. For me, the sample pack is not the interesting
part of this project, but rather I find the emotional power of the raw unedited
recordings is something to behold. Even listening to submissions from languages
that I do not understand, the expressive qualities of the voices in these recordings
are capable of capturing an exceptional degree of emotion.
From these cues, I developed sketches based on the metaphor of an
answering machine. Answering machines provide situations (often exploited by
soap operas) where the caller can potentially offer more honest responses than if
they were aware of being currently listened to.

92
Pain Pack, Ze Frank: Pain Pack, accessed April 3, 2014,
http://www.zefrank.com/pain_pack.
43

!"#$%& <) 5- &1%42 .F&6?, C+% @&1S& 1 3&..1#&

In order to ensure people would be comfortable contributing to this public
answering machine, it was important that they understood how their voice
integrated into the installation. Users need to hear the body of messages that they
would be contributing toward before leaving their own message. Adhering to the
concept of bringing together peoples individual feelings as they go through similar
exam stresses and experiences, the playback of recorded messages are arranged to
overlap and blend between each other, so that multiple voices are heard at any one
time, yet their playback is staggered throughout time so that each message gains
slight precedence at some point within a minute long loop. 10 recorded messages
of up to 20 seconds can be recorded, with the oldest being erased as soon as a
person speaks into the mouthpiece. These recordings are played back on a
continuous loop.
While picking up a telephone from its holstered position would have
suggested dead-air, as well as a necessity to initiate the interaction, by presenting
the telephone off-the-hook and at head height, the messages are ever present.
44
Casually listening to a phone that is already off-the-hook is also perhaps a little less
unnerving than picking up a telephone from its base. Presenting the work publicly
and allowing users to only contribute if they wish removed the stigma of intrusion,
allowing listeners to gain access to others thoughts and feelings through honest
means.
93

For many participants this is where their interaction with the installation can
end. Simply listening to the thoughts of others and perhaps going back to the
installation at different times of the day or week to see how it may have changed is
no less enlightening an experience to be gained than those who choose to
contribute. A written prompt beside the installation encourages users to say Hello
into the mouthpiece. As soon as one chooses to do so, an envelope follower within
the Max/Msp code tuned to seek out amplitude envelopes similar to the human
voice, is exceeded. The other messages are then faded out and an operator asks
you to leave a message. Your voice is then recorded, stopping once you finish
speaking. Afterward it plays back your message through once, and then fades back
in the previous recordings while you can hear your message weaved into the mix.

93
The second exhibition of Leave a Message at the Work Gallery occurred during
increased press coverage of the NSA data gathering and spying scandals in
September 2013. Whereas the issue of privacy and storage of recordings as part of
this installation was not an issue during the first exhibition, it was a concern many
shared with me during the second exhibition. This may have also have had
considerable affects on the content of peoples interaction with the installation, as
there were fewer contributions of personal thoughts and feelings during the second
exhibition.
45

!"#$%& I) T,%&& .F&6?,&. C+% 9%+:96. 6+ N& 941?&G +- 6,& A144 N&."G& 1 6&4&9,+-&

Unbeknownst to me at the time of creating this installation, Dick Higgins
presented a similar concept at the 1969 Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
exhibition Art by Telephone. Higgins asked visitors to speak into a telephone,
adding their voices to an ever denser vocal collage.
94
I believe Higgins piece
and Leave a Message both draw from the curious desires of many of us to not just
listen to each others telephone conversations, but also attempt to read the minds,
feelings, and thoughts of those around us. While the intentions behind Leave a
Message may have been closer to social intervention than sound art, the aesthetics
of the piece match closely the work by Higgins 44 years previous.
Entitled Leave a Message, I planned from its conception to feature multiple
telephones, between 6 and 12, in order to ask different questions of its users and
attempt to draw out different emotions through various prompts. The first iteration
featured prompts spoken by the operator such as How are you feeling today? and

94
Shanken, Introduction to Telematic Embrace, 58.
46
What are you looking forward to the most today? which often led to the most
intriguing responses. More frivolous prompts such as Make your favourite sound,
Sing me a song, and What did you have for breakfast lightened to the tone
between telephones, and also tended to receive relatively tangential yet playful
replies.
The installation was placed in a common study area at the centre of the
Duderstadt library, where students study around the clock. During the day when
the space was busiest, users tended to listen more rather than contribute.
Contributions were also clearly affected by those that were self aware of those
around them during these hours. The most enlightening and meaningful messages
were often those left in the middle of the night. While many of the messages
recorded featured mentions of various exam stresses, more personal confessions
such as disdain for ones parents, anxiety toward moving city, or fear for a
neighbours dog that they suspected was being abused, provided insights that
perhaps one might not have shared with those around them in person.
95

The installation was also presented months later at the Work Gallery space
in Ann Arbor as part of the Test Kitchen exhibition curated by Ann Bartges.
96

Situated this time in a more traditional gallery space for a month, the installation
was not as successful as the exhibition in the library. This relationship between
people and their environment influenced the outcome of the installation greatly.

95
Video documentation of this installation is included in the multimedia appendix.
96
Exhibitions: Test Kitchen | Stamps School of Art & Design, accessed April 3,
2014, http://stamps.umich.edu/exhibitions/detail/test_kitchen.
47
The set of expectations one has going into an art gallery space removed the
spontaneous honesty that was possible upon encountering the installation within
an everyday environment like the study area of a library. While the opening
reception gathered a plethora of playful messages, the installation remained
relatively stagnant despite re-workings of more suitable prompts within the gallery
space.

