Home | Electric Guitar | Acoustic Guitar | Bass | Effects | Keys & Synth | Drums & Perc | Software | Computer | Recording/Live Sound | MIDI
|
127th AES Convention Coverage (New York, NY Oct. 9-12)
PRESS RELEASE
New Collaborative Music Composition
April 24, 1998
Advertisement SSEYO(R) Ltd., UK Internet company and creator of Koan® software for generative music and sound environments, today launched the world's first ever collaborative virtual generative composition, SSEYO Koan^oasis 198. Pioneering artists, including Brian Eno, BRiTs producer of the year 1996 for David Bowie's 'Outside', who have contributed to SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 have all used SSEYO Koan Pro 2 to create their generative components. SSEYO Koan Pro 2 was last week selected as one of the UK's Millennium Products, so chosen by the national Design Council run initiative because of their innovative and forward looking nature. SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 is an online generative composition created by a networked community of Koan artists. It allows a group of Koan artists in their own time to realise, develop and amend their own online components of a generative sound environment and thus to compose music in a distributed manner. Artists do not have to be present or online when the work is "consumed", as is the case with MIDI jamming software. For the first time, artists all over the world can contribute, off-line and in their own time, to a low bandwidth generative community project which anyone in the world can hear 24 hours a day. It opens the doors to new forms of virtual performance and ultimately interaction. Said Brian Eno, "Koan^oasis is a kind of global music eco system. Each composer contributes a musical 'life form' with its own character and behavior, and the music is the rich, ever-changing ecology of interactions between the life forms.". Each SSEYO Koan^oasis is an empty "container" Koan piece placed on a webpage at SSEYO's website which contains links to a number of Koan Artist's contributions, each around 1-5Kb, plus a number of small SoundFonts or samples, typically around 20Kb. When a listener visits the webpage the linked contributions are downloaded to create a composite virtual work on the listener's PC. Koan^oases are made possible by SSEYO's massively Interactive Koan Music Control (IKMC) and its capability to asynchronously download Koan files and sound samples in the background. "SSEYO hopes to learn more about the potential of Internet community creativity and further grow the pioneering online Koan community through the creation of many genuine shared works of generative art" said Tim Cole, SSEYO Co-Founder and Managing Director. "We expect the SSEYO Koan^oases to have the highest production values possible, given the constraints of bandwidth, soundcards and samples and we hope that many more similar Koan community experiences will spring up all over the Internet.". SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 has been virtually created by artists living in 3 different continents; the artists being Kim Cascone, Pete & Tim Cole, Tim Didymus, Brian Eno, Andrew Garton, Jason Gibbs, Andy Greenwood, Greyworld, Mark Harrop, Kaon Koo, David Long and Jamuud of Loop Guru. Jamuud, author of Koan title "Niskala", said "The Koan^oasis organically interprets everyone's contribution and creates harmony from chaos with only a few "unifying" instructions. The Internet makes it possible for the composer to hear his or her element in context and to update or renew it as necessary to create a constantly changing vision.". Tim Didymus, whose Koan title "Float" was recently released, added "The exciting thing about this development is that a group of trans-global generative artists have worked together to create an activated online sound environment for the world's wired population.". As SSEYO Koan software has incredibly powerful and rich inbuilt support for Creative Labs AWE range of soundcards, including use of SoundFonts and special MIDI controller features, the Koan artists contributing to SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 have taken full advantage of this support to create a work specifically for these PC soundcards. Users of the Creative Labs Inspire Internet product can hear the Koan^oasis immediately without having to separately download the SSEYO IKMC, thus directly benefiting from Creative Labs integration of the necessary components of the SSEYO IKMC into Inspire. C. Hock Leow, Vice President Multimedia Division and Strategic Development, Creative Labs Inc., said "Creative Labs is pleased that its SoundFont downloadable sound technology forms an integral part of the 'Ultimate Koan Experience'. SSEYO have long been supporters of Sound Blaster AWE soundcards. It is very exciting that our hardware is being used by such innovative artists, in combination with SSEYO's revolutionary IKMC, to provide AWE owners with such a rich musical experience on the web.". One way of ensuring that websites have good music on them is to provide it! SSEYO intends to create a single consolidated snapshot of the Koan^oasis 198 piece and any samples used. On request, it will at no charge allow websites to link to it or to embed the link to it on their website. A return link to the actual Koan^oasis 198 is all that will be required. Commented Andrew Shoben, Founder of Greyworld, makers of the Layer sensing surface which uses Koan, "As well as creating a unique and fascinating listening experience for visitors to the website, it will generate further interest for the artists involved in the composition and provide them with wider Internet exposure.". Koan is an inherently 'low bandwidth' solution as it adopts a component approach to the creation of sound environments. The components or building blocks include a small Koan piece (typically 1kb to 20kb) and either the hardwired General MIDI sounds on the PC soundcard or downloaded custom WAV samples or SoundFonts; in either case, the Koan engine does the generative composition at the target machine providing an innovative alternative to pre-recorded streamed audio or endlessly looping MIDI music. Said Jason Gibbs, Technical Director of IMS, developers of GLPRO, "Koan technology is inspiring and refreshing to work with. To be able to offer a truly worldwide audience with a collaborative, ever-changing generative composition, that takes only seconds to retrieve on-line, is a fantastic achievement.". With the IKMC, via a webpage and a little VBScript or JavaScript, 200+ Koan parameters can be changed in real-time allowing the creation of incredible interactive sound environments. SSEYO intends to explore more listener interactive scenarios where many aspects of the composition can be controlled or altered by the participating artist or listener.
SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 Multimedia System requirements (listening): SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 Multimedia System requirements (creating): As above, but also including SSEYO Koan Pro 2.1. Also strongly recommended is the SSEYO IKMC Platinum version for saving complete versions of the piece in editable format. For more information, visit their web site at http://www.soundperformancelab.com/. Recent SSEYO headlines
Similar Products at Musician's Friend
|