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Computer Music Journal 25.1 (2001) 95



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Book Review

Synthèse 97 and Synthèse 98


L'Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges: Synthèse 97 and Synthèse 98. CD-ROMs, 1998/1999; Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique--Bourges, Place André Malraux, BP 39, 18001 Bourges Cedex, France; telephone (+33) 2-48-20-41-87; fax (+33) 2-48-20-45-51; electronic mail ime-bourges@gmeb.fr; World Wide Web www.gmeb.fr

The Synthèse 97 and Synthèse 98 CD-ROMs are summaries of the events from the Festival International des Musiques et Créations Électroniques. Each contains good information, but the contents may not be easy to access. I found two obstacles to using these discs. First, getting into the material is too tricky. There is no executable file that runs the program. To gain access to the disc, the user must open the index.htm file and then click on the image that appears. That brings up another page of information with a link at the bottom to get to the information on the disc. The second obstacle is that the CD-ROMs are entirely in French, so if you are not familiar with that language you will have trouble knowing what you are seeing.

Once the user is able to get past the opening screens, the information is easy to find (provided you can navigate the French). In addition to schedules, there are videos and photographs of some of the sessions as well as texts for some of the presentations from the festival that year. Based on what they have attempted to do on the CD-ROMs, a website might have been a better choice for distribution (readers may want to check the online information available from the Bourges site at www.gmeb.fr).

The Synthèse 97 CD-ROM runs only on a PowerMac. The Synthèse 98 disc runs on either a PowerMac or a Pentium 75 MHz PC.

Reviewed by Eric Strother
Lexington, Kentucky, USA

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