MUSICAL THOUGHT NETWORKED
Dante Tanzi
Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale
Dipartimento di informatica e Comunicazione
Universita degli Studi di Milano
Via Comelico 39/41
20135 Milano
+ 39 5031 6380
dante.tanzi@(unimi.it
ABSTRACT
The processes involved in the digitalisation of audiovisual knowledge call for a change of perspective. This
derives from diverse factors: the adaptation of perceptual
abilities required for using digital devices, the change in
social and cognitive profiles involved in computerhuman relations, and the operational dimension of time.
While networked technologies introduces a system of
proximity independent of distances in physical space, an
overlapping of communication channels in on-line
environments is accompanied by some uncertainty and
non-linearity. Consequently, within the intermedial,
interactive spaces of the net, the musical objects can be
processed through ways which destabilise their original
connotation. As for musical navigators, between
retracing contents, extracting connections and meanings,
and modifying musical features, they enjoy a sort of
hidden co-authorship. This paper describes how on-line
technologies are gradually modifying the relationships
between the authors, music and audiences, and inquires
whether the production of musical meaning can remain
unchanged in a distributed environment.
1. INTRODUCTION
The interpretation of information flows and the control of
structures constitutes the core and the communicative
specificity of music. Music, by nature, effects forms of
change within the intertwining of various narratives.
Musical experience habitually has to interpret a variety
of materials and styles, and cope with a communicative
environment pivoting on the control of time and musical
forms. But the presentation of musical contents is
usually linked to codified variations, through itineraries
starting from and flowing into particular dimensions of
social acceptance.
Present day digital technologies have produced a more
refined control of temporal structures, of timbre
dynamics and of spatial parameters. Just as the
stratification of time granularities used in contemporary
and electroacoustic music mirrored the collapse of linear
narrative in literature, the advent of hypertext and
decline of linearity reflected the weakening of the
subject-centred paradigm [1]. This explains why, on the
net, musical activities can evolve through the
coexistence of different subjectivities: relationships
between composers and their audiences are modified; the
communicative exchange may become more important
than the description of contents [12]; the cognitive
environment of navigable spaces proposes a different
frame for spatial and diachronic communication values
[9], since it presents different interaction paths every
time. Consequently, within the formation of musical
meanings, on-line communication proposes new
articulations that influence the existing relations between
producers and consumers.
2. PHENOMENOLOGY
In an on-line context, messages and their contents are
jeopardised by the often unpredictable effects of latency
[2]. Despite the attempts to correct [16] or use it as an
aesthetic ingredient [4], latency still creates difficulty in
the management of interactive sessions in a multichannelled environment. Hence, on a global scale the
reception of musical messages differs with the users'
localisation. Besides, the mobile environments of
cyberspace may lead communication away from a
sequential and linear style: the same cyber-scenario can
be accessed, changed and represented many times, and
the flow of subjective time has to cope with decisions
already made. But the overlapping of diverse temporal
frames may produce dissonance in cognitive paths, and
also in strictly musical relationships. All these facts
influence subjective inclinations in reconstructing or deconstructing the framework of sonorous events.
Besides, in on-line musical communication, identity and
authorship become uncertain. So, the hypotheses
listeners come up against are no longer centred on the
idea of a subject and linear discourse. Not by chance,
well-known projects like Brain Opera and Cathedral
emphasised on-line experience based on multiple-source
listening sessions, where the musical results may not be
ascribable either to a single temporal chain or to one
author alone, although identifiable as such.
3. RE-TUNING MUSICAL AWARENESS
On-line musical awareness can be conceived of as a
condition based on an encounter between a plurality of
individual times, sound environments and listening
situations. In many cases, on-line interactive sonorous
environments are shared experiences of listening and
production; listeners can receive musical input and pass it
on to a sociality composed of endless subjective profiles.