iii: North American Music

In Spring 2013, the Digital Music Ensemble embarked upon a projected
entitled North American Music (N.A.M.). Rather than use a near-instant audio
transmission system such as JackTrip to represent performers from a distance, we
wanted to create a single large acoustic environment that would allow performers
to be represented from their geographically accurate locations by using the natural
speed of sound as the pace of transmission. While of course we would require the
assistance of technology in order to overcome the natural inverse square law of
acoustic decay, one could work out the distances between performance locations,
and divide it by the speed of sound to calculate the length of time it would take
sound to travel from one location to the other.
48
Sound is surprisingly slow when compared to the speeds at which modern
communications can achieve. At roughly 1,234km/h
97
sound is much slower than
Radio transmission (which travel at the speed of light, 1,079,252,762.46 km/h) and
fiber optic cable transmission (~31% less than the speed of light for silica glass
cables). From New York to San Francisco, sound in air would take 3 hours and 22
minutes to reach its destination. Similarly from Ann Arbor to Detroit, a sound
would take 2 minutes and 42 seconds. Just as our aural system uses time of arrival
delay between ears to assist with the localisation of sound sources, another
expanded form of representation of sources from distinct geographical locations
could be the reinsertion of the speed of sound in transmission. Through such a
system, each venue would have a unique listening experience based on the
conditions of their location on global scale.
The original plans for N.A.M. included a performance using this mechanism
with contacts in Buenos Aires, however a quick calculation resulted in a time delay
of over seven hours. This led to a downscaling of the project to 4 locations in the
United States; University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The time delays between the three locations
suggested the creation of a generative compositional structure. With an open score
featuring multiple cells composed by Carolina Heredia, each location would play
the opening gesture once at the strike of 7pm Eastern Time. Everyone would then
wait in silence until the opening gestures from the distant locations arrived to their
location, where they would listen, join in, and then develop a response. This

97
767 mph in dry air, at sea level, at 68 F or 20 C
49
response would then generate a further 2 responses from the other locations, as the
amount of musical content travelling between Michigan, New York, and Illinois
grows exponentially.

!"#$%& U) V&61"4. +C 6":& G&412. +S&%41"G +- 6,& S".$14".16"+- G&S&4+9&G N2 31?F4"- W-G&%G+A-
C+% >+%6, 5:&%"?1- 3$."?

A computer simulation of the generative score using the necessary time
delays led to interesting compositional results.
98
Inevitably the opening hour of the
concert would remain quite sparse and grow denser as the piece develops over the
course of four hours. Occasional moments of silence hours into the piece came
from the consequential timings of waiting for sound to arrive, only to be followed
by flurries of intense activity.

98
A list of timings and x60 scale audification of the timings are included in the
multimedia appendix.
50
Taking place on April 2
nd
, the performance saw Digital Music Ensemble
joined by experimental guitarist Elliot Sharp performing from Ann Arbor, members
of Pauline Oliveros Tintinnabulate Ensemble from Troy, New York, and students
from UIUC alongside veteran bassist Henry Grimes. Sound reinforcement at our
venue separated the locations of the other venues according their relative
geography.

In retrospect I personally believe there were too many issues working
against us for this to be a success. Primarily the number of musicians between all of
the sites, greater than eighteen, is hard to coordinate within a scored
improvisational setting without rehearsal (even if everyone were to be present in
the same location). This only reinforced our prior emphasis on the importance of
localised rehearsals prior to telematic performances. The last-minuteness of UIUCs
preparations due to their busy concert schedule that day also led to a less than
favourable mix coming from their location.
99

II: From Performance to Installation

Long after this concert, I still believed in concept behind the piece despite
the poor initial result. Early attempts in the concert for musicians to communicate

99
A rare respite to an overzealous synthesizer performer led to a 10 minute solo
from Henry Grimes, one of the more musically wonderful moments of the concert.
51
and interact with the incoming music before the structure loosened were intriguing
to me. In conversation with performers afterward, some felt that they paid closer
attention to the musical gestures they performed due to how their actions would be
heard not just by the local present audience, but also two other sets of audiences
and performers at the other locations, forty and sixty minutes later. It was as if their
gestures had more consequence due to their augmented acoustic longevity.

This interesting feedback drew comparisons of the pre-telecommunicative
era when letters posted though the mail were often written with far more care and
investment than perhaps emails are today. It is as if the length of time it takes to
deliver a message, amplifies its meaning and consequence. The benefits of modern
communications are clear to see; the widespread access and exchange of
information has permanently changed global society, yet instant messaging services
have had drastic consequences upon human interaction. We have quickly become
acclimatised to the direct and instant manner of communication via the Internet. As
VoIP services and data-based instant messaging platforms continue to replace
carrier-confined telephone and SMS communications, borders are further blurred,
as anyone with a device connected to the Internet can be contacted within
seconds. We have developed an expectation to be able to contact who ever we
want instantly at any time, shrinking the perceived physical distance between us.
Just as the predominantly used Mercator map projection has skewed our perception
of the layout of our planet, the abundant use of instant communications that
permeates our everyday lives has distorted our understanding of the scale of our
52
planet. I believe that using the speed of sound in the natural world as the pace of
audio communication leads one to reflect on the true scale of our planet.

Throughout my time at Michigan my focus has been split between studying
interaction design - particularly within installation art, and telematic performance. I
had always considered an attempt to fuse these aspects of my work, and examine
the nature of performance, collaboration, and communication across long
distances through a networked installation piece. The ideation of Send a Message
owes itself to many distinct factors that until a retrospective study I was never quite
able to verbalise. In its simplest form, my thesis installation draws from the
common issues that hinder the fantastic potential of telematic performance and
uses a reductive simplification of these issues as a starting point. While this artwork
is not an attempt to resolve these issues, it explores why these aspects are important
in the nature of long distance communication.
100
Telematic performances are
largely experimental, and the limitations of the medium need to be actively
explored through a variety of means in order to be understood as a tool that can
serve a later purpose in art making. This desire to use an interactive installation
piece to explore the practice of telematic music performance extends from the
sentiment expressed by Achim Wollshied in his book Resolving Interactions:

100
Socially, it is the accumulation of group pressures and irritations that prompt
invention and innovation as counter-irritants - McLuhan, Understanding Media,
46.
53
My hypothesis is that interactive art helps to establish a change of attitude,
which will in the future be of importance for all artistic pragmatics.
101

This is also not to say that Send a Messages presentation as a sound
installation lessens its relationship and relevancy toward musical performance. As
Ouzounian states;
Many important links exist between these traditions (sound installation art
and musical performance), but these connections are obscured within discourses
that continue to perpetuate artificial disciplinary boundaries.
102

