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CreateWorld 2009 Draft Papers of the CreateWorld09 Conference

Editors Michael Docherty :: Queensland University of Technology Darryl Rosin :: Griffith University

© Copyright 2009, Apple University Consortium Australia, and individual authors. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without the written permission of the copyright holders.

CreateWorld 2009 Contents Draft Papers

Andrew Blackburn

Computers, the pipe organ and realtime dsp

Kim Cunio

The War on the Critical Edition Volume 1

Andrew Dekker, Stephen Viller, Aaron Tan

Waving creatively: An examination of Google Wave to facilitate collaboration in creative processes

Paul Draper

Authority 3.0: Toward a digital press for universitybased musicians, and its role in validating ERA outputs

Matt Hitchcock

Vertical Integration through Blended Learning: a whole-of-program case study

Kat Hope, Malcolm Riddoch

The Vanishing Bass- Possible implications of Internet centric listening on bass perception

Jean Penny

Inside-Out Flutes: The Emergence of the Transformative Meta-flautist

Jason Zagami

iPrac - twittering to survive practicum

Jason Zagami

iPrac - use of spontaneous recording devices to enhance digital portfolios

computers, the pipe organ and realtime dsp

Andrew Blackburn p 1

Andrew Blackburn M.Mus(Melb) Dip Ed (Melb) DMA Candidate, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University CreateWorld09 November 2009 Computer use in music for the pipe organ and real time dsp - or the music of Janus Abstract Ever since the Bremen Radio Broadcast Performance – 20 May 1962 – a broadcast that included Gyorgy Ligeti’s ‘Volumina’, Mauricio Kagel’s “Improvisation Ajoutee” and Bengt Hambreaus’ ‘Interference’ – all compositions that exposed a whole new world of texture, timbre and musical possibility, the pipe organ has been reclaiming a position of prominence in contemporary art music. The timbral, technical and musical possibilities exhibited in these compositions and the more recent advent of accessible and portable real time dsp (Digital Signal Processing) has encouraged an ever widening range of composers/performers to write for the instrument, extending both its timbral potential and inherent spatial possibilities. These developments have changed our expectations and perceptions of what a pipe organ musically can be and do. In this paper I shall provide a brief background to this development, focussing on four significant and recently composed works for pipe organ and electronics. I shall explore how the instrument’s apparently static timbral world is dynamically altered, and the means by which this alteration is achieved.



Table of Contents Definitions and Background

4

Live Digital Signal Processing and organ

4

Four Compositions for pipe organ and real time dsp

4

Dialogo Sopra i Duo Sistemi (2003 revised 2007)- René Uiljenhoet

4

Vanitas - Steve Everett

5

Symmetrie Integrante (2007)- Andrian Pertout

7

Eight Panels(2007) a structured improvisation - Lawrence Harvey and Andrew Blackburn 8 Conclusions REFERENCES

9 10



Introduction The function and control of timbre by the player of a traditional acoustic pipe organ can be equated in contemporary electronic musical terms to the control and building of sound through additive synthesis. In the last few years a number of composers have also taken advantage of increased portable power and availability of software and vst plug ins to create a new timbral world for the pipe organ. The extraordinary sonic richness of the acoustic organ provides a wonderful source for the digital signal processing (DSP), creating new sounds, not just imitating organ sounds, but opening a whole new range of timbres and aural spatial relationships, changing our expectations and perceptions of what a pipe organ musically can be and do. Pipe organs have many different styles that may be defined by continent, nationality, region, era and individual builder. Today the pipe organ is often associated with Christian religious institutions, often of a highly conservative bent and accordingly music associated with the pipe organ is assumed to be similarly styled. This attitude however ignores the significant music composed since the 1950’s till today, and now often performed on organs in large civic buildings. Before proceeding, it must be emphasized that compositions for acoustic instruments with digital signal processing are not new, for there are compositions for flute and realtime dsp from as early as 1952 (Penny 2009). Bruno Maderna Musica su due dimensioni (1952) for flute, percussion and electronic sounds is certainly one of the earliest examples. Within a couple of years, composers such as Edgar Varése, Otto Leunig and Vladimir Ussachevsky were composing works for acoustic instruments, accompanied or expanded by recordings and processed sounds. In 1958 (six years after the first work combining acoustic instrument and manipulated sounds) Swedish composer Bengt Hambraeus composed two significant works for organ and manipulated organ sounds on tape - Doppelrohr II and Konstellationer (1958). The works are highly significant in the lineal development of the organ as an avant-garde instrument bridging the span between the so-called ‘experimental’ works of Olivier Messiaen and Gyorgy Ligeti’s Volumina (1962) The quasi electronic clusters of Volumina that so shocked many listener did not arrive from a vacuum: timbral explorations from composers such as Tournemire, Messiaen, and Hambraeus may be directly traced forward to Ligeti and so, for all its radicalism, Volumina represents Ligeti ‘...searching for what the next step is in any field. What next step is implied…’ (John Cage quoted in Duckworth, W p 28) This lineal quality in avant-garde music can be traced as strongly in organ music as any instrumental genre, though this trail is beyond the scope of this paper.1 Between the late 1960’s and late 1980’s there was parallel experimentation in avant garde organ music - composers including Australians Warren Burt, Stephen Ingham, and Ron

1

The topic is explored in Blackburn (2008) The organ as an avant garde instrument unpublished paper.



Nagorka looking at combinations of taped sounds and organ and those like Gyorgy Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis or Stephen Montague who extended performance techniques acoustically.

Definitions and Background Live Digital Signal Processing and organ A brief and simple description of what we mean by music composed for pipe organ and Real time Digital Signal Processing (DSP): a pipe organ in which, in addition to the acoustic qualities and potential of the instrument that are already established, microphones placed in and around the organ input signal to a processing unit. This then sends processed sounds from the organ to a speaker system in the same physical space, so blending the acoustic and electronic sounds in a coherent whole to an audience. The configuration of all these elements is variable and dependent upon the room in which the organ is situated, the layout and disposition of the organ, and the musical requirements established by the composer. Wolfgang Mitterer (Linz) and Morgan Fisher (Tokyo) - are both improvisers who the organ and live dsp of the organ sound. Some other recent examples of improvisor/ keyboardists include Chris Abrahams and Charlemagne Palestine - both using pipe organ with other (non organ based) realtime dsp in their improvisations. 2 So far the earliest example of organ with live digital signal processing appears to be: Hans W Koch orgel/topographie (1998) for one performer inside a church organ with live-electronic, a second performer at the keyboard. It uses a hand held microphone to amplify certain sounds from deep within the organ. aus "sechzig" teil IV: paradiso infernale (1997)composed for an exhibition of Salvador Dali’s xylographies after the "divina commedia" by Dante for two speakers (male/ female), tenor saxophone, organ, synthesizer and live- electronic. In an email from Hans Koch to the author, he writes of the live dsp... I´d say it was a crude mix of ring modulation, some very cheap echo, filtering and some oscillators. i used a lot of feedback also fed trough the echo. the truth is, that i didn´t have much money at that time (not that i would now...), so started building my own circuits. they mostly worked, but had a peculiar sound. and then, failure sometimes has its own beauties :-) (Koch, H. (2006) Personal email to Andrew Blackburn)

Four Compositions for pipe organ and real time dsp Dialogo Sopra i Duo Sistemi (2003 revised 2007)- René Uiljenhoet 2

In this paper, the ability to reproduce music without the input from the original creator is a selective factor, and so the work of these practitioners is not considered.



For organ and quadraphonic live electronics, duration c. 18’30” The title of this work also suggests its intent - a dialogue between two systems - one old and the other new. It is derived from the Gallileo Galliiei Dialogo di Galileo Galilei ... : doue ne i congressi di quattro giornate si discorre sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico e copernicano proponendo indeterminatamente le ragioni filosofiche e naturali tanto per l’vna, quanto per l’altra parte (1632), in which the author compares the prevailing concept of a flat earth with his own theory of a spherical, rotating planet. Dialogo has received a number of performances3 since its composition in 2003 and the most recent iteration of the score (2009) includes many warnings and notes that suggest they are born of performance experience. From the composers introductory notes “... Due to the musician operating the computer using both hands and eyes to operate the computer as well as the mixing desk, it is recommended to ask an assistant to help turning the pages of the score in order to stay synchronous with the organist...’ or regarding the setup of the microphones in the organ case ‘... be prepared to spend a lot of time realising the installation and be careful not to damage pipes...during this installation process! Also make sure – in advance of the concert date – that the owner of the organ allows this harmless treatment to be executed.’ The electronics for this piece are programmed in SuperCollider 3 (http:// supercollider.sourceforge.net ) and a runtime and patch file are provided with the score. The setup requirements are as follows: OS X (10.4.8 to 10.4.11) running SuperCollider3 to version 3.3.1 (rev 9267) with a (minimum 8 I/O) audio interface attached. Eight microphones to inputs: 4 outputs (1 - 4 on interface) to mixer and to four amp/loudspeaker combinations, set up around the audience: Mic 1 is inserted in the Swell - left side; Mic 2 is inserted in the Swell - right side; Mic 3 and 4 inserted in the left and right of the Great; Mic 5 & 6 in the left and right pedal towers; Mic 7 & 8 in the left and right sides of the positive organ. This arrangement - with less or more microphones has turned out to be a most successful arrangement for most organs. It is the maximum which has been used by this author, and allows for the true spatial expansion of the instrument within the performance space. The software is set with 35 performance ‘scenes’ each descriptively titled, within a single user interface page.

Vanitas - Steve Everett

3

eg Randall Harlow - Eastman Organ Festival, at the Laurenskerk, Rotterdam and recording etc



Vanitas refers to a type of still life painting consisting of a collection of objects that symbolize the brevity of human life and the transience of earthly pleasures and achievements (e.g., a human skull, Everett S Vanitas 2005 organist books, musical instruments, decaying fruit and flowers, a mirror, and Randall Harlow broken pottery) – a reminder that worldly riches cannot stop man’s mp3 perf 2007 inevitable decay. Such paintings were particularly popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in the Netherlands.(Harlow, R (2007) Contemporary Organ Music Festival April 11-14, 2007 Programme notes, http:// ecmc.rochester.edu/ecmc25/concert8.pdf last accessed 1 November 2009) The aim of the electronic processing in this instance is, to create an impression of the decay and ephemeral nature of life, as depicted in the Vanitas paintings through effects used in the electronics including timbral shift, spatial re-location and tuning and detuning of the organ sound. Vanitas is composed for organ with live electronic processing using Kyma4 Sound Processing System. 5 Everett explains his technical requirements in the performance instructions are as follows: Four to eight microphones [are] placed as close as possible to the organ case in a vertical array on both sides of the performer. If possible it is desirable to place the microphones inside the case to avoid feedback issues related with microphones placed in acoustically rich halls and churches. This audio is then processed through eleven computer Sound Objects in Kyma created by the composer. Each Sound Object consists of three or more spectral filters, delays, and diffusion effects... scheduled with the Kyma Timelone and is notated in the score as “ *Kyma 1-11 Ideally a four channel sound system with a fifth sub-bass channel, all hidden from audience view is preferred for playback. The goal of the live electronic processing is to subtly enhance timbral shifts, spatial location and tuning of the organ sounds. (Everett, S 2005 p 2) One of the important aspects of this piece is the relationship which is established between the acoustic organ and the processed sounds. In requesting that the speakers be concealed, Everett seeks to create a blend of acoustic and electronic sounds, but blurring the boundaries between them. Which sound source is responsible for each timbre or effect is rendered indistinguishable by concealing the speakers in and around the organ, and mixing the combination of sounds in the performance room. It is a compositional device that makes Vanitas distinct from the others under discussion in this paper. Where Dialogo, Symmétrie Intégrante6 and Eight Panels7 exploit the potential for re-spatializing the organ and its relationship to the performance space through speakers placed around, amongst, above and

