[ISEA2011] Panel: Jason Free­man – Real-time No­ta­tion, Text-based Col­lab­o­ra­tion, and Lap­top En­sem­bles

Panel Statement

Panel:  Chasing Ghosts: Reactive Notation and Extreme Sight Reading

For me, dy­nam­i­cally-gen­er­ated music no­ta­tion is a pow­er­ful mech­a­nism for con­nect­ing peo­ple to each other through in­ter­ac­tive music sys­tems. Much of my artis­tic work is con­cerned with ex­plor­ing new re­la­tion­ships among com­posers, per­form­ers, and lis­ten­ers (often blur­ring those cat­e­gories be­yond recog­ni­tion). Over the last six years, I’ve in­cor­po­rated dy­namic music no­ta­tion into my com­po­si­tional prac­tice in three ways. In live per­for­mance, I use real-time no­ta­tion to link the cre­ative ac­tiv­i­ties of au­di­ence mem­bers to the music per­formed by in­stru­men­tal mu­si­cians in real time, cre­at­ing a con­tin­u­ous feed­back loop link­ing per­form­ers and au­di­ence mem­bers through­out the per­for­mance. On the In­ter­net, I have use dy­nam­i­cally-gen­er­ated scores as a way to in­cor­po­rate the ideas of web-site vis­i­tors into fu­ture con­cert per­for­mances of works. And with lap­top or­ches­tras, I have used real-time no­ta­tion to link the ac­tiv­i­ties of im­pro­vis­ing lap­top mu­si­cians to the music played by in­stru­men­tal mu­si­cians and to share this process with the au­di­ence. I bring con­sid­er­able ex­per­tise to the panel in terms of de­sign chal­lenges and po­ten­tial so­lu­tions, tech­ni­cal plat­forms and im­ple­men­ta­tions of real-time no­ta­tion and aes­thetic and his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tives on its use.

  • Jason Free­man‘s works break down con­ven­tional bar­ri­ers be­tween com­posers, per­form­ers, and lis­ten­ers, using cut­ting-edge tech­nol­ogy and un­con­ven­tional no­ta­tion to turn au­di­ences and mu­si­cians into com­po­si­tional col­lab­o­ra­tors. His music has been per­formed by groups such as the Amer­i­can Com­posers Or­ches­tra and the Rova Sax­o­phone Quar­tet and fea­tured in the New York Times and on Na­tional Pub­lic Radio. Free­man stud­ied at Yale Uni­ver­sity and Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity. He is cur­rently an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in the School of Music at Geor­gia Tech in At­lanta.