In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon lists four levels of user interaction that
exist in interactive art and performance: Navigation, Participation, Conversation,
and Collaboration.
103
Navigation alludes to the presentation of options of pre-
defined choices to an audience, whereas participation enables audiences to
influence the work in dynamic ways. While these first two levels are readily
achievable within the context of performers interacting with each other over a
network, I believe conversation and collaboration require a level of engagement
that is often beyond the reach of most telematic performances. All four levels of
interaction exist in exchanges between performers in traditional format music

101
Achim Wollscheid, Resolving Interactions (Frankfurt: Selektion, 2003), n.d., 56.
Found in LaBelle, Background Noise, 243.
102
Ouzounian, Sound Art and Spatial Practices, 40.
103
Steve. Dixon, Digital Performance a History of New Media in Theater, Dance,
Performance Art, and Installation, Leonardo (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007),
563.
54
concerts, whereas within networked settings they are frequently lost as the concerts
can take the form of simultaneous yet disparate performances of the same piece.
In response, this installation reverts from music to speech as a simpler and
more accessible form of communication. I believe that looking back to speech
based conversation and collaboration will help us to understand the nature of
musical conversation and collaboration over long distances.
The choice of speech as the communication mechanism and previous
successes with the use of telephone handsets within installation settings influenced
my decision to use telephone handsets as the physical interactive device that
provides input and output to the installation.

By far the most intriguing aspect of telematic performance for musicians and
composers alike is the promise of direct connectivity between performers and
audiences regardless of geographic location. As argued by Schroeder and Rebelo,
seeking out seamless synchronous presence with disparate performers is a nave
approach to take given the inherent impediments within network communications.

104
Much like how the recording studio introduced a significant shift in attitudes to
performance, the network presents a similar shift in attitude and practice.
105

While I understandably respect experiments into telepresence as essential to
the furtherance of telematic performance for rehearsal purposes (for example), I
believe that many such telematic concerts overlook the necessity for different

104
Felipe Hickmann, Territories of Secrecy (Queens University Belfast, 2013), 96.
105
Franziska Schroeder and Pedro Rebelo, Sounding the Network: The Body as
Disturbant, Leonardo Electronic Almanac 16, no. 45 (2009).
55
performance and representation strategies than found within traditional
performance due to this dislocation. This is particularly evident in the regular use of
video conferencing tools in telematic concerts. Quite often the positioning of
cameras and projection screens present a coherent ensemble for the audience, yet
the performers are at a disadvantage, unable to exchange subtle cues and gestures
from an angle. To acknowledge that the disparate performers will never quite be
there and will always be a step removed, no matter how immersive the
technological communications setup can be, means to acknowledge the true
nature of performing over the network rather than performing multiple versions of
oneself simultaneously within various geographic locations. For example, since
2007, Rebelo, Schroeder, Renaud, and Gualda have suggested the use of avatars to
represent the disparate performers, from abstract geometric visualisations
106
to
virtual reality simulations such as within Second Life.
107

In Whispering Places, Michael Gurevich used the medium of an interactive
telematic installation to highlight the paradoxes of space, location, and direction
raised by real-time networked audio interaction, and exploit them in an artistic
manner.
108
The piece combined ambisonic spatialisation with gravitational force
algorithms according to the longitudinal and latitudinal co-ordinates of three
participating venues in Palo Alto, Belfast, and Paris. The piece required participants
to whisper (any speech was excluded through spectral tilt analysis), making it

106
Ibid., 5,6.
107
Pedro Rebelo, Disparate Bodies-A Three Way Network Performance, 2010.
108
Franziska Schroeder, SLTUDE: Performative Presence Rendered Across
Worlds (DRHA 2009 Conference, Sonic Arts Research Center, Belfast, 2009).
56
difficult to identify individual voices. Looped messages recorded from all locations
were superimposed on top of messages from the other locations. This virtual
conglomerate of acoustic spaces was then reproduced at each physical location,
thus creating a space where participants existed both physically and virtually
concurrently.
109

With Send a Message, I wanted to counteract the perhaps pervasive notion
that simultaneous telepresence is the most effective and aesthetically desirous form
of telematic representation for artistic purposes. Drawing from the concepts of
using networks to establish virtual environments such as within Public Supply and
Radio Net, as well as the reinsertion of geographic relevancy as seen in North
American Music, this installation strives to give credence to the physical location of
each participant with respect to the globe.
While the use of a telephone handset as the communication mechanism
within the installation suggests point-to-point communication rather than tapping
into an expanded acoustic environment, it remained the interface of choice for
many reasons. The telephone is the most widely recognised tool for distant voice
communication. From a practical point of view, users know how to interact with a
telephone handset without instructions. Simply placing the handset to you ear and
mouth is all that is required to enter the installation. If this were to be a microphone
and headset, I believe ones potential unfamiliarity with sound equipment or an

109
Gurevich, Donohoe, and Bertet, Ambisonic Spatialization for Networked Music
Performance, 6.
57
expectation to initiate interaction (such as pressing play) would have provided an
obstacle. By having the telephones hanging from the ceiling, they are already off-
the-hook, and I believe more inviting to users than if it were placed on a base.
We are conditioned through experience to expect another person to be on
the other end of the telephone. While the concept of transmission at the speed of
sound may be a complex concept to grasp, the use of telephone handsets suggests
that there are indeed other real people at the other end of the line. If this were a
microphone and handset, one may sooner expect recorded playback or
manipulation of ones voice. I liken the use of the telephone within the context of
this installation to a global party line, connecting people from distant places to the
same conversation.

III: Technical Details
Hardware

The majority of the physical components of this installation were developed
during the creation of Leave a Message in April 2013. A set of 10 black Cisco
telephone handsets was purchased, due to their easily interface-able 4 pin
connectors and use of electret microphones. Electret microphones replaced Carbon
microphones in telephone handset models developed after 1980. Much like
condenser microphones, electret microphones require power, albeit much less than
the 48 Volts phantom power provides. Telephone lines supply +48V to landline
58
telephones, however the power for the microphone is stepped down significantly.
Upon probing a connected landline telephone, the DC voltage going to the
microphone was seen to be ~0.7V with minimal current draw.

Drawing from the same mechanism as powering a small electret
microphone with a battery, the following circuit was used.

