Research Seminars

What's all that noise? Some thoughts on remote group music improvisation
Nick Bryan-Kinns, Dept of Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London
Wednesday 21 January 2004

Collaborative improvisation, composition, and performance of music constitute a basic and distinctive form of human interaction and is an activity in which we can feel alive within ourselves through our creative interplay and engagement with others. Although we are continually embracing new ways and means of communicating and collaborating (e.g. mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging, email, etc.) issues such as how to support people creating music together when not in the same place have had very little attention. This talk contemplates how we might design and evaluate tools to support group creativity as exemplified through group music improvisation. The contemplation is exemplified with reflection on two pilot studies of the use of such tools.