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 Listening: Expanded Presence in Telematic Space(s)
This research builds upon Van Nort’s 20 years of research-creation work and performance in telematic music, and seek to move beyond the prevailing concept of telematics as a new, instrumentalized medium with affordances to play with (e.g. with respect to latency), towards understanding the complex contingencies of acoustic space, place, technological mediation, the sonic-haptic spectrum, embodiment and new paradigms for composition and audience interaction that collectively determine a broader sense of presence at a distance.
Distributed Composition: Networked Music and Intersubjective Resonance
This research explores emergent forms, aesthetic experiences and senses of shared agency that are unique in a paradigm of networking musical signals, actions and intentions. This includes audience influence of performer actions, mutual influence of control/synthesis parameters in a “laptop orchestra” paradigm, and shared signal transformations that revolve around resonance of attention and intersubjective experiences of sound-making, inspired by Van Nort’s performance practice of live-transformation of fellow performers, first developed with the Triple Point trio and extended through work with the Electro-Acoustic Orchestra and small ensemble settings.