!"#$%& R) H?,&:16"? +C 6,& 6&4&9,+-& ,1-G.&6 ?+-S&%6&% ?"%?$"6) 5 ."-#4& 55 N166&%2 1?6. 1. 6,&
9+A&% .+$%?&)

The speaker signal needs no conditioning and can be passed straight
through at near line-level. The earliest prototype of this circuit did not use
connectors and hard wired the coiled telephone cable and audio cables to the
circuit board.

59

!"#$%& Y) 5- &1%42 6&4&9,+-& 1$G"+ ?+-S&%6&% 9%+6+629&

This design was far too susceptible to cable strain disconnecting the wires
from the circuit so a more robust iteration featured a telephone 4P4C connector
jack with two separate mono 1/8 audio sockets. Coupled with the use of a 2x3x1
plastic enclosure, the final units are sturdy, and survived postage across the
Atlantic.

!"#$%& X) T,& C"-14 1$G"+ ?+-S&%6&% $-"6

60

!"#$%& (Z) 5- +S&%S"&A +C ?+:9+-&-6. "- 6,& 9%+[&?6)

The final posted portions of the installation included a telephone handset,
the audio converter unit, 25ft coiled telephone cable, and 2 x 50ft 1/8 audio
cable.

Software

61
The audio processing for North American Music was built using JavaScript
and developed within the Processing IDE. The Beads library was used for audio
playback and recording.
110
Using RAM buffers for a delay line in this context was
unfeasible and unreliable. With an hour-long delay line, a stereo 44.1kHz, 16-bit
file would require over 600MB of RAM. As there would be multiple delay lines
going at once, this would reach the limits of the available 4GB of RAM a 32bit
program would be able to access. There would also have been no recovery
mechanism if there were an error within the RAM buffer. Because of this, Colin
Fulton developed a double buffering technique that recorded a series of 10-minute
audio files. These files would then be uploaded to the server with a timestamp and
location tag as the filename. The other computers could then download the
appropriate files based on timestamp calculations, and stitch the audio files back
together. Two recording buffers and two playback buffers with slight overlaps
crossfade between files to ensure smooth transitions between files.
The system worked well but there was one essential flaw that was not
rectified before the concert. Each time an audio file was written to the hard-drive,
the system would pause the playback of audio for up to three seconds until the file
write was complete. This caused jarring disruptions to the concert every 10
minutes.
This critical problem with the original code led me to recreate the software
within the graphical programming software MaxMsp that is dedicated to real-time

110
Whispering Places (2010) | Michael Gurevich, accessed April 15, 2014,
http://michaelgurevich.com/?page_id=55.
62
audio processing. While file-handling, folder structures, and simple loop iterations
are somewhat trickier to achieve in Max when compared to more traditional
computer programming languages, the reliable and stable DSP features of MaxMsp
removed the previous problems.

!"#$%& (() T,& C"-14 31L3.9 "-6&%C1?& C+% 6,& "-.614416"+-

The code has four main sections; system timing, delay calculations,
recording and playback.

Timing

In order to be capable of calculating accurate delay times between locations
according to the speed of sound, series of one-minute recordings are used. By
rounding up all of the calculations to the nearest minute, the code can attain
relatively accurate timings while not over-complicating timestamp codes for the
audio files.
63
The [date] object in Max is susceptible to drifting inaccurately. It checks the
computers system clock upon loading the patch, it then estimates values based on
MaxMsps scheduler from then on. In place of this the MXJ (Max Java External)
Now is used which consistently uses the system clock. In turn, modern operating
systems synchronise their system clocks to Network Time Protocol servers. A
timestamp is generated by combining the date, month and minutes elapsed since
midnight as one string of numbers. All of the locations must have their system time
set to UTC, in order to simplify the calculations and avoid issues with time-zones
and date-lines.

Delay Calculations

In preparation for this installation, a small MaxMsp patch was developed
allowing one to enter the longitudes and latitudes for two locations. The program
would then calculate the distance as-the-crow-flies between those too locations as
well as the number of minutes it would take a sound to travel between those
locations.

!"#$%& (=) V".61-?& 1-G H9&&G +C H+$-G V&412 \14?$416+%

64
This patch relies on a small amount of JavaScript code
111
that takes the
longitudes and latitudes and calculates the distance using the Haversine Formula:
c = 2.atan2(#a, #(1$a))
d = R.c

The Haversine Formula calculates the great circle distance across the surface of the
Earth between two points, ignoring the slight equatorial bulge of the planet as well
as any hills. It is accurate to within 0.5%. The resulting kilometres are then divided
by 20.4174, the speed of sound in kilometres per minute at sea level at 20 C in
dry air.

The final Max patch subtracts the resulting values from the current time of
day in minutes to create appropriate time-stamps for the playback mechanism, thus
delaying the playback according to the speed of sound delay from their respective
locations.

Recording

The recording section of the code uses two alternating buffers. The incoming
audio from the telephone is recorded to a 65 second buffer, which is then written
to disk with the appropriate time and location-stamped filename and directed to
the server folder. New recordings are made on the alternate buffer for every minute

111
Included in appendix
65
elapsed. The five additional seconds are necessary for the crossfade that will occur
upon playback between files.
The files are down-sampled to a quarter of the audio interfaces sample rate as they
are being recorded. On a 44.1kHz system this equates to 11.025kHz. As
telephones use a very narrow portion of the frequency band for speech (roughly
300 to 3500Hz), the placement of the Nyquist frequency at 5512.5Hz records all of
the necessary detail of the telephones microphone signal, while also minimising
the filesize, thus saving hard drive and web server space. With 8 locations in the
installation contributing audio with these parameters, the total space required for
one day of operation is roughly 15GB.

The cloud storage service Dropbox was chosen to act as the server
mechanism for this installation. Dropbox proved to be infallible in previous tests,
with options to utilise unrestricted upload and download bandwidth. The service
provides clear notifications of when files are uploaded or removed and the ease of
distribution of files amongst participants proved to be helpful. By placing the Max
patches in the shared Dropbox folder, I was capable of editing sub-patches and
have them updated in real-time to the other locations, as well as monitoring the
installation from any location.

