Of interest here is music and moving image in the new medium of Internet2, which has become a platform for sharing images and music across distances in a collaborative exchange of live and processed images, video, and sound. Internet2 productions are characterized by images, video and sound that are exchanged in real-time using broadband connections transmitting and receiving multiple channels of video and audio as a multi-site simultaneous performance. Internet2 performances exist as a new medium that has yet to be fully defined and articulated.
Internet2 collaborative performances emerged during 2000 as unique investigations of artistic expression, serving as an opportunity to explore the technical limits of this new medium, while developing aesthetic practices borrowed from features of video concerts and practices, and live television. Many of these early productions focused on music in relationship to the moving image, but were generally functioning on the assumption that the only difference in musical treatment was that these concerts were delivered through Internet2 and that the primary considerations had to do with the technical problems that had to be solved while nothing new had been introduced to challenge the aesthetic premise of such productions. However the aesthetic features of Intenet2 productions suggest that this is a new artistic medium, and the role of music in the context of interactive performances in this new medium has yet to be fully explored and researched.
The most obvious feature of Internet2 performances between distant locations is the latency that occurs because of time lag between the sites, the reception of the sound and image between sites is not instantaneous. It takes time for the signal to be transmitted and received and latency can vary during connections. For sites that intend to incorporate the sounds and images of each other as part of the performance material, ignoring latency or syncing with one site is not satisfactory. Latency is a real-time factor that should be included aesthetically as part of the performance.
Several works were created as a collaboration between University of California Irvine and New York University. including Songs of Sorrow and Songs of Hope, performed in response to the terrorist attack of 9/11 on the World Trade Center. It was during the preparation and performance of this work that Internet2 was perceived by the performers to be an emerging new medium for artistic expression.
Visual and sonic latency adds to the texture of the artistic work and several approaches to structure and performance provide a rich array of possibilities. The Internet2 collaborative process shapes a powerful new medium incorporating moving images and sound in ways that can be understood as essentially different from the inclusion or addition of sound to the moving image of film. Of further interest is to understand how the layering of images, processed and live, changes the perception of the whole and shapes the musical work, especially when the music may be a combination of scored and improvised sounds. Latency furthers the richness of the texture. How does this latency impact on the creative process visually, sonically, and kinesthetically?
Web Arts Collaborative 