Electroacoustic and Computer Music Timelines


Paolo Zavagna Francesco Peccolo Riccardo Sellan

Conservatorio “B. Marcello” Conservatorio “B. Marcello” Conservatorio “B. Marcello”

Venezia Venezia Venezia
paolo@zavagna.it francescopeccolo96@gmail.com riccardo.sellan@hotmail.it

ABSTRACT 2. FIRST LOOK

Electroacoustic [4] and Computer Music [3] timelines
are projects created by Paolo Zavagna in collaboration
with the students from Conservatoires of Venezia and
Padova (Italy). Timelines are organized by events, bio-
graphies, technologies and other relevant topics about
electroacoustic and computer music, each one viewable
with additional information. The project is totally open-
source and uses the SIMILE widget (MIT) [1] that
adapts to the mostly-used browsers.
Time flux is disposed horizontally with the latest year in
the right side. Under the main timeline there is a scroll
menu with a larger time window that shows density of
events in a several amount of decades; the main time
window is about eight years (it depends by the monitor
resolution). Events are distinguished by colors and
symbols described in a key at the bottom of the page.

Figure 2. Time and key visualization.

3. SOURCES OF INFORMATION
All sources of information are listed in a bibliographic
file – periodically updated and both in pdf and bib for-
mat – that you can download from the websites. As you
can see in the following example each record, in JSON
format [2], has a field for the “source” of the informa-
tion.
Figure 1. Overall view of the website.
{’start’: ’1996TZ’,
1. INTRODUCTION ’title’: ’<i>Me-Oh</i>’,
’description’: "by Shlomo Dubnov,
The purpose is to create a tool for researchers, students composition for Voice, ensemble and
and anyone who’s interested in electronic and computer live electronics, commissioned by the
music history and discoveries; another purpose is to Tarshish Ensemble, performed at the
popularize the field of electronic and computer music. Jerusalem Festival, 1996.",
Timelines include historical events since the end of XIX ’caption’: "Shlomo Dubnov",
century. Electroacoustic Music timeline includes a pe- ’icon’: "green-circle.png",
riod approximately before the 70’s while Computer ’source’: "G. Fronzi, Electrosound,
Music covers the following years. Information is divi- 2013,
ded into two different timelines for better consultation. p.152”},

Copyright: © 2018 Paolo Zavagna et al. This is an open-access arti-
cle distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and
source are credited.
4. APPROACH
4.1. Choosing timelines
Timelines include historical events since the end of XIX
century. Electroacoustic Music timeline includes a time
approximately before the 70’s and events and people
more involved in electroacoustic ‘analog’ music pro-
duction while Computer Music cover the years starting
from the late 50’s and musical production by means of
digital or mixed analog plus digital systems.
4.1.1. Moving in the timeline
The are several ways to consult timelines. The first
method is to drag the main bar to the left or right for a
fine shift; to the other side it is possible to do the same
action to the menu for a larger shift.
As well as the drag method moving through the years
can be done by double-clicking on the left or on the
right side of timelines. A double-click on the main
timeline will produce a closer movement while double-
clicking on the menu bar cause a larger movement.
Another method is to scroll the mouse wheel to do a
precise shift; changing the direction of the scroll can be
used to move through different time directions.
The last method is to use arrow keys, up and left
make the older events viewable while the down and
right show earlier ones.
4.2. Moving mouse
By moving the mouse on a topic, basic information can
be seen about it.
Figure 3. Pop-up hint with primary information.
4.3. Select an event
To select an event it’s enough to click on the symbol or
on the linked label; doing this operation, a pop-up win-
dow will appear. This window shows some essential
informations.
4.4. Reading information
The pop-up window of each event shows brief descrip-
tions, images and precise date if it’s know. Most of
them are linked with external websites that provide
more specific details or multimedia contents.
Figure 4. Pop-up window with specific information.
5. KEY
The key is located at the bottom of the web page and
illustrates the different kind of topics.
5.1. People
Brief biographies regarding composers, engineers, in-
ventors and others are marked with blue text for the
name.
5.1.1.Birth
The date of birth of a composer and relevant personali-
ties is indicated by a “b.” to the left of the linked name.
5.1.2.Death
The date of death of a composer and relevant personali-
ties is indicated by a cross to the left of the linked name.
5.2. Compositions and works
Compositions and other relevant musical works are
indicated with green dot to the left of the linked work.
5.3. Articles or books
Basic articles and books on the field of Electroacoustic
and computer music are indicated by green text and
blue dot to the left of linked label.
5.4. Musical instruments
Electronic, electroacoustic, digital instruments are indi-
cated by grey text and dot to the left of the linked in-
strument.
5.5. Patents
Patents are marked by red dot to the left and red text.
The ‘duration’ of the patent, marked by a red line, start
when the patent is filed and stop when is patented.
5.6. Events
Relevant events like concerts, meetings, and founda-
tions are indicated by a blue dot to the left of the linked
event. The duration of the event is marked by a light
blue line.
6. CONTRIBUTE
6.1. Creative Commons
The whole project is licensed with a Creative Commons
license with some right reserved: the paternity has to be
always recognized, timelines can be used without com-
mercial intents, the resulting materials linked to the
project must have the same license.
6.2. Active participation
Electroacoustic and Computer Music timelines are cre-
ated with SIMILE timeline widget developed and pow-
ered by MIT [1]. Timelines can be edited with JSON
code [2] to create and modify events and other struc-
tures. The work is in progress and people are invited to
report misprints, errors, omissions to the authors.
6.3. Future updates
The possible future updates and improvements will in-
clude a search engine to make consultation easier with
keywords and tag. Also, the timeline time window can
be changed. Anyone can access the open-source code
and propose improvements.
7. REFERENCES