Playback

66

!"#$%& (J) T,& 9412N1?F :&?,1-".: C+% +-& 4+?16"+-

A playback buffer is loaded with a file containing the appropriate time and
location stamp and played back at a quarter of the sample rate. Each minute
interval crossfades the output between the two playback buffers. Once the
playback of a file reaches 65 seconds and is then silent, the next file in the series
replaces it. If Max cannot find the appropriate file, the buffer is cleared so as to
prevent looped playback of the last available file. This may occur if the connection
from a location fails and the upload of files is prevented.

Visuals

67
From its conception I understood the necessity for a visual display to
accompany this piece. As part of North American Music, Macklin Underdown
developed a Processing sketch that mapped North America and displayed the
locations of the performing locations. As an amplitude threshold was exceeded at
any venue, a visualisation of a propagating soundwave emerged from that location
and travelled slowly outward so that the circumference would cross over a location
as soon as that sound was heard.

!"#$%& (<) ]"+4"-".6 1-G ?+:9+.&% \1%+4"-1 Q&%&G"1 9&%C+%:. "- C%+-6 +C 31?F4"- W-G&%G+A-P.
S".$14".16"+- 1. 91%6 +C >+%6, 5:&%"?1- 3$."?

While the visualisation functioned erratically during the concert, I believe it
provided a visual reference that explained the concept behind the piece in a simple
and elegant way. In order to replicate soundwaves propagating outward, an
azimuthal map projection from the point of origin simplifies the need to transform
the circles proportions as it grows. Initial sketches featured an azimuthal map
alongside a more traditional projection, as it was confusing to visually comprehend
where the other venues in the installation were located from the azimuthal
projection.
68

!"#$%& (I) ^-"6"14 :+?F_$9 +C 6,& S".$14".16"+- C+% H&-G 1 3&..1#&

Using node.js and socket.io, two javascript systems for real-time web
applications, Underdown constructed a website capable of receiving timing and
event information from any web client. Envelope followers track the presence of a
voice on the incoming signal at each location within the Max patch. If one speaks
into the telephone and the threshold is exceeded, a small amount of Ruby code
(using the jRuby Max external)
112
creates a http request with the namespace of the
location from where that person is speaking. The cloud based web development
platform Heroku
113
then receives the request via Node.js and animates a simple
pulse at that location on the map. The website also calculates relative timings of

112
The Beads Project - Realtime Audio for Java and Processing, accessed April 8,
2014, http://www.beadsproject.net/.
113
Adam Murray, Compusition, JRuby for Max, accessed April 13, 2014,
http://compusition.com/software/maxmsp/jruby_for_max.
69
delays between locations using the moment.js library
114
, and displays the times at
which a message will arrive at the other locations if one were to speak into the
telephone.
The open source D3.js library for data-driven documents features a set of
map projections, including an equidistant azimuthal projection.
115
The clarity of
this map removed the need for a separate, more traditional projection.

!"#$%& (U) 5- &1%42 .F&6?, +C 6,& S".$14".16"+-

114
Heroku | Cloud Application Platform, accessed April 13, 2014,
https://www.heroku.com/.
115
Moment.js | Parse, Validate, Manipulate, and Display Dates in Javascript.,
accessed April 13, 2014, http://momentjs.com/.
70

!"#$%& (R) T,& S".$14".16"+- C%+: `&4C1.6P. 9+"-6 +C S"&A

IV: The Collaborative Process

Just as telematic artworks attempt to connect distant participants, the
very process of creating that artwork requires distant collaborators. One needs
to embrace the chaos of distributing the ownership of a project and placing
faith that others will follow through. Telematic music performances often use
dedicated research networks with higher bandwidth and speed capabilities that
are usually limited to academic institutions. Due to this limitation,
collaborations between particular universities with access to the Internet2
network have been responsible for the majority of telematic performance
experimentation.
71
Artistic collaborations naturally extend from personal relationships, yet as
we attempt to create telematic artworks, we may not have access to collaborators
in distant locations with whom we already have personal relationships. The
necessity for internet based platforms to assist web-collaborations has led to the
creation of services such as collabfinder.com
116
however there are countless
virtues to meeting someone face-to-face before embarking on such a collaboration.
As it turned out, those that I had met face-to-face, even if it were only for a
few minutes, were far more likely to become involved in the final installation.
While I inevitably drew from previous relationships from my time in Northern
Ireland, I was at a loss to source collaborators that I knew would have an interest in
undertaking such a project. I also realised the importance of involving other
nationalities and languages as part of this installation, if it were to provide a
commentary on the nature of distant communication on a global scale.
117

In November 2013, I attended the Inst-Int conference in Minneapolis, a
gathering dedicated to the discussion of interactive installation. Despite the
majority of attendees work being based on the web, the conference emphasised
the necessity for people to meet in person to aid the potential for future
collaborations. As many of the attendees had a similarly strong interest in
interactive installations and the web, I targeted this as an opportunity to gain

116
Geo Projections mbostock/d3 Wiki GitHub, accessed April 13, 2014,
https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Geo-Projections.
117
The patterns of the senses that are extended in the various languages of men are
as varied as the styles of dress and art. Each mother tongue teaches its users a way
of seeing and feeling the world and of acting in the world that is quite unique.
McLuhan, Understanding Media, 80.
72
collaborators for this project. During a 10-minute pitch presentation, I explained
the basics of the installation and gave illustrations of how it would work. I made
sure to emphasise the opportunity for creative input for all collaborators in this
project. I believed that this invitation of creative agency within the project would
provide an appealing impetus to those that seek out new experimental art forms
and would in turn enhance the project with their collective expertise. Following
this presentation I received many responses from people wishing to host a
telephone and be involved in the project. From the dozen or so responses, seven
were firmly on board and enthusiastic about working on the project in the near
future. With an exchange of business cards, I sent a follow up email a week after
the conference giving more details about the project. As is the nature of email
communication, some previously enthusiastic responders chose not, or forgot to
reply. Others expressed their willingness to help, but also mentioned their lack of
physical resources and / or time to participate. In the end, three people I met at the
conference were involved in the final project. These three participants from
Portland, Boston, and Oslo, also became key collaborators in the project, as they
were the most engaged throughout the process.