4 www.symbolicsound.com 5 A Max/MSP version of the electronics is available at http://music.emory.edu/COMPUTER/SE/ VanitasMaxMSP.pdf 6

Andrian Pertout 2007

7

Lawrence Harvey (in conjunction with Andrew Blackburn) 2007



below the audience, Everett arranges the electronic sounds so that they all appear to emanate from the organ itself. It is an idea currently being explored further by Christophe d'Alessandro et al, in a recent (unpublished) paper delivered at the 2009 ICMC in Montreal: The Ora Project: audio-Visual Live Electronics and the Pipe Organ Symmetrie Integrante (2007)- Andrian Pertout A work for organ, flutes (3) and live electronics. (click here for a video example of excerpts of this piece and section8) It was commissioned for performance at the Melbourne Town Hall. It is a startling piece that contrasts instruments of different dimensions from the largest to shortest organ pipes (10 metres to 4 or 5 mm) as well as flutes alto to piccolo. The electronics are a minimum of four microphone inputs connected to a computer through a digital audio I/O to a mixer incorporating a 4 channel sound diffusion system, ideally configured similarly to that of the Uijenhoet piece described earlier. Again, the music is arranged into preset ‘scenes’ - nine for the flutes and 4 for the organ. They were operated by the composer in the original performance and the composer is currently creating a more portable version in Max/MSP for another performance in the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields scheduled for next January. Programme 2 ‘Waves metaflanger5.0 VST plug in (a vintage tape flanging and phaser emulation audio plug-in that generates gentle choruses and dual delay flanging sounds to sharp phasing and extreme jet sweeps.)’ (Pertout A Symmétrie Intégrante 2007 composer’s performance notes) The actual settings of this scene are: mix: 100%; feedback: 80.0%; phase enable: on; filter type: low pass; cut off frequency: 1.2HΩ; filtering: on; delay: 9.0ms; tape: on; rate/oscillation speed: 0.10Hz; sync: manual; depth: 12.0%; link: off; waveform: triangle; stereo: 180.00 ; gain: +0.0dB.9 The effect of this is startling in impact, particularly contrasting the almost pure sine wave structure of the organ (registration specified as rohrflute 8’ and 4’ principal) with the triangle wave form inserted by the plug in 8 Panels excerpt Panels 5 - 6- organist Andrew Blackburn and projected with the extreme ‘jet Click to play: sweeps’ created by the wide stereo setting of 180.00. Pertout found that DSP for the organ is most musical when manipulating quieter input levels, a facet that is common in all the works under discussion. The opening and closing sections of the work are loud (registration - principal chorus to mixtures) and his dsp in this is used to create waves of sound that project into the hall bathing the audience in an audio wash which exaggerates the wash of sound from the organ itself.

8 9

http://www.hutes.com.au/hute_1./Andrew_Blackburn_Video_Samples.html

The full list of settings is provided in the compserʼs performance notes. Andrian Pertout has adopted the approach to performance that, given the relative transience of many audio applications, a technical list if settings is most desirable and this can be re-created in the software that is available to the performers.



Eight Panels(2007) a structured improvisation - Lawrence Harvey and Andrew Blackburn Eight Panels was also commissioned by the City of Melbourne and first performed in the Melbourne Town Hall in October 2007. It is a structured improvisation conceived by Lawrence Harvey in conjunction with Andrew Blackburn. The audio input arrangement from the organ is similar to that of Symmétrie Intégrante given above, but the output arrangement is considerably developed. Again, here the intention behind the work is to draw the organ from its location in the Town Hall (in a very large chamber across the full width of the stage The work is built around 8 major sections, each one exploring different sets of dsp effects through Harvey, L 2007 8 Panels Score Panel 5 (section) the audio input from a carefully structured though improvised organ part. The output for the work is a 16 channel surround sound - two concentric circles of speakers placed around the audience, and within the audience space, four speaker ‘trees’ were positioned. These provided a highly specific sound source which was also positioned vertically in the aural space. Players required to perform this work are: organist and two sound technologists ( one technologist controls the signal processing of the organ sounds, whilst the second controls the location of the sounds within the large space of the hall. The score is divided and precisely indicates this process. (see example above) Melbourne Town Hall Organ - the larger pipes on the facade are in excess of 5 metres in length.



Conclusions When used to manipulate the acoustic sound of a pipe organ, computers and computing offer extraordinary possibilities to impact on the timbral and spatial world of the pipe organ. There is an ever growing body of work for the organ with realtime DSP and an expanding number of composers around the world who are interested to write for this combination. The works discussed all come from composers of very different backgrounds and even cultures - yet in this frontier sound world there is a commonality of purpose as well as a (perhaps surprising) unanimity of what works when manipulating acoustic organ sounds. As far as I have been able to ascertain, at the compositional stage, none of the composers were referencing earlier works, but all have used similar processing techniques; flanging, delay, reverberation, granular synthesis, ring modulation and more. Although there are some practical difficulties positioning microphones and speakers in and around large pipe organs, the musical result is well worth overcoming these potential pitfalls.



REFERENCES Blackburn, A (2008) The Organ as an instrument of choice for avant garde composers. Unpublished paper d’Allesandro, C., Noisternig, M et al (2009) The ORA Project: Audio-Visual Live Electronics and the Pipe organ Unpublished paper presented at ICMC 2009 http:// www.icmc2009.org/ last accessed 6th November 2009 Duckworth, W. (1995) Talking Music – Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and five generations of American experimentalist composer New York. Da Capo Press Everett, S. (2005) Vanitas (musical score), self published and available from the composer Everett, S. (2005) Vanitas (mp3) http://music.emory.edu/COMPUTER/Media/ Vanitas_Harlow_organ.mp3 last accessed 4th November 2009 Harlow, R (2007) Contemporary Organ Music Festival April 11-14, 2007 Programme notes, http://ecmc.rochester.edu/ecmc25/concert8.pdf last accessed 1 November 2009 Koch, H. (2006) Personal email to Andrew Blackburn O’Connell, M (2005) Flexible Learning and Educational Design http://eddesign.blogspot.com/2005/07/designing-learning-experiences-what-is.html web page last accessed 6 November 2009 Pertout, A. (2007) Symmetrié Intégrante (2007) for organ, flutes and electronics Op 394 (musical score), self published and available through the compser’s website www.pertout.com or the Australian Music Centre Snyder, K. J. (ed) (2002). The organ as a mirror of its time North European Reflections, 1610 - 2000. Oxford, Oxford University Press.



Uijenhoet, R. (2003 rev 2009) Dialogo sopra i due sistemi for organ and quadraphonic live electronics (musical score) Amsterdam, Netherlands: Muziek Centrum Nederland.

Melbourne Town Hall Organ Case. The larger pipes visible are in excess of 5 metres in length

Create World: AUC, Brisbane Australia, November -2 December 2009 http://www.auc.edu.au/AUC

THE WAR ON THE CRITICAL EDITION VOLUME 1 Dr Kim Cunio Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University

ABSTRACT In my so called ‘serious’ research (into best practice realisation of ancient and medieval music), a major theme has been the preparation of multiple realisations of a text or musical work, in response to music that has no critical or singular edition. This has applied to both scores and recorded works and this premise has had a profound effect on both my realised early music and new art music composition. This paper documents two methods of consciously working against the notion of a critical edition. The first is three recorded realisations of the prologue to Hildegard of Bingen’s 12th Century music drama Ordu Virtutum (ABC Classics 2007). Each realisation becomes an existing work in itself and sets to prove that early music notation allows the space for significant new composition. The second case study, Namu Amida Butsu, a new piece of honkyoku 1 for solo shakuhachi, is the genesis of another process. An existing scored and recorded work is currently being deconstructed with the purpose of being recomposed either on Garageband or a comparable music sequencing program. The ramifications of this method are significant because the technique of ‘comping’ 2, from which this is derived, is common in popular and image based music where it is used to produce a critical edition similar to that of a score. However in this case new technology is not used to reinforce an existing structure, but to find multiple new structures from the source material.

1. INTRODUCTION This paper serves two functions: to document part of the practice based research contained in two composition and recording projects between 2004 and 2006, as well as starting a future research project into the processes and ramifications of recomposing around existing material. Both projects were commissioned works that had to work within the confines of agreements, budgets and players, and a process of artistic self-examination was undertaken concurrently, particularly as I was completing my Doctorate in composition at the time. Two of the findings of my research were that multiple editions of a work do not inherently endanger a musical tradition as long as the

1 2

A traditional Japanese Zen music and meditation form.

The arrangement of a final recorded version of a recording from multiple takes or versions on a music sequencer.

contributors to it are fully aware of the process of artistic investigation (Cunio, 2008), and that intercultural and early music can inherently benefit from not being defined by a critical or singular edition (Cunio, 2009). One of the conclusions was the need for a practical investigation of this premise, a process that this paper begins. Two works that I wrote in this period are therefore unpacked and reworked within the notion of resisting the singular critical edition. Three pieces from The Sacred Fire (Cunio, Lee, 2007), derived from Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum Prologue demonstrate my most common practice in breaking the concept of the critical edition, which is multiple realisations of the same textual and melodic source material. Namu Amida Butsu, the second work, is much more radical, as it experiments with postmodern representations of traditional music and will allow the listener to recompose the music itself. Namu Amida Butsu is presently being cut into multiple loops. When finished the loops will be imported into the Apple Garageband loop library. The loops will be sent to colleagues and students offering them the chance to recompose the work. No reference copy of the existing critical edition will be supplied.

2. THE CRITICAL EDITION The critical edition is at the heart of western art music. When someone asks to hear Ave Maria at their wedding there is an inherent cultural assumption that they will hear a particular version of the Ave Maria, usually composed by Schubert or Bach/Gounot. Though the Bach/Gounot is an arrangement of an earlier critical edition it has been absorbed into the cannon of western art music alongside the Schubert, and as such either composition can be attributed to a composer(s). Musicology can document the works of western composers thanks to the invention of notated music by Guido of Arrezzo in the 11th Century, and the extant works of the thousands of composers who have worked in both sacred and secular music. These thousand year old notations give us many of the best and worst aspects of our current musical life: they allow copyright and patents to flourish, intellectual capital to be recognised, but they also allow singular editions to push their multiple counterparts to the side. For example an artist may play a hit song many different ways but the critical edition is always the recorded and disseminated version of the work. Technology is changing how we perceive both music and tradition. It is no longer necessary to write a definitive

Create World: AUC, Brisbane Australia, November -2 December 2009 http://www.auc.edu.au/AUC score when working in many music styles. Indeed when notating and working with traditional music full scoring can be a burden, making future renditions unnecessarily complex or rigid in nature. The journal Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music defines this point of change: Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music encourages scholars to rethink the critical edition as a crucial component in the current rapprochement between ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and cultural studies. As new media make it possible to experience musics from throughout the world, as oral traditions have become essential to the globalization of local musical practices, and as popular musics give postmodern meaning to historical diasporas, so too does Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music invite music scholars to conceive of editions that will contribute fundamentally to some of the most critical debates of our day. (Bohlman, 2005). The computer has revolutionised music, and art music composers and institutions are only now coming to terms with the ramifications. The recording of music offers a potentially perfect copy of a performance that can then be transcribed or learnt orally, making it a meeting place between oral and written forms. It can be argued that notation, as we historically understand it, is now only one of a number of processes to preserve and record music. Innovations such as the Music Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), and wave file composition (whereby the composition takes place after the recording of the individual parts), have replaced traditional scoring for many composers. In addition to this we now extend the term composition and composer well beyond the historical Western definitions. The composer of a work does not necessarily have to know the craft of notation, nor be able to perform a work the same way twice. Reid states that a written score can range from a chord chart to a Pro Tools file (Reid, 2007), yet a standard composition degree at a tertiary institution is still mainly concerned with the authorship of singular critical written works.

