Social Systems for Improvisation in Live Computer Music

I am currently studying for a PhD in Live Computer Music at Durham University where my supervisors are Dr. Nick Collins and Prof. Peter Manning. My research interests lie in examining the political practices implicit in collaborative network music performance and designing systems for group improvisation that impose particular social (and/or anti-social) structures in performance situations.

As a practice-led research student my PhD portfolio consists of a number of systems for improvisation and accompanying research papers documented below.

Pieces:

Flow (2015) Solo live coding performance dealing subverting cognitive flow

Union (2015) System for mediating long distance collaboration

Flock (2015) Artificial voting system for collaborative live coding

“Democracy is not just a tweet away…” (2015) Sound installation using political twitter data

On Edge (2014) Instrumental work with distributed decision making

Dissonant States (2014) Live score generated from data relating to democracy

Controller (2013) Interface for collaborative music making playing with power dynamics

Papers:

(2015) Changing Music’s Constitution: Network Music and Radical Democratization, Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 25

(2014) The Politics of Laptop Ensembles: A Survey of 160 Laptop Ensembles and their Organisational Structures, Proceedings of NIME 2014, London