In an attempt to attract more collaborators from outside of Europe and the
United States, I asked friends for contact details of people with an interest in sound
art that they may know around the world. I received plenty of emails and Skype
usernames, and many responses to speculative emails with descriptions of the
project. Needless to say, these calls for collaborators had the least success, with
73
many positive yet uncommitted replies. In one instance, an unfortunate decision
from the rectors office at the University of Zurich declared that non-university
related projects could not be hosted within their buildings, which lead them to
drop out in the last month. The only successful collaborator from this method was
Nota Tsekoura, a sound artist and educator involved in a sound art and architecture
research program called Sound Tectonics in Athens, Greece. Both Sound Tectonics
and Tsekouras interests overlapped with this project and resulted in an engaging
collaboration.
Many of the potential collaborators that did not participate were those with
whom I had more tenuous personal connections. They also happened to be those
that lived in more culturally and geographically distant locations such as Nairobi,
Astana, Kyoto, Istanbul and Mexico City.

The final list of collaborators;
Ben Purdy,
An interaction designer for Instrument, a Portland based digital creative agency.
Daniel Buckley,
Faculty at MassArt, the only publicly funded art school in the United States.
John DArcy,
A friend, sound artist and current PhD student at the Sonic Arts Research Center in
Belfast.
Olan Stephens and Michael Speers,
Friends and MMus Creative Practice students at Goldsmiths University in London.
74
Morten Marius Apenes,
A digital creative content producer for Netron, and
Grete rbu
Curator for Hydrogenfabrikken Kunsthall, a gallery space in Fredrikstad, Norway.
Cory Levinson,
A friend currently working for Soundcloud in Berlin.
Nota Tsekoura,
A member of Sound Tectonics in Athens.

The most difficult and time-consuming portion of this installation was the
logistical side of finding and organising the collaborators. After some initial
prefacing of the installation via email with each collaborator, I Skyped them
individually to discuss the installation in more detail. These Skype conversations
were by far the most effective means of communication as I could answer their
questions rapidly and give concise and clear details. I could also gauge their
interest in the project as well as understand the personality of the collaborator and
how that could determine the nature of our collaboration. While I already had
previous experience working with the collaborators in London and Belfast, and had
met all of the other collaborators in person before, Nota Tsekoura was the only
collaborator that I had not met in person. A quick yet highly productive and helpful
Skype conversation with her established a strong collaborative bond and placed my
trust in her as a pro-active collaborator. In retrospect I believe that if I had have co-
ordinated Skype sessions with those that were close to being involved based on
75
previous email correspondences, there would have been more likelihood of them
participating.
A primary concern of the collaborators was finding a suitable venue for the
telephones. Based on previous experience with Leave a Message I suggested
locating the phones in somewhat public locations rather than dedicated gallery
spaces. I described how the ideal location might be along the lines of public
atriums, cafs, libraries, or open workspaces. As a result the venues that
collaborators sourced were on the whole more atypical locations to host artworks,
but were ideal for the purposes of Send a Message.

When the final line-up of locations had been established I finalised the
publicity materials and posted the units. Apart from occasional questions and
suggestions from collaborators, each of them independently secured suitable
venues for the installation and made preparations for the piece. As the units were
being shipped, I provided Dropbox accounts for each of the collaborators that
contained the code and setup instructions. The setup instructions for the physical
assembly of the telephones included a guide on how to hang the telephone from
the ceiling but also suggested they install the telephones in any way they deemed
suitable for their location. In the end this resulted in slight variations in the physical
setup of the telephones in different venues. One such example was the installation
of a telephone in Glyph caf and Art Space, Portland. As Ben Purdy and the caf
owners deemed a projection or display to be unsuitable for their location, Purdy
created an Arduinobased interface that would illuminate LEDs based on messages
76
arriving from the various locations. Embedded into a solid maple block (fig. 18)
with textual information about the installation, Purdys contribution to his portion
of the installation is an example of how collaborators in this project had the
potential to express their personal creativity as well as improve upon the materials
that I had provided.

!"#$%& (Y) T,& 6&4&9,+-& ,+4.6&% G&."#-&G N2 `&- K$%G2

The installation opened informally with Ann Arbor and Boston going online
on April 8
th
, 2014. Within a week, all of the other locations joined the installation,
which remained active until April 30
th
.

77

Conclusions
Collaboration on the Web

The success of this installation depended heavily on finding collaborators
who would be wilfully engaged in the project throughout. By finding a common
interest group from music technologists, web designers, and interaction designers,
the project appealed to each individual due to the issues surrounding internet
presence and the nature of online communication that pervade each discipline.
Those who have interests in these fields also tend to be creative artistic
practitioners themselves. To further compound their interest and engagement with
hosting this installation, an invitation of creative agency allowed them to express
their personal creativity through the ways in which they exhibited their telephone.
Examples of this include Ben Purdys Arduino based LED notification mechanism,
an idea that was incorporated into a later iteration of the visualisations used at
every location. Collaborators in Fredrikstad and Athens also chose to create their
own poster artworks for the installation, expanding on the simple press materials I
supplied. In Belfast, the telephone was hung in the corner of a large white walled
hall. John DArcy saw this as an opportunity to creatively position the projector at
78
such an angle that he could display two separate visualisations, one for each wall.
By finding collaborators in the field of media arts, they each had prior experience
in audio hardware and software, greatly aiding the setup process for the
installation. Many of them also had no problem accessing not just the physical
hardware that I could not provide (such as a laptop that could be dedicated to the
project for a month), but also access to suitable venues.