3.

Eugene Goosens Hall, Sydney, and released in May 2007 by the ABC. This project involved taking the music of Hildegard of Bingen, (1098-1179), the visionary composer author and mystic, and recomposing around existing scores. The brief for the project was to create a CD recording of Hildegard of Bingen’s music unlike any other to date. It was made clear by Lee that the vocal line would be performed as written, though there would be room for ornamentation and harmony (organum4) in the vocal lines. Despite these constraints there was enormous room for innovation in instrumentation, texture, and accompaniment. A series of new pieces were written for the assembled intercultural ensemble, and one work was selected to be part of this larger experiment. Lee and myself argued in the liner notes of the disc that the craft of medieval music notation is unable to provide anything like the nuance that we expect from a contemporary score, and as such the original editions of Hildegard’s scores (the Riensekodex and Dendermonde collections) can enable a process of imagination and recomposition (Lee, 2007). Many things simply do not exist in the original scores, most prominently absent is any rhythmic duration or emphasis, and the interpretation of neumatic5 notation in which this is expressed is far from standard. The argument comes down to one essential point: a purely authentic rendition is not actually possible, and from this premise multiple realisations of a single text are valid. The Prologue to Hildegard’s play Ordo Virtutum was selected for an in-depth exploration in this manner. Because Ordo Virtutum is such a long piece, it was impossible within the confines of the commission to work with the whole piece (it is both significant and long enough to constitute a whole recording). The Prologue was therefore a perfect choice. Three main parameters investigated in this realisation of the Ordo Virtutum Prologue were the use of multiple realisations of a single text, the use of free and metric time with the same text, and the use of harmony.

EXPERIMENT 1: THE SACRED FIRE

I have worked with soprano Heather Lee for the last 10 years on a large variety of projects from Western classical music to traditional music. Consequently, Lee was an obvious collaborator for this project. Lee has had a strong interest in the music of Hildegard of Bingen, and her background in medieval and Baroque music was ideal for this project. Additional collaboration was with Cantillation, a vocal ensemble based at the ABC, and a newly formed intercultural ensemble sourced for the project.3 The music was recorded in February 2006, at the

Three new pieces The pieces written from this realisation process are: Who are these? The Sacred Fire (TSF) disc 2 track 6, Patriachs, Prophets and Virtues, TSF disc 2, tracks 7-8, and Ordo Virtutum – Instrumental Prologue, TSF disc 2 track 10. Who are these? is a recitation of a translation of the prologue text into English by Rebecca Frith and an intercultural ensemble. The music is constructed around a

Parallel harmony, most commonly up a 5th or down a 4th from the original melody. 4

Kim Cunio, reed organ, Jamal Rekabi kemanche, Llew Kiek plucked strings, Paul Jarman winds and Tunji Beier percussion.

3

5

Sign based - a precursor to modern notation.

Create World: AUC, Brisbane Australia, November -2 December 2009 http://www.auc.edu.au/AUC very simple descending Dorian fragment G – F – E – D, in which all instruments have the opportunity to improvise as Frith speaks. The traditional wind tarogato is the featured melodic instrument and plays a long phrase with circular breathing at the end of the piece. Patriachs, Prophets and Virtues is a significant setting of the text and music of Hildegard. A series of Burmese gongs stress the D Dorian scale (with a Bb available to augment it). A massive slightly detuned low E gong thunders the feeling of the piece into newly constructed cadence points before and after the singing, and the Cantillation male ensemble sing the primary text of the prologue very slowly. They then accompany Lee who sings the text of the Virtues over a I-V vocal drone. The men then respond to close the section, before all is repeated with variations and organum harmonies (Lee, 2007). Ordo Virtutum – Instrumental Prologue is a setting of the same melody for an instrumental ensemble. In this version additive rhythm is used to provide a pulse that there is no record of in the neumatic notation. Material that was sombre and austere is now infused with energy. This piece retains the odd lengths of Hildegard’s phrases, as opposed to O beatissime Ruperte (TSF1, track 13) which fits the melody into a constant time signature. Rhythm in this case is crucial, and an underlying quaver pulse ties the music together.

Time and harmony The Ordo Virtutum – Instrumental Prologue is in metric time. The following score shows the first two phrases of original melodic line of Hildegard followed by its instrumental adaptation. This use of metre responds to Hildegard’s music - it is definitely pulsed in a manner similar to the original, yet it is not historically judged as being capable of being played ‘in time’. The bars in this example are described as 14/8/ + 14/8/ + 10/8 + 9/8 + 10/8, in the scores of the realisation (Cunio, 2008).

The Patriachs, Prophets and Virtues explores differing uses of harmony. The music itself is repeated and developed in a modified strophic repeat. The first time there is a little harmony, principally a I -V drone from the male choir, the second time this radically changes. In the repeat (TSF disc 2, track 8) the gongs play through the text instead of only at the beginning and end. They provide a functional harmonic progression of I- bV1- 1V -11- 1 (D – Bb – G – E – D). The tarogato enters in a melismatic and dissonant manner, pushing towards suspended intervals such as the 2nd, commenting on phrases in the scale, and providing melodic emphasis completely different to the music of Hildegard. The voices are faster and more urgent and the male choir sings in organum harmony up a 5th from the original. The voices are also different in the repeat. The men sing in organum with the tenors a 5th higher, the reed organ enters with a drone and the texture grows to a tutti, culminating with the final refrain of the male choir in organum, with obligato lines for both the female voice and tarogato. The piece ends with the tarogato and gongs, with the tarogato not resolving its final phrase, finishing on the 2nd. In summary all three pieces are completely new pieces of music derived from the same source text and score. They are not arrangements or variations, as the character of each work is completely different, derived from compositional intention, parameters and forces. They are newly composed, utilising the score, improvisation and a limited amount of post production editing. I was feeling that the research proved a particular point, and would raise debate but to my surprise no-one was even mildly upset; reviewers either accepted the suppositions of the research or simply did not feel it necessary to mention. The ABC was more concerned about the marketing and packaging of the disc than any threat to the music of Hildegard, and academics responded to both the production values and sense of adventure in the project without addressing the implications of the new composition at all. However, something became apparent over the following year: I realised that, far from finishing this process, I had only just begun. A number of ideas were opening up for me as I began to teach composition increasingly with technology. In 2008 I asked students to write new compositions from motivic fragments that I prepared for them and the majority of the submitted works sounded like new compositions, despite coming from the same source material. 6 The logical next step was (as it still is

6

(Cunio: 2006).

There were three discreet assignments. The first involved composing a rhythm track from a combination of rhythm recordings. They were in different music styles, primarily Egyptian and South African and were deliberately given to the students in different beats per minute so that they could not be merely placed one under the other as tracks in a DAW. The second was to recompose from the actual audio files from a 2005

Create World: AUC, Brisbane Australia, November -2 December 2009 http://www.auc.edu.au/AUC currently) to treat my own work in a similar manner. This part of the project is in its genesis and I hope to expand it to include the work of a number of new and old composers, and to ask students, professional composers and interested third parties to undertake this process of recomposition with me. •

4. EXPERIMENT 2: NAMU AMIDA BUTSU The war has begun and, like the city of Darwin in 1942, the war is now is close to home. It is all very well to play games with music that are held in the public domain, or to write a piece of music on a royalty free loop, where no-one really suffers directly as a result of the experiment. But what happens when I disown my own music, moreso a piece that I am personally proud of, that has strong aesthetic and cultural values independent of its mere score? Am I being simply naive? And how does this disassociation take place, via the score or the recording? For me the answer is obvious: anyone can listen to a recording but few people can read a score. Further, the practical steps in manipulating a recording are very simple to learn. The selection of the piece was also important. I decided in 2007 that the first selection must be largely in one key and either in free time or strict metric time to allow for quick recomposition. There is also little point for me to undertake this process with popular music (though others researchers might want to). Garageband and other loop based programs already offer a large selection of popular and cinematic music styles to recompose with. Finally there are a few implicit cultural presumptions I hope to test during the project.

My critical edition Namu Amida Butsu was commissioned by Bronwyn Kirkpatrick. It was premiered in her Masters recital in shakuhachi,7 at the Carrington Ballroom, Katoomba on September 12, 2004. Kirkpatrick had been a student of Grand Master Riley Lee in Australia for the previous six years and was about to embark on a course of study in Japan. Her Masters recital was a milestone in her career, the only available qualification in Australia, as the shakuhachi does not currently run as a performance major in the University system. Kirkpatrick requested a piece of ‘new music’ that would relate to the body of traditional work for the shakuhachi, in particular honkyoku. It was decided to write a piece for solo shakuhachi that would interpret music written for the instrument, and the tradition which it has come from, Zen Buddhism. The piece is fifteen minutes long. Traditional honkyoku is a dialogue of sound and silence. The piece begins with silence and then the first breath, which is consciously experienced as it enters the whole body by means of the skin surface coming into the "hara" and then slowly up into the whole of the lungs. There is a slight holding of the breath and then the sound. The sound is entered into, developed, colored and exited, and then with just as much attention the silence is entered into. A seamless connection, unbroken. Silence of breathing leaving the music unbroken sound. The silence then becomes part of the sound as the sound becomes silence. Words only, if not experienced in minute detail in the body; this is the rhythm of the traditional Honkyoku (Brandwein, 1999).

Positive • • •

•

•

That new composition can be undertaken from motivic fragments on a program such as Garageband. That it is possible to write inherently new music from a static collection of source material. That any person with a computer has the ability to cut up and change the compositional structure of an existing work, and that these techniques, which are more common in popular and screen music can be applied to art music. That art musicians have generally distanced themselves from the loop revolution of Apple’s Garageband and other software which allows composition from motivic fragments, and that this process of composition is potentially as valid as notation. That this process can be applied both to audio, and scores exported as MIDI data.

composed from a limited subset of recordings that all have the same sonic signature. A guitar track made entirely out of Apple audio loops might have numerous compositional possibilities embedded in its scale pitch, harmony etc, but it only has one recorded sound-world, instead of the almost limitless numbers of instruments, recording spaces, microphone and preamplifiers that would otherwise be available. A loss of respect for the traditions of music as everything becomes equal on the page of the DAW.

Musical excerpts of Namu Amida Butsu

Negative • • •

A perceived or actual reduction in the need for high level skills or training to realise a new composition. The loss of notation as a primary medium for western composition, though this can also be argued as a positive outcome. A singularisation not of composition, but psychoacoustic and other schematic data, as music is increasingly

television commission of mine in which new instruments and tracks were encouraged, while the third was to compose from the supplied parts of an instrumental Irish tune. The experiments were done by students at the Sydney Institute.

(Cunio, 2004).

The piece develops from this motivic fragment and the intervals become increasingly jagged as time progresses alongside subtle additive rhythmic variations. This piece is designed to be played relatively ‘in time’, a response to the strict physical disciplines of Zen which gives the

7

A cylindrical bamboo flute extant from medieval Japan.

Create World: AUC, Brisbane Australia, November -2 December 2009 http://www.auc.edu.au/AUC illusion of formlessness through great attention to form itself. The lead up to and the opening of figure B illustrate this. The piece starts to move, and a melodic flow begins to take shape within the tonality of the opening. At figure B the alternation between 4/4 and 6/4 gives the piece a rhythmic flow that is subtle, yet still regulated.

