July 10, 1998
Perspective: Turning Cybercasts From Music Promotion to Art Form
By John Maxwell Hobbs
With
the opening of the latest incarnation of the Intel New York Music
Festival, a great deal of attention is being paid to the novelty -- and
commercial and artistic potential-- of cybercasting. But "Cybercasting"
itself is nothing new: Around the turn of the last century, an opera being performed in Philadelphia was transmitted via telephone to New York. In 1927, live images of Herbert Hoover were sent by telephone from Washington, D.C., to New York City. In 1933, a concert in Philadelphia was transmitted in stereo over phone lines to Washington, D.C. In 1964, the first transcontinental Picturephone telephone call was made. In 1972, the theatre group, Mabou Mines presented a multi-site performance via CB radio. In
1974, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz presented "Hole in Space" - a
satellite hookup that connected life-size video projections in a window
on the plaza at Lincoln Center in New York and a window looking out on
to the street at The Broadway department store in Los Angeles.
Microphones and speakers at both locations allowed people in the two
cities to have "face to face" real-time communication. In
1986, Pauline Oliveros used a massive ham radio setup to send the sound
of her accordion to the moon and back. She repeated this ten years
later and broadcast the results over the Internet. In
1995, Alvin Lucier's brain waves were digitized and transmitted from
The Kitchen in New York, to the Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica, where
they were used to play percussion instruments. In
1995, I transmitted the voices of David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir,
performing at The Kitchen in New York, to Le Thoronet Abbey in France,
and brought the reverberation of the Abbey back to New York in real
time, essentially transporting an acoustic space. 1995,
Cathy Weiss performed improv dance from The Kitchen in New York with a
video artist in Prague via CUSeeMe and a DJ in Santa Monica via ISDN. In
1996, I began a series of Global Drumming Circles using a combination
of analog and digital connections to connect drummers around the world
and allow them to play together. In 1997, Res Rocket Surfer was launched, allowing musicians to have jam sessions over the Internet. So, what is new about cybercasting? In
the one-way transmission world, for the first time, thanks to the
nature of the Internet, narrowcasting has become affordable. Up
until now, it has been incredibly expensive to transmit time-sensitive
media like audio or video to more than one person. So it only made
economic sense to transmit that media to a mass audience simultaneously
in order to recoup the costs. The Internet does not currently lend
itself to mass simultaneous broadcast. But, since the transmission
pipeline is "always on" and inexpensive when compared to satellite or
over-air broadcast transmission, it is perfect for multiple
asynchronous transmissions - in other words "on demand" transmission.
There is the potential to reach just as large an audience, just not all
at once. Also, because a portion of the Internet bandwidth is available
to anyone with a computer, a modem and a small amount of cash, it is
quite easy for an individual to become a narrowcaster compared to
what's involved in becoming a broadcaster. So, what else is new about cybercasting? One
of the most revolutionary and least explored aspects of cybercasting is
its fully interactive, two-way potential. The content of standard
one-way cybercasting differs little from its broadcast cousin. Modern
network technology, however, makes it possible to "give as good as you
get." Interactivity can involve more than "turn left, turn right, press
to fire" (or "press to buy"). Currently, the two most popular uses of
the Internet are e-mail and chat. Both are two-way interactive
experiences. Because the prices of multimedia input devices are
dropping, compression technologies are improving, and bandwidth is
increasing, "video chat" is getting easier. The impact of this on the
nature of artistic content on the Net is just beginning to be explored. So, what does this all mean? For
one-way, non-interactive media streaming, very little, because most of
the aesthetic and economic models differ very little from traditional
broadcasting. Essentially watching TV on the Internet is no different
that watching TV on TV. All that remains is to tweak those models to
fit the minor differences - "If your cat has kittens in the oven, you
don't call 'em biscuits." The
two-way approach has a long way to go. What is clear at this point is
that attempts to shoehorn traditional approaches into the new format
lead to unsatisfactory results. Part of the problem involves the one
hard reality cybercasting has to face: the speed of light. For every
168 miles a signal travels, it picks up around a millisecond of delay.
The human ear can easily detect a 15-millisecond delay. That's why long
distance phone calls carried via satellite, with their 500 millisecond
round trip delay, are so frustrating. The way data is carried over the
Internet can add significant latency to a signal as well, not to
mention the delay imposed by audio and video software. The inherent
latencies in transmission make real-time multi-site performances of
rhythmically tight music such as jazz and rock next to impossible. A
form of performance that uses the delay as an intrinsic element needs
to be developed. In the case of the project I did with David Hykes and
the Harmonic Choir, the 70-millisecond delay inherent in the phone
transmission between The Kitchen in New York, and the performance space
at Le Thoronet Abbey in France closely duplicated the natural pre-delay
of the Abbey itself. The use of network technology was necessary
because of the impossibility of digitally simulating the rich acoustics
of the Abbey in real time. Res Rocket
-- a piece of software developed in the UK -- deals with Internet
latency in a very inventive fashion. By using synchronized MIDI loops,
it creates its own time-base, both duplicating the feel of jamming in
real time, and expanding the possibilities of musical interaction. So
it's possible for surfers to participate in the same jam session on and
off over the course of weeks. Still,
this is tip of the iceberg stuff. Real-time interactive media is still
in the R&D phase. There are still a lot of blind alleys and
dead-ends to follow. But while the Intels of the world struggle with
finding a business rationale for cybercasting -- one which apparently
will look a lot like broadcasting -- lets hope New York's creative
community continue to explore the broader artistic possibilities. John
Maxwell Hobbs is a musician and has been working with computer
multimedia for more than fifteen years. He is currently in charge of
multimedia development at Ericsson CyberLab New York. His interactive
composition "Web Phases" can be found here
. He is also on the board of directors of Vanguard Visions, an
organization dedicated to fostering the work of artists experimenting
with technology. He is the former producing director for The Kitchen. |