!"#$%& (X) T,& `&4C1.6 6&4&9,+-& "-.614416"+-

While distributed authorship of a multi-location artwork can benefit from
the collective creativity of its participants, the sacrifice of individual control can
result in logistical difficulties. Simply co-ordinating this many distinct collaborators
(all of whom did not know each other apart from one pair) was a difficult task
alone. While I dedicated much of my past year to executing this project, I could
not expect the same level of dedication from the other collaborators. It was
unrealistic to expect immediate responses to instant messages or emails in such a
context, as each collaborator naturally had their own unrelated obligations and
79
concerns. The line-up of collaborators that I believed to have confirmed to host
telephones 6 months prior to the installation was drastically different to the line-up
of collaborators in the end. For many, the turning point was when I asked for postal
addresses to send the physical units. Up to this point, many of the contacts were
quick to reply and positive in tone. Upon this request, some of the contacts became
hesitant to respond, or disappeared entirely from view. It seems that once
preparations for the installation became a physical reality (i.e. actual components
in a box) rather than simply a concept for an idea that they liked, the necessity to
pro-actively seek out a venue became apparent to them. For many this step proved
too much of an obligation, and they left. There is a natural human tendency also to
leave less important things to the last minute. While this was not a concern for
those that were pro-actively involved in the project, the introduction of some
venues to the installation ended up being much later than planned due to a lack of
preparation.
In order to accommodate the varying levels of engagement from
collaborators, it was vital to create a passive mechanism within the code that
allowed venues to enter and exit the installation without disrupting the
installation as a whole. This turned out to be a huge advantage due to building
closures including extended Easter holidays. While ideally the piece would have
featured all venues running throughout the entire period of its installation, various
circumstances resulted in different groupings of locations being active at any one
time.
80
The experience of co-ordinating this installation has reinforced for me the
virtues of meeting other creative minds in person, and developing personal
relationships with others located in distant places at any available opportunity.
Despite how a greater proportion of social activity is occurring online, I believe we
are still reliant on face-to-face encounters in the real world for introductory
purposes, before the conveniences of telecommunications can assist in developing
a previously established relationship.

Reflections upon Send a Message

One of the primary goals of this installation was to encourage people to
ponder the nature of instant communication, and perhaps gain a deeper
understanding of their locus on a global scale. In this regard I believe the
installation was a success for those that dedicated time in their interactions with the
installation and were willing to invest into the conceptual aspect of the work. Once
participants realised that they were not going to receive an instantaneous response
due to the delay, many began to consider the locations of the other participants
through their actions and messages.
118
It can be a somewhat humbling and isolating
experience to speak and not know if you will be heard. This unintuitive inversion

118
A selection of recordings made of the installation from Ann Arbors earpiece
over the course of one day is included in multimedia appendix accompanying this
thesis.
81
of the telephone interface, which is normally perceived as a direct line to afar, only
enhanced the feeling of distance whilst the visual reference of the map suggested
that you were still connected to these locations despite not receiving an aural
response. For some, this violation of the expectations with the telephone interface
proved a step too far, with some recorded messages expressing frustration or
confusion surrounding a lack of a response.
In proposing this installation to collaborators, I mostly focused on the time-
based conceptual narrative as the appealing aspect of this work. However the most
enlightening experience that arose from this installation was simply the connection
of distant spaces. Whilst removing the delays and having the spaces directly
connected would have resulted in more playful and active interactions, I believe
the time-delays enhanced ones consideration of the distant spaces due to their
perceived distance. With all forms of telecommunications, the instantaneity of
communication can cause perceived distance to disappear. As established in
conversations with performers from North American Music, the perceived
significance of ones musical gestures was proportional to the time it would take for
them to arrive elsewhere. This phenomenon was also evident in Send a Message.
Once participants understood the delay in the system, their messages took a
different tone. They began to greater consider not just the locations of the other
telephones, but also their sense of place within the installation. Many cultural
references were made, as if they were sharing information about their area and
82
looking to learn more about others.
119
Much like the care with which mail was
written in the past, the introduction of a temporal resistance in this installation
accrued more conscientious discourse than is often found within modern instant
communication.

The presentation of the work as a public installation was beneficial in
attracting many participants but was also detrimental to the way in which the
public perhaps interpreted the concept. The use of telephones in this installation
were chosen due to prior experience in witnessing how people were willing to
engage with an off-the-hook telephone for reasons of curiosity and familiarity with
the interface.
120
While monitoring the progress of this installation, I had the luxury
of listening to the incoming feeds from around the globe via my headphones.
Through this playback mechanism I could clearly hear the ambiences of each
venue ebb and flow as the activity in individual locations varied across each day. I
could spend the morning listening to children running around a tiled floor of a
museum with Northern Irish accents. In the early afternoon it would turn into a mix
of ambient music coming from a reverberant space in Athens, with the occasional
comical guffaw from seemingly always-jovial Norwegians. Later in the day, the
ambience would shift to a steady stream of bean grinders and overlapping
conversations from a caf in Portland mixed with the shuffling of feet and shutting

119
Recordings of such messages are attached in the accompanying media for this
thesis.
120
See p.43-44
83
of doors in Boston. The delightful nature of these intermingling ambiences was lost
when one listened via the telephone interface.
Through using the telephone interface, I was connecting voices, but not the
environments within which these people exist. In my initial focus, the installation
attempted to greater represent participants physical geographies through
introducing the speed of sound as a time-based localisation mechanism. However
by using telephone handsets, which are tailored for the human voice, the
installation ignored the physical acoustic spaces of the venues. While the
telephone was successful in attracting many participants, I had inadvertently
sacrificed an essential component of the concept behind the work.

Through the previous work Leave a Message, I witnessed the effects of the
social environment upon the types of interactions users would have with such an
installation. Leave a Message used a set of 6 or more telephones prompting group
interaction. When interacting with the piece individually, users were conscious of
their surroundings with some of the more interesting messages left when there were
fewer people in their environment. When installed in the gallery space, Leave a
Message changed in tone entirely due to the shift in social conventions within that
space. In contrast, Send a Message only used a single telephone at each location.
This suggested that only one user could interact with the installation from each
location at any one time. I encouraged collaborators to place the telephones in
busy public areas in order to attract as many users as possible. However such
spaces led to users being particularly self-conscious due to the very public nature
84
of their actions. Compounded with the lack of instant response from the
telephones, the experience could be quite alienating for users, thus resulting in
fewer meaningful interactions. Some of the more enlightening interactions came
from groups approaching the telephone and taking turns in speaking and listening.
The confidence gained from being part of a group allowed people to engage with
the installation at a deeper level.
In response to this phenomenon, I feel there are two ways this installation
could have been improved. A telephone booth that demarcates a private social
space could have assisted in easing participants self-consciousness. However this
would also have placed a barrier of entry between the public and the artwork,
resulting in fewer users approaching the piece. An alternative would be to
encourage local group interaction. Providing an interface that engages multiple
people at one time, such as using a speaker rather than an earpiece could have
decreased the social apprehension associated with talking to yourself.