(Cunio, 2004).

The piece then moves to the extremes of the instrument with many jumps, using either octave displacement or the intervals of a major and minor 9th. This section represents the yearning desire for enlightenment, and the stage of actively seeking that often comes before surrender. It is introduced towards the end of the first page at the figure D animato. The grace note leaps of a 7th (bar 46), followed by a 9th, are evocative of much of the piece. This outward focused section peaks on the high G# (the highest note of Kirkpatrick’s instrument) at bar 53, before retreating at bar 56. The repeated section at bar 56 gives the player the opportunity to explore the subtleties of repetition.

enlightenment chop wood carry water’. Though everything is outwardly the same after this musical representation of enlightenment, bar 97 is marked ‘with delicacy’. A final point of stillness is achieved at H. The markings are all soft and the note to play ‘breathy’ in bar 102 sets the tone for the final phrase, which is a merging with the cosmos. A ppp morendo at bar 103 makes the final bars as soft as possible.

(Cunio, 2004).

5. LET THE WAR BEGIN Namu Amida Butsu is currently being prepared for the upcoming collaboration. The following questionnaire will accompany the composition task. THE WAR ON THE CRITICAL EDITION VOLUME 1 NAMU AMIDA BUTSU I am making war on the critical or singular edition of music. Will you participate? Namu Amida Butsu was written for shakuhachi Master Bronwyn Kirkpatrick in 2004. I am hoping to find out whether it can be used as a basis for new composition in the manner of the Apple loop library or similar software looping programs.

(Cunio, 2004).

Figures E and F represent the transition towards enlightenment and an increasingly introverted state. The peak of this section is bar 70, the end of figure E, where the words ‘Namu Amida Butsu’ are written. They can be whispered, spoken or thought in the accompanying General Pause. The music is sparse. Long notes are punctuated by recurring grace notes, in the manner of much honkyoku. Fermatas are used at the end of every phrase to allow length in the playing.

The original piece has been cut up into randomly numbered motivic fragments that can easily be imported into your loop browser. From there simply drag, drop and compose, everything is up to you. You can form any structure, use or not use any part of the source material, combine multiple tracks, process the audio in any manner you wish, change the tempo, duration, amplitude, formant or anything else you can think of. Or if you are really stuck you can try to recreate what I did! When finished please burn the track to CD and post: Dr Kim Cunio: Lecturer Music Sound and the Moving Image Queensland Conservatorium PO Box 3428 South Bank Qld 4101 Australia Or email via http://www.yousendit.com/ To me: [email protected]

(Cunio, 2004).

I hope to report the results of this research at Create World 2010, and release a disc of the results in 2010.

The piece ends with one last flourish at G, a representation of the Zen Buddhist quote and parable ‘Before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after

While this process is in its infancy I feel strongly that there are two legitimate means by which to challenge the critical edition, the mode of multiple source based

Create World: AUC, Brisbane Australia, November -2 December 2009 http://www.auc.edu.au/AUC composition (Hildegard of Bingen) and the recomposition of an existing composition (Namu Amida Butsu), utilising the technologies of popular music. Both require substantive further investigation.

6.

REFERENCES

1. Bohlman, P. (2005). General Editor. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music A-R Edition 2005ISSN 1066-8209 introduction,.http://www.areditions.com/rr/rrotm.html. 2. Brandwein, M. (2007). Playing Honkyoku;_Praying Honkyoku, USA, 1999, www.shakuhachi.com, 2007. 2. Cunio, K. (2008). Intercultural composition and the realisation of ancient and medieval music. University of Western Sydney, 2008. 3. Cunio, K. (2004). Namu Amida Butsu score, Lotus Foot Music 2004. 4. Cunio, K. (2006). The Sacred Fire scores, Lotus Foot Music, 2007. 5. Cunio, K. (2009). The Thread of Life: Intercultural music making and the process of defining cultural connection. In proceedings of MSA 2009, 25-28 October 2009, Newcastle, Australia. 6. Lee, H. & Cunio, K. (2007). Hildegard Von Bingen, The Sacred Fire, ABC Classics, 4765705, 2007.

7. Lee, H. (2007). The Sacred Fire liner notes, ABC Classics, 4765705, 2007. 8. Reid B. (2007). Composition, Personal communication, 23 November – 15 December 2007.

Waving creatively: An examination of Google Wave to  facilitate collaboration in creative processes   Andrew Dekker, Stephen Viller, Aaron Tan  {dekker | viller | aaron} @itee.uq.edu.au   School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering   University of Queensland   St Lucia, Queensland 

Abstract   Current technologies to support collaboration rely on either synchronous or asynchronous  communication at any given time and a combination of multiple tools is often used, which in turn  can get in the way of the creative activity itself. This paper explores the barriers and challenges in  using digital collaborative tools in the creative process. We examine the role of Google Wave in  creative collaboration and its potential to become an environment to support conceptual phases  of design, and document the creative process. Finally we explore the potential of Wave, and how  it can be extended to integrate with current creative workflows and design tools through the  development of CocoaWave: a Mac OS X Wave client.     Themes: Ubiquitous computing, Online collaboration, Social networks.  

Introduction   Computers have played many different roles in supporting creativity, particularly as the content  being created has moved into the digital realm. Computers are increasingly used in the creation  of new content with suites of tools dedicated to the creation and manipulation of online  multimedia artefacts such as digital video, audio, and images, as well as print‐based texts and  images. These tools are typically targeted at individuals rather than groups or teams, so that any  collaboration around the artefacts produced must either take place in a meeting where the team  members gather in the same space, or if the team are distributed and co‐presence is not possible,  then some other tool or technology must be employed to support the collaboration. The tools  used to support collaboration are often very mundane and everyday in their nature, for example  discussion can be supported via a telephone call or teleconference facilities, and richer  conversations can take place via videoconference, particularly with the increasingly standard  inclusion of video cameras in mainstream computers such as the built‐in iSight cameras in Apple  iMacs and MacBooks. Perhaps the most ubiquitous tool for electronic communication is email,  which since the advent of multimedia mail standards has become widely used (many would say  overused) for the distribution of digital content such as embedded images and file attachments.  This brings us to the problem being explored here, which is how digital tools are used to support  creativity through collaboration, and how the design of such tools can be improved based on an  understanding of the nature of collaborative activities in creative processes. In the remainder of  this paper we examine first how the creative process has been characterised, and in particular  the role that collaboration plays in creativity. We then discuss how computer‐based technologies  have been designed to support collaboration, and present a number of problems with current  approaches to supporting collaboration in creativity. We examine the role of Google Wave in  creative collaboration and its potential to become an environment to support conceptual phases  of design, and document the creative process. Finally we explore the potential of Wave, and how  it can be extended to integrate with current creative workflows and design tools through the  proof of concept development of CocoaWave, a Mac OS X‐based Wave client.  

Collaboration in creativity   In this paper, we are looking at collaboration within creative processes (by which we mean a  series of actions that generate, iterate and evolve ideas over time). There already exist several  definitions of the creative process resulting from a large amount of research conducted into the 

process itself and its influencing factors (Warr et al., 2005; Fischer, 2005; Sternberg et al., 1999;  Maslow, 1963), but we are not concerned here with debates around the definition or with  contrasting specific understandings of the process between different creative disciplines. Instead,  we are interested in the social process that emerges around creativity, and how we can support  this collaboration with digital tools. Farooq et al. (2007), break down these collaborative  processes within creativity into three core activities: creative conceptualisation, realisation  (implementation), and evaluation. We feel it is clear that throughout the lifecycle of the creative  process, the requirements and needs of a support system will change, and there may also arise  specific needs for some specific communities. Nevertheless, we wish to explore the design of a  general platform for creative collaboration which can subsequently be tailored for more specific  purposes.   Based on numerous studies within this area (Perry‐Smith et al., 2003; Warr et al., 2005;  Mamykina et al., 2002), we can highlight key aspects of creative collaboration that need to be  considered when determining the appropriateness of digital support tools (generically rather  than for one specific field or creative activity). Tools must be able to support diverse and  evolving collaboration. They have to be useful not only at the conceptualisation stage, but also  the realisation and evaluation stages. They have to support multiple methods of interaction, from  real‐time to asynchronous, and be able to move between them. They need rich media support, as  once media is split between multiple collaboration tools, content is no longer managed in a  structured way. From this, we argue that it is fundamental that the tool provides a means for  documenting the process over time, for the evaluation stage of the creative process, and to  support iterative workflows. The collaborative tool must also support awareness between  participants, and put emphasis on the collaboration, rather than the creative outputs. As soon as  ideas or artefacts are required to be packaged for distribution before they can be collaborated on,  the efficiency and flow of the process is dramatically reduced (Warr et al., 2005).  

Computer‐mediated communication   A number of terms have been used to denote the research into, and development of, technologies  to support cooperative activities. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), a research  community which grew out of Human‐Computer Interaction (HCI) has evolved from an early  focus on the design of collaborative tools and studies of cooperation in various enterprises, into a  broad multidisciplinary exploration of how computer‐based technologies can support social  interaction of all types. Around the same stage in the mid 1980s the term Groupware became  popular to denote software designed to support groups. Early CSCW research characterised the  nature of collaboration, and the tools to support it, in terms of how it is distributed over space  and time. The now classic “four‐square map” of groupware (Johansen, 1988) characterises  groupware in terms of where it sits in a 2 x 2 table mapping the activities taking place in same  and different place and time. More recently, this rather simplistic view was revised to instead  consider how activity can be placed in a 2‐dimensional space mapping space and time, in order to  account for how some technologies can be used across the space/time division in the original  classification. For example, email to a colleague on a local area network is delivered with so little  delay that virtually synchronous communication is possible with what is essentially an  asynchronous communication technology—and many people not only use email in this  synchronous manner, but are surprised when instant communication does not happen.  Conversely, asynchronous message passing can take place when using synchronous instant  messaging (IM) tools such as ICQ and iChat. As CSCW became more established and more studies  of such tools in action were conducted, design principles and guidelines started to emerge which  provided designers with guidance for common problems and pitfalls such as understanding the  cost/benefit equation for deploying CSCW systems, how a 'critical mass' of users are required for  collaborative systems to work, and the challenges raised by technology that by its very nature  must be used in multiple locations by many people at the same and also at different times before  it can be evaluated effectively (Grudin, 1994). In more recent times, with the explosion of  collaborative applications on web‐based platforms, now broadly characterised as Web 2.0, the  term Social Software has become adopted to describe essentially the same area. In contrast with  the CSCW community, which had its roots in academia, Social Software designers tend to be in  internet‐focused companies and start‐ups, releasing their products online, often in long‐running  'public beta' mode while the critical mass user‐base is built and the stability of the software is 

improved. Similar to Grudin's challenges for designers of groupware, there have been prominent  authors in the field writing for designers of social software about what must be designed for and  taken account of (Shirky, 2003).    In recent times, there has been an explosion of social software applications that are designed to  support online collaboration in various ways. The basic building blocks of these systems are  Blogs, which allow quick and easy publishing of content online; Wikis, which allow collaborative  editing of online content using simple mark‐up; and Forums, which implement well‐established  note + comment discussions (which have their origins in the bulletin boards which existed in the  earliest days of the internet). In the area of creativity, several prominent tools have evolved  around the online publication and discussion of multimedia content. For example, flickr1  supports the online publication of photos and videos, allowing discussion, annotation, and  critique through the web site. In addition to the large community of users sharing their holiday  snaps, flickr also supports an active community of professional and semi‐professional  photographers who use the site to publicise and receive critique on their work. YouTube2, while  it has a strong association with the posting of amusing clips, music videos, and copyright material  from TV shows, and its comments tend to not be as thoughtful or constructive as they are on  flickr, is also widely used to publish creative content from video makers.   

