Global Visual Music Jam Project

Based on a paper presented at "Artists in Industry and the Academy," a special section of the 92nd Annual Conference of the College Art Association, Seattle, WA, 18-21 February 2004.

In 1972, as an architecture student and improvising violinist, I imagined a global visual-music jam, enabling performance in 3D spaces in collaboration with musicians and artists from many cultures over great distances. I proposed, to a number of my professors and later to collaborators with whom I worked, using satellite communications, computers, video and electroacoustic musical instruments. In the 1990s, I again set out to realize this vision. By then, Miller Puckette had created Max/MSP and Rand Steiger had composed a series of multimedia works, including music, to accompany my computer animation.

In 1996 we began working together on real-time interactions between media using computers. The availability of increased audio and video processing by networked computers offered a greater range and depth of interactions than ever before. We formed the Global Visual Music (GVM) project, and a series of software developments, live performances and gallery installations followed.

Our primary concern was to achieve an abstraction of connection; instead of making direct correspondences between pitches and colors, for instance, the aim was to make connections that were clearly perceptible without being didactic or machine-like. Second, the Internet explosion was beginning, and it seemed timely to explore the use of the Internet in artworks: not in obvious ways, but more abstractly. Rather than present direct visualizations of sounds or sonifications of visual elements, GVM sought to connect different sites, as well as elements within a site, in a more semantic way.

Educated respectively as a mathematician, a composer and a visual artist, the three of us also had some experience in one another's domains. Just as digital systems foster crossover between media, the collaborators interacted fluidly and creatively. We explored a wide range of concepts and techniques and investigated sensory connections through physical action, moving images and improvised music. Synthetic thinking by each of the researchers and between them became a central focus, and thus software development and artistic creation were accelerated, inspiring new ideas and directions.

Steiger composed structures for the improvising musicians, produced the live performances, and together with me programmed scenarios for sound/image interaction. I created the text, video and computer animation. Puckette wrote real-time audio analysis software needed to generate the desired semantic control streams (Fig. 1 and Color Plate G No. 1). Later, Mark Danks came to play a central role as a programmer extending Puckette's software to access OpenGL, in part as a response to the ideas of GVM.

This collaboration has had an impact on the subsequent careers of the three main collaborators:

• • Puckette's Pd software, which was ported from IRIX to the PC platform for GVM, saw its user base explode, leading recently to the first Pd conference in Graz, Austria [1].

• • I have created large, innovative installations, including Sanctuary and Morocco Memory II [2].

• • Steiger continues to compose works with real-time signal processing, notably the IRCAM-produced composition Ecosphere [3].

The positive impact on the lives and careers of the three main participants stems mostly perhaps from openness, shared vision and mutual respect. The three of us each had (and maintains) a strong interest in the others' domains, and this was essential to the success of the collaboration.

Fig. 1.

Miller Puckette, Vibeke Sorensen and Rand Steiger, Lemma 2, networked multimedia performance, 1999. Anthony Davis, midi-piano; Steven Schick, drumset.

Photo © Vibeke Sorensen