During the first few days of the installation, I was concerned that due to the
high level of conceptual engagement required, passers-by who expected immediate
gratification from their interaction with the installation would be disappointed. To
counteract this, I understood that I needed to include some mechanism that would
acknowledge users for going out of their way to interact with the piece. In early
plans for this installation, a receipt printer at each location would have produced a
list of times of arrival for the various locations after one spoke. I believe this system
would not only have provided an instantaneous and playful response, but would
85
have also reinforced the concept behind the piece. Due to the prohibitive costs and
complex nature of receipt printers, this idea never came to fruition. The visual
display used in the final version compensated somewhat for their loss.
From the outset, the visuals would respond to your voice via a pulsing dot
animation atop of your location. However there was no sonic recognition that the
system was even listening. The first change in the audio code was to insert a small
amount of the microphone feed into the earpiece. With this modification, once you
spoke into the telephone, you would your voice in real-time with the filtered effect
of the telephone.
Based on the recommendation from Ben Purdy, I later included an LED strip
on the underside of the display. The brightness of the LED strip was linked to the
amplitude of incoming messages, and also the volume of your voice as you spoke
into the telephone. Not only did this notify you of when a message is incoming, but
it also added another simple and playful interaction for casual participants in the
installation.

In retrospect I believe that the concept would have come across clearer and
have been more engaging if its presentation were more akin to a participatory
durational performance. By having people enter a space dedicated to the
installation, there is a higher expectation that one has a stronger conceptual
understanding behind the environment they are entering. I would estimate from
86
monitoring the installation that roughly two thirds of messages spoken in this
installation were greetings such as Hello, is anybody out there?
121

This is to be expected given the telephone interface, however the
visualisations and brief textual descriptions on screen were quite successful in
prompting users to think about how they might interact across such a medium. On
the first day, teenagers from Boston took turns to ask European telephones various
questions, only to exclaim afterward, I know you all wont hear this for hours but
let me know.
122
Others expressed their feelings of connectedness through the
phones despite there being no sound coming from the other ends. On numerous
counts, individuals verbalised math problems, attempting to calculate the amount
of time it would take to hear a reply, taking into account the likelihood of someone
hearing their message based on time-differences and even daylight savings. On
these counts, I personally believe that the installation successfully led users to
question the pace of communications that we are used to today, and how that
influences our interpretation of our place on the planet.

Send a Message as a Commentary on Telematic Performance.

121
Early in the installation I overheard someone ask Is there anybody in there?.
Whether this was an enlightened insight into the nature of existing within a virtual
framework provided by the infrastructure of the network, or simply a misplaced
preposition from a non-native English speaker, I will never know.
122
Questions such as Why do people in London eat snails?
87
This installation owes its origins to criticisms of telematic performances in
which performers attempt to achieve transparent telepresence between venues
despite the impediments of Internet communications including the loss of presence.
By using the speed of sound as the resistance of the medium (rather than the
degradative properties of internet transmission) this piece attempted to subvert the
notion that presence is only achievable through means of immersive representation
and immediacy in transmission. In this installation, the speed of sound presented
the other locations as unique and heightened the relevancy of their geography. This
encouraged participants to contemplate the differences between them and the
distant listeners and spaces. Thus, participants interactions resulted in not just a
more engaging narrative but also a palpable sense of presence. While performing
music via the Internet is time-sensitive by nature, I believe this installation
highlights the necessity for practitioners of telematic performance to understand
that presence can be achieved not solely through immersive and immediate
transmission, but through empathy for the distant venues and respect for the
separation that exists between locations.

Future Work

There is fantastic potential for telematics to transform performance,
installation art, and creative practice in general. As with most new technologies,
artworks must first explore the medium before it can mature into a tool that can be
88
used for future art making. This installation is just one small attempt to further
explore the capabilities of telematics and communications within an artistic format.
As an artist with access to the resources and infrastructure required to experiment
with telematics, I feel that I am personally charged to experiment within the
medium and potentially influence the artistic considerations of future practitioners.
While I have an aesthetic fondness for telephone handsets and admire their
ability to enact public engagement with interactive art-installations, I believe I will
attempt to use different interfaces that are better suited to connecting environments
and not just voices in future experiments into multi-location telematics. I wish to
further explore connecting physical spaces via telematics and also experiment with
tangible interfaces for live music performance that offer alternative modalities of
non-musical communication between distant performers.
As we continue experiments into telematics in performance and installation
art, I believe the importance of re-situating place to the forefront of our aesthetic
considerations will only enhance the potential of the medium. As occupying space
is the most fundamental proof of existence, we must discover ways in which we
can achieve the fantastic promises of telepresence without ignoring our corporeal
and environmental realities.

89
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Appendix

The CD that accompanies this thesis contains three folders, each containing media
relevant to individual projects.
These materials can also be found at:
http://conorbarry.me/sendamessagemathesis
Folder 1: North American Music

NAMTimingAudification.wav
An audification of the generative structure the time delays created in North
American Music. See page 49

NAM Sampler.wav
A short series of excerpts from North American Music.

Folder 2: Leave a Message

LeaveAMessageWorkGallery.mp3
Recordings from the Leave a Message installation from the Work Gallery
exhibition.

LeaveAMessageDuderstadt.mov
A video of the Leave a Message installation from the Duderstadt Center exhibition.
See page 46

Folder 3: Send a Message

Send a Message Code:
AnnArborExampleCode.maxpat is an example of the final code used in the
installation. It depends on the other files within this folder for some of its
functionality.

Distance Calculator is the tool used to calculate the distance and speed of sound
between two geographical coordinates. See page 63

Send a Message Media:
SendAMessage Examples from April 12
th
.mp3 contains recordings made on that
date of the Send a Message installation. See page 80

Press Materials folder contains various posters and press materials used for Send a
Message.

Send A Message - Conor Barry Media Arts MA

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