Problems with current tools   In studying research into collaborative creativity, and reviewing the numerous options for  collaborative tools to support this social process, we have found a number of areas where  current tools fall short in terms of their support for the creative aspects of this collaboration.   “Group members need an integrated view that networks and combines their contributions  in a meaningful way and provides and social and temporal index of who is doing what and  when” ‐ Farooq et al. (2007)  

The need to use multiple tools. The expense of developing “collaboration‐aware” desktop  applications has always been a hurdle in CSCW and Groupware, where alternative approaches  have previously been explored whereby single‐user applications can be 'fooled' into behaving as  if they are collaborative applications. The proliferation of social software tools available over the  internet is leading to a situation now where there is an increasing number of tools available  which target specific niche markets. This approach offers the promise of an integrated online  environment where a single application can support not only the creation of digital content, but  also the creative collaboration that leads to it. This is still far from the norm at the moment,  however, where it is more likely that specific tools will be used for content creation, and others  will be used for the creative process around this. For example, using Adobe Creative Suite tools to  generate illustrations, and email/IM/flickr for initial idea generation, discussion, and critique.    “In addition to summarizing interaction history, group members need a workspace for  reflection where they can discuss pros and cons of novel ideas, provide an exegesis, and  decide how a particular idea would be implemented” ‐ Farooq et al. (2007)  

Content vs. Process: the overheads of using a specific technology. One of the issues to  contend with in any collaboration is the effort required to maintain the collaboration itself. In  small group work this is often referred to as the 'group maintenance' problem, and refers to the  fact that the benefits of working in a team have to be offset against the overheads of keeping the  team functioning effectively. When collaboration takes place in a creative context, the line  between content and process can become blurred as a large amount of the process is focused on  generating, recording, critiquing, and reflecting about the content. However, because of the need  to use separate tools to support the different media being used, the collaborators are forced to  spend more time and effort focusing on the tools at hand, rather than on the content or the  communication about it.                                                                       1 http://flickr.com/  2 http://youtube.com/ 

“An attractive solution is to give users control over a flexible space for composition, able to  impose or remove constraints at will, making use of them as an aid to understanding  practicalities rather than having to work around them when developing ideas. This also  allows composers to design a space suited to their own working method and current  project” ‐ Coughlan et al. (2006)  

Fitting into a linear (timebased) process model. Creative processes are often non‐linear,  especially when collaboration is concerned. Early generative stages of a creative process where  multiple options are being entertained and evaluated can lead to parallel operation on multiple  fronts until a final solution is arrived at/agreed upon. Many tools are limited by either a  hierarchical model of how points in the process are related to each other, or alternatively a linear  timeline‐based representation. When reviewing the process and moving backwards from the  current solution to review all decisions made along the way, these solutions work reasonably  well, but as soon as one needs to reevaluate past decisions due to arriving at a creative 'dead‐ end' in the process, if the tool hasn't successfully captured the previously dismissed alternatives,  then reviewing and changing earlier decisions can be very difficult.   “Our analysis suggests that a recap of interaction history, specifically for novel ideas, is  important for group members to have access to” ‐ Farooq et al. (2007)    “[in music composition, a non‐linear process is essential,] with composers modifying  elements of a composition or adding completely new ideas at late stages”. ‐ Coughlan et al.  (2006)   

Lack of replay and revisiting decisions.  Further to the above, it is often useful to return to the  beginning of a creative process and be able to replay it from start to finish. If the supporting tools  do not allow for this playback functionality there is a problem here, which is compounded by  how the creative process is represented and stored.   “When creativity is taken as a long‐term, complex activity, support for awareness is also  required for group members to monitor the development of ideas, track how these ideas  got narrowed down to a few alternatives, and to stay cognizant of how the alternatives are  being implemented and integrated by other group members” ‐ Farooq et al. (2007)  

Lack of awareness of others' activities.  Awareness is one of the key research areas within  CSCW (Rittenbruch & McEwan, 2009), and is concerned with a variety of issues around how  collaborative technologies support their users' awareness of the activity of others, and of the  development of the content. Awareness may be something as simple as providing a 'telepointer'  for each user of the system so that others are able to see where they are pointing or gesturing to  in the shared workspace. Alternatively, it may be a feature directly related to the content, where  users are able to see the content being added to the shared workspace as it is being created.   “Creative contributions, even smaller ones, are necessary to help the creative actor simply  maintain his or her status as well as enhance it.” ‐ Perry‐Smith et al., 2003   “Production blocking is common when ideas are expressed verbally within a group.  Verbally expressing ideas is a form of asynchronous interaction, i.e. only one person in a  group can express her ideas at one time. The problem with synchronous forms of  interaction with respect to group reativity is that if one member of the group is expressing  her ideas, other members of the group are simultaneously prohibited from expressing their  ideas. They may subsequently forget their ideas or suppress them because they may feel  their ideas are less relevant as time passes”. ‐ Warr et al., 2005  

Granularity of interaction. Finally, and related to the above point about awareness, the level of  granularity of interaction that is communicated to collaborators using the tool also has an impact 

on how well they are engaged in the process with their team mates. When thought of in terms of  shared text editors, it is the difference between sending updates on a character‐by‐character  basis, allowing others to see keyboard activity in near real time (including mistakes and  deletions), to only updating the content when a user hits return. In‐between, it is also possible to  think of word‐by‐word, or line‐by‐line updates as well. The decision for tool developers here is  often a trade‐off between better activity awareness and privacy, as well as the cost of sending  more data over the network to update all collaborators with different levels of detail as the  content is updated. It is also worth considering the challenge of implementing a multi‐user undo  function and how this might change as the granularity of updates shifts from an atomic level up  to larger, possibly more meaningful, chunks of content. Add to this the further complexity of  updates happening simultaneously in order to reduce production blocking issues (allowing  simultaneous inputs with idea generation activities, for example), and the enormous challenge of  developing tools to support collaborative design becomes all too apparent.  

Google Wave   Google Wave is a web browser based collaboration and communications tool developed by  Google which investigates ways that distributed collaboration can be enhanced. The concept  presented by Google for Wave is “what would email look like if we set out to invent it today?”,  however this idea can be easily misunderstood and unrepresentative of the technology. Rather  than treating Google Wave as similar to email from an interaction perspective, its comparison is  more related to the use of email: a ubiquitous platform that facilitates communication and  collaboration, and is generic enough that it can be adapted and extended for unexpected uses.    The use of a generic collaborative tool such as Wave has the benefit of being a single contact  point for all digital collaboration. Tools such as Sharepoint and Alfresco have been used to  facilitate collaboration within enterprises. The flaw with these tools for creative collaboration,  however, is that they focus on a collection of documents and conversations in a heirarchical  organisational structure, and do not aid in facilitating continuous collaboration; rather they act as  a repository for documents produced throughout the creative process. Additionally these tools  do not directly provide creative support internally, and instead act as a hub from the output of  other applications.   To further explore Google Wave as a collaborative tool to support the creative process, we  outline the current implementation of Wave as well as the potential of Wave as a collaborative  tool for supporting creativity. The Wave interface (see Figure 1) is separated out similar to an  email application, primarily consisting of a list of users, a list of conversations, a list of folders  (which contain conversations), and a wave viewing and authoring interface. We can break these  elements down into two main categories, organisation (users list, conversations list and folders  list), and the wave authoring interface. While the organisation aspects of the Wave interface are  similar to existing collaborative tools (albeit with an intuitive drag and drop user interface), the  authoring interface is unique and should be explored in detail.   A wave is a conversation where one or more users can create, modify and remove content.  Rather than the content within a wave being temporal based, users are allowed to insert content  at any point in a wave, as well as nest content as a response to existing content. Each piece of  content is termed a wavelet, and is the atomic unit of a wave. Google Wave makes it easy to  automate and connect up content and interweaving ideas with each other without enforcing a  specific structure. The way of interacting with objects here is intuitive, the conversation is free  flowing and it does not interfere with the creative workflow.  

Figure 1: The Google Wave interface  

   A wavelet can contain not only textual information, but images and other forms of media (both  interactive and non‐interactive). The media type that a wave supports is not limited to commonly  used media (such as images and video), but can contain any form of media by using plug‐ins  called Gadgets. Examples of Wave Gadgets include the ability to include and annotate a Google  Map, construct a Concept Map or flowchart, multiplayer Sudoku, a virtual whiteboard for  drawing primitives and free‐form objects, and even a fully automated organisation and initiation  of a teleconference meeting. Media within these Gadgets that a user adds into a wavelet are not  only shown to all participants, but allow full interactivity and can be edited by any user within  the wave, in real‐time. This allows Wave to not be limited in what kinds of collaboration can be  supported, compared with other collaboration tools which often fallback on email for the  distribution of unique media types. Wave also supports Robots, which are automated users that  can be programmed to either generate or react to content within a Wave.   The wave itself is a constantly evolving collection of wavelets, organised by the users, and  synchronised to all users in near real‐time. The underlying Wave infrastructure provides all  users within a wave character by character, line by line updates of any changes or additions to a  wave. Communication is synchronous, allowing multiple users to edit a piece of content  simultaneously, while maintaining information integrity.   Waves are persistent and not lost during breaks in conversation, allowing for asynchronous  collaboration where it is preferred or required. A big strength of Wave over other asynchronous  collaborative tools is that wave constantly keeps track of updates, and has the ability to go back  in time, playing through the evolution of the wave one interaction at a time. As Farroq et al.  (2007) point out, “When creativity is taken as a long‐term, complex activity, support for  awareness is also required for group members to monitor the development of ideas, track how  these ideas got narrowed down to a few alternatives, and to stay cognizant of how the  alternatives are being implemented and integrated by other group members”.  The current Google Wave interface is similar to other Google applications, such as Gmail and  Google Calendar. As Wave is a web application, any user with internet access and a web browser  is able to access and collaborate on a Wave, without requiring a deep technical background or  powerful computer (one of the best ways to interact with Wave is via the web browser on the  iPhone). Additionally, as no information is stored locally, a user can move between locations or  devices and still have the full history and ability to collaborate inside the wave.  

