From: garry@cs-sun-fsc.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Garry Beirne)
Subject: Musical Virtual Worlds
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 21:30:38 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Nov13.213038.27046@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
Organization: The Banff Centre for the Arts

Most of the discussions about VR have assumed a visual world, or some 
representation of a visual world.  This is natural, given that we are 
probalby 'visual animals'.  However, there is no reason why we need to 
base our notion of virtuality on things we can visualize.

There has been a great deal of progress on the development of 
interactive music systems in the past 10 years.  There are a number of 
composers and performers who are also excellent programmers (e.g. George 
Lewis, Daniel Scheidt, Robert Rowe) who have given spent a long time 
thinking about interactivity, and have developed successful 'virtual 
musical worlds'.  In these worlds there is a musical framework that is 
defined by the compser.  There may or may not be entities in these 
worlds that exhibit their own (musical) behaviours, and may or may not 
respond to stimulus from the other occupant of the musical space, the 
performer.  I will call these Musical Virtual Worlds (MVW)

The are several features of these MVWs that we in the 'visual' worlds 
might learn from.  

First, it is assumed that the occupant/participant/user/performer in a 
MVW is a 'virtuoso';  they are experts in communicating via very 
specific musical gestures (bowing the violin, playing the piano, etc.) 
and there is a well established vocabulary within the range of gestures 
they use.  In VR we almost always assume a naive user.  Why not follow 
the model of the instrument builder, and develop a set of gestures that 
are 'appropriate' to the task of communicating to and from the visual 
virtual world?

Second, there is a large degree of interaction between the performer and 
the MVW.  The performer plays something, the MVW listens and responds or 
accompanies, the performers next gestures are influence by what they 
hear from the MVW, which is in turn affected by what the performer 
plays, and so on.  There is a rich degree of 
dependance/reliance/cooperation between the two entities.  (Note that 
the MVW is not 'intelligent'.  Rather, it is the embodiment of the 
composers' musical thought.  So, it is the composer that is intelligent, 
not the MVW).

In short, I think that the music world has a mature notion of 'virtual 
worlds' and is at the forefront of 'interactivity'.  

Yes, I have left a lot unsaid ... but I don't want to give it all away 
on the first posting   :-)


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