Distributed Performance: Networked Practices and Topologies of Attention


This area explores the experience of distributed creativity in two distinct contexts: telematic performances that are geographically dispersed and “network music” in which performative actions mutually influence one another – an explicit network topology of performance actions – where performers and audience may or may not be co-located.

This work seeks to further our understanding of what it means to establish a “listening presence” in a complex aggregate of many sonic spaces, to come to understand distant voices and distant spaces through distinct, principled approaches to listening, sounding and mutual influence, the role of the non-visual senses in this process and how technological mediation can enhance and productively play with this rather than act as merely an ostensible “portal” for performance connection. Further distinction between the two clusters of projects in this area is articulated in Van Nort’s 2016 Leonardo Music Journal article, “Distributed Listening in Electroacoustic Music”.

This research has been supported by Van Nort’s SSHRC Partnership Engage grant “Connecting Communities Through Telematic Music”.  Work in this area centres around two main research projects:

Distributed Composition: Networked Music and Intersubjective Resonance

Distributed Listening: Expanded Presence in Telematic Space(s)