The potential of Google Wave ‐ Addressing the problem of  current technologies   The potential of Wave is less in its individual parts, but more in its consolidation of different  media types, and its adaptability. The scientific community is already embracing Wave, and  utilizing it in ways that it was not originally designed (BBC, 2009). Wave does not force a single  method of collaboration, instead it provides the tools that allow its users to develop a process  that works for them. A wave is simply a wrapper for media and information, providing users  ways to manipulate and iterate the information collaboratively. Due to its realtime appearance,  Wave also promotes the idea of a “stream of consciousness”, rather than allowing users to reflect  on their work before publishing. This drives the collaborative aspect of the work, and reinforces  collaboration on the process itself, rather than the outputs. Current collaborative tools focus on a  single form of media (for example Google Docs focuses on textual content), and therefore  backchannel collaboration gets pushed into the creation itself, and is often hard to separate. Due  to the flexible and generic nature of Wave, users can develop a way to easily differentiate  between backchannel conversation, collaboration, and the creation itself (Figure 2).   Figure 2. Google Wave Gadgets can support collaboration via alternate means of media,  rather than simply text  

  While Wave already offers many advantages over traditional collaboration platforms, the real  benefit is yet to be fully realised. Wave is not simply a unique user interface that promotes  collaboration, instead it is built upon the latest technology to support both synchronous and  asynchronous collaboration. The standard user interface for Wave is an example of how the  technology can be utilised, and is being updated daily to improve the user experience as well as  add new features to improve collaboration. Due to the open source nature of Wave, the  technology allows a tremendous amount of interoperability with existing technologies, and has  the potential to pull in information from other mediums such as email and instant messaging  collaboratively.   The core strength of Wave is the technological concepts it is founded upon: Operational  Transformation (OT) and Federation. OT allows each collaborator within a wave to safely  collaborate in real‐time. While other technologies (such as Google Docs and SubEthaEdit) have  previously implemented this, there are limitations on both the update speed, and also 

consistency/reliability of the information being presented. This is important for creative  collaboration, where idea generation, as well as quick and agile feedback can be made difficult by  struggling with the technology and consistency. OT provides the seamless character by character  synchronisation seen in the current interface, as well as the ability for history and revision  information to be recorded effectively. As Wave is built upon OT, users can be assured that all  functionality of Wave (even those created by third parties) will record history and maintain  consistency between collaborators.   Within a creative context, the main benefit of OT is that people can be brought in and taken out  throughout the creative process, rather than merely providing thoughts on creative output. OT  allows people brought into the process later an opportunity to view the entire creative process  from its inception, giving them real insight into the creation rather than just its final delivered  state. While there exists other collaborative tools that provide this ability, they are limited to a  single type of media, or require a conscious effort by the user to ensure that the process is  documented. The ability to peruse the entire creative process by external users also can support  reinvigoration of ideas that were considered during the generative part of the process, but  discarded later on.   The other foundation technology which makes Wave such a powerful tool for supporting  creativity is that Wave servers are federated: a team of artists or designers can run their own  Wave server locally, and have the option of connecting to other Wave servers. Within creative  industries, this has large implications, as it allows artists to work either in privacy or in public,  without consequence. This also allows information to be stored on a privately owned machine,  rather than giving information to an external source (such as Google). Federation also allows  multiple Wave servers to be connected, but still distributed, so that working with external  collaborators is possible without giving them direct access to the teams Wave server. Due to this  federated nature, it also dramatically reduces the potential downtime which other collaboration  services suffer from.   From this, we can see that with regards to the initial problems identified with current  collaboration tools and their support for the creative process, the Wave infrastructure addresses  each of these to an extent:   •

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media support ‐ While Wave can be considered primarily text based interaction, the  infrastructure allows for Gadget Extensions and Robots which can be developed by the  Wave community to support specific media types and automated actions   content vs process ‐ The dynamic structure of a Wave changes over time, based on the  direction and intention of collaboration, and this puts the emphasis on the evolving  process, rather than specific pieces of content. Wave does not enforce a specific set of  media types, rather its treats all media the same, a piece in the overall conversation.   linear model ‐ The structure of a Wave is not determined by temporal factors (unlike  more other collaborative tools), but rather it is based on a tree structure, where ideas  can be expanded upon and grouped together.   lack of replay / traceability ‐ The infrastructure of Wave allows participants to play  back the entire evolution of a Wave.   lack of awareness ‐ Wave promotes awareness by offering near real‐time collaboration,  as well as play back functionality.   granularity ‐ The Operational Transformational functionality that Wave is built upon is  based on individual interaction synchronisation (character by character, line by line),  while still supporting asynchronous collaboration (in that temporal differences between  users are not only allowed, but fully supported (due to the play back ability of a Wave)  

While Wave does address these initial concerns, the concept of Wave creates others which may  hinder the collaborative process. Due to a wave structure being dramatically different to more  traditional means of collaboration, it can become confusing and frustrating when trying to  observe and collaborate. New information added to a wave may not necessarily be found at the  top or bottom of a wave, but nested deep within existing content, “Google Wave's inline reply  capability turns a conversation into a tree that can grow any number of branches. When wave 

participants add new information to a wave on different branches at different times, the non‐ linear nature of the discussion can be overwhelming and feel unnatural.”, (Trapani et al., 2009).  While the OT functionality of Wave mitigates the current awareness and granularity issues, the  inherent speed at which a wave evolves can lead to a feeling of anarchy, especially when multiple  users are adding content at the same time in different areas of the wave. OT also enforces the  need to summarise, refactor or garden a wave conversation throughout the collaboration, to  ensure legibility, maintain organisation and effectively group ideas and conversations.   Waves are conceptually a single entity, with users either actively collaborating, or having no  accessibility to a wave. Once a user becomes part of a wave, they inherently own the Wave, and  cannot be removed. This may change as the product evolves, but fits with the current conceptual  model of Wave. Another issue with Wave is that although parts of a wave can be extracted to  form a new wave, there is no support for a hierarchal structure of a wave (rather waves may be  connected via hyperlinks similar to websites, which forces the user to browse between waves to  gain an overall understanding). This structure limitation constrains how a wave can shape over  time, and does not allow the ability of information in a wave to be efficiently moved between  existing waves.  While Wave has many advantages over traditional collaborative methods, currently we are not  able to get streaming updates and there does not seem to be any way to know if a wave has been  updated without going to the site itself. Unlike other social media tools, there is no incentive to go  back to a wave and continue the conversation. It is still a very reactive tool and most of the time  there is no one else is around. We need to fix these issues and more if we wish to attract  newcomers to Google Wave. Email may not be ideal as a collaboration tool, but it is going to take  more than a good user interface and a handful of content widgets to make Google Wave the  collaboration tool of choice for creative collaboration.  

CocoaWave ‐ Extending Wave   From our initial investigation, we found that while Wave was an excellent collaboration tool, the  nature of the application (being itself a website) limited how we could use it. Wave does support  the ability to script bots, which can act and create content within a wave automatically, however  these bots are based on the web, rather than locally, which leads to the same limitations. From  this finding we examined potential technologies that we could use to further extend Wave that  would not be limited by the web sandbox. Due to the current lack of an official external  Application Programming Interface (API) to Wave, it was important to choose a tool which could  easily hook into the web interface to allow the sending and receiving of information. The  technology directions that we investigated were Cocoa, Fluid, Adobe Air and Python (Table A).   Table A: Comparison of development platforms    

Cocoa  

Fluid  

Adobe Air / Flex   Python  

Platform  

OS‐X  

OS‐X  

Windows, OS‐X,  Linux  

Windows, OS‐X,  Linux  

Application Type   Native  

Native  

Flash Player VM  

VM with C  extensions  

Integration with  system  

Full  

None  

Limited *  

Full  

Development  

Easy/Medium  

Very Easy  

Easy/Medium  

Medium/Difficult  

Built in webkit  Built in webkit  Requires  Some  (web browser)  (web browser)  programming  (Greasemonkey)   APIs   APIs   HTTP Requests   * Adobe Air is run within a sandbox, limiting its connectivity with external applications and  hardware   Website  Integration  

Fluid allows users to wrap a website in a native application, and allows us to hook into the  website to manage notifications. The main problem with Fluid was the inability to extend the  application to hook into other applications/hardware. While languages such as Python give us a  powerful way to integrate with the operating system, they do not give us ready‐to‐use  functionality to hook directly into the Wave interface, and instead require a lot of programming  time to manually connect to the interface. Alternatively, Air/Flex and Cocoa both have the ability  to run websites within the application, which has two benefits: we can build upon the current  Wave interface without having to rebuild it, and we have the ability to send and receive  information to/from Wave through the provided APIs. We chose to develop prototypes in both  Cocoa and Flex/Air to further examine the appropriateness of the platform. However we  discovered that the native speed (or lack thereof) of the Flash Player, combined with the  complexity of the Wave interface, led to an unstable system and issues with sending information  to Wave. In contrast, Cocoa suffered none of these issues, and while it is a more complex  language, we were able to develop the application (with examples of sending/receiving  information from Wave through the Webkit Javascript API) in less than 100 lines of Objective C  (64 lines to be exact). In under 12 hours we were able to creative a native OS‐X application which  allowed us to extend Wave and provided us with a custom interface that we could modify (Figure  3). We have now distributed CocoaWave under an open source license in the hope of seeing how  other designers can utilise it for integrating with external applications and hardware devices.  The full source code is available at http://code.google.com/p/cocoawave/.   Figure 3. The current CocoaWave interface  

   In essence, CocoaWave is simply a wrapper application for Google Wave, that enables us to  customise both the interface as well as interaction with Wave beyond what is possible in its  current web based implementation. Our interest in Wave is how it could be adapted (apart from  the official Gadget, Extensions and Bot support which is built into the client) to better support  both integration with other applications, as well as external devices. From our exploration of  Wave as a collaborative tool, we found that the web browser based interface limited how Wave  could be adapted into existing workflows, especially compared with legacy platforms. Other  collaborative technologies such as Email and Instant Messaging desktop applications have the 

ability to notify users of new communication via the client applications, and already have the  ability to be integrated with other applications and hardware devices.   While Wave can already support a large number forms of interaction, the use of the Wave  interface as a creative collaboration tool has the potential to hinder the creative process, and we  anticipate that the current interaction is more likely to be used as a creative output tool, rather  than integrated into the existing creative process. The ability to connect with other applications  and hardware devices would enable us to collaborate around information directly and  automatically (for example sending MIDI information between collaborators). For example, a  Musician would be able to integrate their electric guitar directly to a Wave application, which  could record the ongoing process. External collaborators could view and collaborate in this  process in realtime. Rather than forcing collaborators to exist and interact within the Wave  sandbox, this reinforces Wave as an underlying framework to support collaboration (Figure 4).   Figure 4. CocoaWave has the potential to allow external devices to communicate through  Wave  

  In the current implementation of CocoaWave, we have successfully been able to send information  between CocoaWave clients without manual interaction with the Wave interface. This  implementation has shown that with extra work we can support standard protocol  communication through the Wave infrastructure. There are considerable benefits to this method  of communication compared with existing methods. Firstly, this external communication  happens in tandem with the existing Wave collaboration, keeping interaction within a single  application, reducing the need for multitasking between collaborative applications. Secondly, we  have the ability to not only transfer information across the Wave, but augment it with Gadgets  that exist within the Wave. For instance, a musician on a guitar can play, other participants  within the Wave could listen to the music, and additionally a graphic of a guitar could be  embedded within the Wave, and visualise the notes being played. This, combined with the ability  to communicate within the Wave itself, as well as the underlying features of Wave (OT and  Federation), leads to a potentially rich and powerful collaborative tool. It must be noted, 

however, that although Wave provides near real‐time synchronisation, there is a noticeable lag  with regards to data.  

Conclusions and Future Work   In our current work, there are two directions we wish to explore further. While we have explored  Wave and determined it to be a step in the right direction, we are yet to conduct a formal  evaluation on the technology with regards to collaboration in the creative process. To formally  evaluate this, we are planning to conduct a case study and evaluate Wave in an undergraduate  Studio Design course in first half of 2010 throughout the entire design process. This physical  computing course focuses on groups of multidisciplinary design students working together over  a 4 month period to produce a tangible physical computing concept. We hypothesise that by  utilising and formalising Google Wave in the team collaboration process, we can qualitatively  analyse the effectiveness of Wave in creative design processes.   Figure 5. A proof of concept CocoaWave implementation which demonstrates the  communication of external applications/devices through standard protocols such as MIDI  and XML.  

