Abstract (Long paper)
Keywords: Mobile Apps, Networked Audio, Crowd-Sourced Performance, Granular Synthesis, Algorithmic Systems, Generative Music, Multichannel Sound, Greek Poetry, Microtonality, iOS, Web Audio API.
“The Tomb of the Grammarian Lysias” is a setting of a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy for voice and audience members’ mobile devices, composed by Ben Houge, based on software developed by Ben Houge and Javier Sánchez. During a performance of the work, a vocal soloist sings the poem in Greek, recording fragments of his or her voice using a custom application; these recordings are distributed wirelessly to the mobile devices of audience members for further processing and deployment, providing the crowd-distributed accompaniment to the soloist, with no other sound reinforcement required. The result is a uniquely portable and scalable performance environment in which the audience enables the work without directly interacting with it, representing an underexplored realm of app-based music performance. This paper presents an overview of the work’s genesis and antecedents, a description of the technology developed to enable the performance, and a discussion of its unique aspects and aesthetic ramifications. In closing we share some of the challenges related to presenting a piece that involves audience members’ mobile devices, including a comparison of the work’s two incarnations: as a native iOS app and as a web app using the Web Audio API.
- Ben Houge has been developing audio for video games since 1996, including seven years at computer game pioneer Sierra in Seattle (USA) and four years at Ubisoft in Shanghai (China). Career highlights include his acclaimed string quartet score for Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (2001) and the innovative cellbased music deployment system he designed for Tom Clancy’s EndWar (2008). From 2004 to 2010, Ben lived in China, where he was active in the experimental sound scene. Previously he contributed Seattle’s new music community as a founding member of the Stranger Genius Award-winning Seattle School collective. He has recently produced a series of “food operas,” using video game techniques to score the indeterminate events of a fivecourse meal. Ben holds music degrees from St. Olaf College and the University of Washington and currently teaches in the Music Production, Technology, and Innovation department at Berklee College of Music’s new campus in Valencia, Spain.
- Javier Sánchez has been developing iOS apps since 2009. He is co-founder at Xculpture and Lingualia and has been involved in the development of iOS apps including Letsbonus, DressApp, Xculpture, iLoowi, Match My Music, and Multituch Me. From 2008 to 2011, Sánchez was a visiting scholar at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, working at the Stanford Intermedia Performance Lab. He received his MS (1995) and PhD (2006) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from TECNUN, University of Navarra, Spain, where he focused on computational methods for the generation, manipulation and representation of tensile membrane structures in real time. His current work involves the relationship between art and technology and human computer interfaces, especially as related to industrial design, tensile membrane structures, and music. Sánchez current teaches app development in the Music Production, Technology, and Innovation department at Berklee College of Music’s Valencia campus, Spain.
Full text (PDF) p. 615-621