  We are also planning continued development and extension of CocoaWave, to examine the  underlying infrastructure capabilities of Google Wave (including Federation and Operational  Transformations). The next stage of the CocoaWave development is to create a high fidelity  prototype which has the ability to connect input devices (such as an electric guitar or sensor  array) to output devices (audible and visual displays) via the Wave protocols and interface  (FIgure 5). Through this we hope to better rich collaboration in various creative fields by 

enabling distributed connection of devices, as well as effectively integrate with the existing  collaborative capabilities of Wave.   In this paper, we have examined current technologies which can facilitate collaboration in the  creative process, and proposed that Google Wave can provide collaborators with a central way to  collaborate without the main limitations or disadvantages of current technologies. We have also  examined the issues of Wave, and developed a prototype application (CocoaWave) to see how we  can extend Wave to provide features which help bring Wave into existing creative processes.  From our initial investigation of Wave, we have found that while it is not currently the ultimate  collaborative tool to support the creative process, the foundation of Wave allows it to be a much  more powerful tool than existing systems, and is certainly a step in the right direction  

References   BBC, (2009), Strength in Science Collaboration,  available at  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8342851.stm Retrieved 5/11/2009  Coughlan, T. and Johnson, P. 2006. Interaction in creative tasks. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI  Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April  22 ‐ 27, 2006) CHI '06. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 531‐540.    Farooq, U., Carroll, J. M., and Ganoe, C. H. (2007). Supporting creativity with awareness in  distributed collaboration. In Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM Conference on  Supporting Group Work (Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, November 04 ‐ 07, 2007). GROUP  '07. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 31‐40.   Fischer, G. 2005. Distances and diversity: sources for social creativity. In Proceedings of the 5th  Conference on Creativity & Cognition (London, United Kingdom, April 12 ‐ 15, 2005).  C&C '05. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 128‐136.     Grudin, J. (1994). Groupware and social dynamics: Eight challenges for  developers. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 92‐105.   Johansen, R. (Ed.), (1988) Groupware : Computer support for business teams. New York: Free  Press.   Mamykina, L., Candy, L., and Edmonds, E. (2002). Collaborative creativity. Communications of the  ACM Vol. 45, No. 10, pp. 96‐99.  Maslow, A.H., 1963. The creative attitude. Structuralist, Vol. 3, pp. 4‐10.  Perry‐Smith, J.E. & Shalley, C.E. (2003) The Social Side of Creativity: A Static and Dynamic Social  Network Perspective, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 89‐106  Rittenbruch, M., & McEwan, G. (2009) An historical reflection on awareness in collaboration, In  Markopoulos, P., De Ruyter, B., & Mackay, W. (Eds.) Awareness Systems: Advances in  Theory, Methodology and Design, London: Springer, pp. 3‐48.   Shirky, C. (2003). A group is its own worst enemy [Electronic Version]. ETech keynote. available  at http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html Retrieved 5/11/2009  Sternberg, R.J. and Lubart, T.I., 1999. The Concept of Creativity: Prospects and Paradigms. In  Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.) Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,  pp. 3‐15.   Trapani, G. and Pash, A. 2008. The complete guide to Google Wave. Available at  http://completewaveguide.com/   Warr, A. and O'Neill, E. 2005. Understanding design as a social creative process. In Proceedings of  the 5th Conference on Creativity & Cognition (London, United Kingdom, April 12 ‐ 15,  2005). C&C '05. New York, NY: ACM Press, pp. 118‐127.   

CreateWorld 2009 – Mobile Me: Creativity on the Go, 30 November – 2 December, Brisbane, Australia

Authority 3.0: Toward a digital press for universitybased musicians, and its role in validating ERA outputs Paul Draper Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University South Bank, QLD, 4101 Australia +61 7 3735 6263 [email protected] ABSTRACT

This paper examines dilemmas for Australian music academics in terms of quantifying their research equivalence in the recent Federal government ERA preparations. To do so, short written statements and limited digital assets were offered in a trial evaluation framework somewhat disconnected from the original musical contexts and their meanings, yet this assessment model will increasingly impact upon career progression, esteem, and research funding in future ERA rounds. Consequently, this paper reviews the salient features of recent web 1.0 and web 2.0 activity to argue the case for a scholarly digital resource peer-review system as ‘authority 3.0’. Keywords

Digital resources, music research, peer review. INTRODUCTION While current computing practice abounds with innovations like online auctions, blogs, wikis, twitter, social networks and online social games, few if any genuinely new theories have taken root in the corresponding “top” academic journals . . Excess rigor supports the demands of appointment, grant and promotion committees, but is drying up the wells of academic inspiration . . the inevitable limits of what can only be called a feudal academic knowledge exchange system, with trends like exclusivity, slowness, narrowness, conservatism, self– involvement and inaccessibility. We predict an upcoming social upheaval in academic publishing as it shifts from a feudal to democratic form, from knowledge managed by the few to knowledge managed by the many . . The drive will be that only democratic knowledge exchange can scale up to support the breadth, speed and flexibility modern cross–disciplinary research needs. (Whitworth & Friedman, 2009, para. 1)

While these ideas encompass a wide-ranging agenda for academic research and peer-review, their thrust highlights some of the issues confronting university-based artists whose work falls in the ‘non-traditional’ research domain. This paper considers musicians in the academy, and the barriers and opportunities arising from the recent Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) trial collection of Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA)

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digital recordings, scores and written value claims. It questions the next steps for the ERA peer review processes in consideration of the confounding relationships between end-users (general public consumers of music), commercial approaches to online music endeavours, and a place for authentic peer-review of scholarly creative works. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARTISTS IN THE UNIVERSITY

Australian Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) were amalgamated with universities following the radical restructuring of tertiary education begun by the Hawke government under education minister John Dawkins in the late 1980s. This required more than just educational convergence, but also an evaluation of what might constitute ‘researchequivalent’ outputs by creative and performing artists, now as university academics. Subsequently, a significant policy initiative was the release of Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy (Keating, 1994), marking the first occasion of an Australian federal government enunciating a clearly articulated cultural policy and “vision of a cultureled future in a globalised society” (Craik, Davis & Sunderland, 2000, p. 1). This was soon followed by the Strand Report (1998) and the introduction of Categories H and J, mechanisms to report on academic creative outputs in an attempt to parallel traditional research quality and esteem indicators. Perhaps a little early for its time, ‘Cat.H/J’ proved conceptually flawed and administratively unwieldy, and was subsequently abandoned. A decade later the Howard government introduced the Research Quality Framework (RQF, 2006), modelled on the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE, 2008) and which once again offered a suite of indicators by which to measure and value creative arts outputs (now more widely available as digital proxies). This too never came to fruition and was quickly replaced by the Rudd government as the Excellence for Research in Australia Initiative (ERA, 2009). For the first time however, ERA does promise additional university research block funding on the basis of the quality and peer esteem of creative works. Now after some 20 years of speculation and false starts, a nationwide ERA trail evaluation of the Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) research cluster took place during July-September of 2009.

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ERA AND THE MUSIC EXPERIENCE

In recent times therefore, university academics and administrators have repeatedly navigated the RQF and ERA processes to consider, test, re-examine and recommend appropriate discipline-specific indicators in order to better define notions of research income, publications, quality and impact using citations against relevant Australian and world benchmarks, where relevant and applicable.

•

the separation of the reviewer from the abstraction of music making and/or its context;

•

the potential for various personal tastes to be applied to the ranking of any art-form; and,

•

the relative success of a digital proxy (variously limited by file size, platform, media or audience).

THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

For many university musicians however, this has been a blunt, force-fit approach with much guesswork involved in using the wrong instruments to evaluate digital proxies of the right activity – ie, traditional publishing conceptions and indicators used to measure artistic activity (often site-specific and/or real-time) via written commentary on digital representations restricted by the 2009 ERA trial requirements for a maximum 15MB file size (ERA, 2009). Nonetheless, the procedures have been useful in refining academic thinking around this, as per the following exercise at the author’s institution.

To the lay-person, when the question is asked ‘how do musicians publish?’, the answer is often ‘by records’ or perhaps ‘music scores’. While the contemporary field of activity is certainly much broader than this, recording and score publishing is useful as a starting point to examine the current environment. Similarly to books, the music field is broken up into many niche markets and publishing houses: from jazz, to classical, world, and popular music etc., although it would be fair to say that commercial interests are generally very narrow. Other academic limitations also include:

Within the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre (QCRC) ERA data collection processes, the most common representation of practice-based music research outputs included:

•

finding and managing such interactions is time consuming and often unsuitable for the outputs of experimental or niche work so often common to the scholarly context;

•

music recordings;

•

•

video recordings;

•

music scores;

equivalents of ‘print and distribution’ (P&D) arrangements require cash up-front but do not guarantee distribution or review mechanisms suitable for academic publishing;

•

web-based creative and/or curated materials;

•

•

DVD-ROM interactive pieces.

difficulty in aggregating the metrics and/or esteem rankings on an institutional /sector basis as is required for academic research evaluation.

These outputs presented a non-linear mix of commercial, independent or un-published works, where the latter may have often attempted to verify impact, esteem or significant public recognition – there appeared to be no direct correlation with scholarly conventions for academic publishing. Therefore a major component of the ERA undertaking has been in gathering so-called ‘research statements’ from each of the relevant academics which include best-as-can information re. research background /contribution /significance. While this has clearly been a useful reflective exercise both for staff and institution, it would be fair to say that most academic musicians do not personally monitor, gather and rank these kinds of metrics on a regular basis – unlike in the traditional publishing domain where citations indices are provided in an arguably rigorous but certainly systematised way. In sum, this method of selfreview is neither suitable nor equitable. ERA next steps will invite external peer review of secure digital archives of such material. While representing a welcome step toward due recognition of the work of artists in the academy (and one presumes, resulting research block funding flow-on) the on-the-ground processes may prove problematic in terms of notions of ‘excellence’, for example:

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Notwithstanding these restrictions, there remains the possibility that developmental or experimental works may be evolved over time and leveraged to wider distribution in much the same way that conference publications and journal articles may seed a significant book output. At least this could be the case if such a developmental mechanism existed, and if the relevant IP and copyright arrangements allowed. THE PROBLEM WITH MUSIC st

In the 21 century, the Internet has impacted on the dissemination, consumption and ranking of digital works, but arguably none terraformed more significantly than the international music recording industry (ie, digital downloads, iPods, Apple iTunes, .pdf scores etc). Also in the recent past there have been a range of initiatives by Australian universities and peak bodies which have progressed the idea of sector-wide peer-review of arts endeavours (eg, ANAT, 1998; Ausdance, 2007; Inter-arts, 2009). With music however, this has been somewhat problematic in that the online publication of works is subjected to a range of limitations. These include: sub-disciplinary or genre boundaries (eg, new music, vs. sonic art vs. popular music), competing

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university branding obsessions; Australian collection society licensing laws where the material may not be 100% original (for example, jazz improvisation on set pieces, original performances of classical repertoire); or where authorship is often complex given the varying contributions of composer, performer, recordist and/or executive producer (Draper, 2008). Many Australian universities have developed varied approaches to measuring or profiling artistic works, but to date these are largely segregated along thematic or administrative lines, that is, digital works are utilised as: •

promotional materials (external relations and student recruitment departments);

•

commercial products (enterprise units);

•

research-equivalent outputs offices for research reporting);

•

live online digital activity and data sets (eresearch and computing clusters);

•

faculty/school level independent endeavours (podcasting, webcasting, internet radio, etc.).

(administrative

Clearly none of these viewpoints speak clearly to each other, highlighting a multitude of doxa-like assumptions about music-making, its quality, its value and its impact. More pertinently – there are no consistent peer-review criteria which as yet may be confidently applied to digital resources (Bates, Nelson, Roueché, Winters, & Wright, 2006). PEER REVIEW OF DIGITAL RESOURCES

Digital resources cannot not tell the whole story about music, but in the ERA context, recordings, web-sites and scores are being put forward as research proxies for evaluation. While mechanisms for the evaluation of the print outputs of traditional scholarly research are well established, no equivalent exists for assessing the value of digital arts by-products and/or ‘born digital’ outputs. Therefore if digital resources are genuinely to contribute to the research profile of Australian higher education institutions and form part of the ERA processes, it is essential that an authentic framework for evaluating these resources be established. A consistently-applied system of peer review of the artistic quality, intellectual content, and/or technical architecture should serve to: •

establish resources types which are of most use/interest to practice-led music research;

•

contribute to the development of common standards for accessibility and usability;

•

reassure academics and their host institutions of the worth of time spent in the creation of music and its representative digital resources;

•

inform proposals to ensure the sustainability, preservation or wider leverage of high-quality scholarly practices and material outputs (ibid).

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With the next ERA sector-wide collection and evaluation imminent in 2010, this then prompts a re-examination of just how digital repositories, peer thinking and open publishing for music might be best conceptualised and leveraged. To do so, I will now turn to briefly examine a number of publishing scenarios, then draw upon these to discuss and argue some possible ways forward. AUTHORITY ONLINE Online scholarly publishing in Web 1.0 mimicked fundamental conceptions . . Most content was closed to nonsubscribers; exceedingly high subscription costs for specialty journals were retained; libraries continued to be the primary market; and the "authoritative" version was untouched by comments from the uninitiated. Authority was measured in the same way it was in the scarcity world of paper: by number of citations to or quotations from a book or article, the quality of journals in which an article was published, the institutional affiliation of the author, etc. (Jensen, 2007, p. 3)

‘Format shifting’ was the first wave. For example, in e-learning platforms such as Blackboard, lecture notes and content have simply been moved from hard-copy face-to-face formats to online delivery of digital materials. While podcasting, video lectures and the like are welcome for asynchronous engagement and review, delivery represents a traditional approach to the one-way transmission of authorised knowledge to learners as receptors. Similarly with scholarly e-journals. For example, First Monday (2009) is now a mature and widely read publication using the Open Journal Systems (OJS, 2002) platform to semi-automate peer review administration and publication processes. This allows for streamlined workflow and brings research articles to market much more rapidly than conventional print-press, yet, the framework is still that of old – authority blind reviews and edits, while readership consumes (and hopefully cites). In music, the recording industry is moving progressively from shop-front sales of records and CDs to digital downloads stores such as Amazon and iTunes. More recently, music buyers have witnessed the resurrection of the LP format online, seen as some commentators as simply a way for the record industry to perpetuate old bundled approaches to maximising copyright and IP returns. CMX (Wikipedia, 2009a) is just such a file format proposed by the record label majors and intended to be a successor to MP3. CMX's premise is similar to that of Apple's iTunes LP (Mortensen, 2009), with data such as audio, lyrics, and album art being contained in a single file. Such approaches represent convenience or novelty, but nonetheless conventional transmission. In parallel, formerly blind consumption is increasingly awakened by ‘long tail’ pattern intelligence (eg, Google, iTunes Genius), web 2.0 rankings and social networking sites (eg, LastFM, BeBo, etc) (Draper, 2009).

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Following this, it is perhaps unsurprising that many university programs have borrowed from these developments: firstly through web 1.0 content delivery, but more recently incorporating web 2.0 technologies for social networking, wikis, blogs and tagging to value-add. To unpack this further, the following presents a brief overview of online university music publication systems. UNIVERSITY RECORD LABELS

Internationally, many universities have developed their own music dissemination platforms, often modelled on commercial online music stores. In most cases, it would appear a modest return is channelled back into the running of the enterprise, while the primary benefits would appear to be the promotion and viral marketing of the university and its programs. Indicative examples are as follows: The UK – Royal Academy of Music Record Label Working in the recording industry is increasingly central to the careers of many performers. The Academy's excellent recording facilities are available for producing demo tapes, and the Business for Musicians module of the BMus programme includes training on making and promoting a CD. (RAM, 2009)

The next two examples are from Australia. These both highlight variations in the student-led and commercial shop-front models by their inclusion of open publishing platforms, social networks and/or collaborative student-staff undertakings. Queensland – Radio IMERSD Radio IMERSD invites digital contributions and collaborative ideas from academic staff, practitioners, visitors, alumni and students in a range of areas including: public speeches, viva voce and workshop presentations; musical compositions, performances and sound recordings; commentary and review intended to stimulate critical discussion. (Radio IMERSD, 2006)

The open publishing component features podcasts which are disseminated under Creative Commons Australia licenses and via Apple iTunes and Griffith iTunes-U. All material comprises original works produced by staff, students and visitors as composers, arrangers, performers, or sound recordists/producers, as shown in Table 1 below: Table 1. Radio IMERSD Themes and Clusters Theme

Content

Concerts

Staff, students, alumni and guests http://www29.griffith.edu.au/radioimersd/index. php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory& id=17&Itemid=27

RAM’s raison d'être for making CDs is threefold: •

to provide studio experience for students;

•

to record music which reflects the disciplinary range and quality of RAMs’ musical activities;

•

to produce committed and discerning interpretations of interesting repertoire, “something which young, talented people often respond to spectacularly well” (ibid).

RAM recordings are regularly broadcast by BBC Radio 3, Classic FM and the BBC World Service, and selected discs are distributed world-wide. Most discs are available for sale in Academy Chimes campus stores, with all proceeds used to fund future recordings. Digital works are distributed through Naxos Music Library. USA – Intercollegiate Record Label Association IRLA membership is comprised of representatives from student-run record labels and other student-run music-related organizations. The IRLA exists to facilitate the sharing of information between studentrun record labels and to establish a mechanism for music industry entities to communicate with all student-run record labels easily. (IRLA, 2009)

The IRLA links up record labels across a very large number of US universities. It promotes the name of the member organizations, logos, web stores and social networking sites, and provides opportunities for artists to promote their music via the ESPNU intra-university entertainment and sports television channel (Wikipedia, 2009b). The IRLA primarily services the networking of student-run, university music recording organisations.

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Public Lectures

Academics, VIPs & research partners

Creative Sparks

Original student work

http://www29.griffith.edu.au/radioimersd/index. php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory& id=16&Itemid=28 http://www29.griffith.edu.au/radioimersd/index. php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory& id=15&Itemid=29

Radio IMERSD also provides a 24/7 streaming NetRadio station which cycles and broadcasts recording studio and live concert productions. While external commercial recordings are not distributed, certain material can be made available only on the university intranet due to complex music collection society licensing laws, so limiting the distribution of those recorded performances which utilise compositions, scores or arrangements in-copyright with publishing houses (Draper, 2008). In sum, this model provides an open source platform to freely disseminate and promote the work of the Conservatorium’s diverse population. Google Analytics is employed to provide hard metrics about access numbers, downloads and international distribution. The value-adding is not only in terms of promotion, but also in terms of local exemplars, internal knowledge, popularity, and sharing ideas, opinions and cross-postings via other networks including discussion boards, blogs, and podcasting sites. A good deal of informal traffic returns to authors and creators, but to date this cannot be measured in terms of its impact.

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Western Australia – Slow Release Music Welcome to Slow Release. Here we will be releasing music from the various streams of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. A student run enterprise, the label will be produced, managed and promoted by a student team from the Bachelor of Music course. (WAAPA, 2009).

A new initiative with little content as yet. However, the design thoughtfully profiles and promotes WAAPA music departments in how it has designed and presented its shop-front by album genre: Classical, Jazz, New Music and Contemporary. Slow Release provides its own on-line store. Preview and purchase releases are available from the Slow Release label catalogue in both CD and digital format. All digital releases sold through the Slow Release Store are packaged as high quality non-protected MP3s and all albums and EPs come with printable cover art. More notably than other examples perhaps, the Slow Release Music design includes cross promotion and maintenance of a range of external social networking websites as shown in Table 2 below: Table 2. Slow Release Music Social Networks Web 2

Site

Facebook

WAAPA Music Label

DISCUSSION: AUTHORITY 3.0

Throughout the related e-publishing literature (eg, Whitworth & Friedman, 2009; Jenson, 2007; Bates et al., 2006), an overarching question is repeatedly raised: what are the implications for the future of scholarly communications and scholarly authority? Jensen (2007) proposes this as ‘Authority 3.0’, that is: the digital availability of a work for indexing, referencing, quoting, linking, and tagging; the existence of metadata that identifies the work, categorizes it, contextualizes it, and summarises it; the capacity for others to enrich it with their own comments, tags, and contextualizing elements. This last point was picked up in a significant report (Bates et al., 2006) by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) following many RAE rounds which proved unsatisfactory in relation to the peer review and evaluation of digital resources for the arts and humanities. The document summarises its key recommendations based on the input of many universities across Britain, with particular reference to the interface between blind-peer review, authors and audiences. Firstly, it was apparent that an entirely new system of peer review and evaluation was not required, and indeed that . . it would be damaging to replace wholesale the

http://www.facebook.com/pages/WaapaMusic-Label/80616819424?ref=mf

LastFM

established methods of evaluating publicly-funded research . . Rather, the existing review structures should be developed to meet the specific challenges of the digital environment. Above all, peer review should retain its character as a measure of esteem (p. 18).

waapamusiclabel http://www.last.fm/user/waapamusiclabel

MySpace

WAAPA Music Label http://www.myspace.com/waapamusiclabel

Twitter

waapamusic http://twitter.com/waapamusic

YouTube

WAAPA Music Videos http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=waapa music

WAAPA’s platform makes a useful effort to link web 1.0 and 2.0 authority models: it provides a front-end which borrows on a conventional web-store sales approach, but also links content to a range of well maintained and highly active social networks as a way to promote and to a degree, review content.

However, it was urged that this model then should be expanded in an open process, to be debated in public and made available to the community via conferences, wikis, discussion lists, and web 2.0 technologies. The report’s final recommendations (pp. 31–32) convincingly argue that: •

Peer review of digital resources should be conducted with the evaluation report published on the respective project website. The process should be open, with all comments attributable.

•

Resource creators should be offered a public right of reply.

•

Post-completion review should be conducted in a spirit of openness, so that resource creators are encouraged to discuss freely any problems which they have encountered and any innovative solutions that they have adopted, for the benefit of the research community as whole.

•

Scholarly press are encouraged to commission reviews of significant digital resources, and to publish them routinely alongside other reviews.

•

Common and widely-publicised citation standards for digital resources should be established; resource creators encouraged to include citation instructions on their project websites and to maintain persistent URLs.

Synopsis

Across the wider breadth of university-based record labels that were examined, activity tends to remain focussed on student content, led by a decidedly commercial mimickry. While Radio IMERSD does provide for professional and/or academic content, what is missing is the capacity for review by expert professionals, academic authorities, or other leaders in the relevant fields as would be necessary as a basis for developing appropriate discipline-specific indicators against relevant Australian and world benchmarks, where relevant and applicable (see above, ERA discussion).

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Michael Jensen (2007) takes this further in The New Metrics for Scholarly Authority (US, The Chronicle Review), that in a internet-connected world of pervasive and powerful computer processing, Authority 3.0 will likely include the following, as summarised in Table 3 below: Table 3. Authority 3.0 Framework Authority

Attributes

Scholarly Peer

Prestige of the publisher. Prestige of peer reviewers. Quality of the context: What else is on the site that holds the document, and what is its authority status?

Author

Social Network

Digital Asset

Quality of author's institutional affiliation(s). Significance of author's other work. Author's participation in other valued projects, as commenter, editor, etc. Reference network: The significance rating of all the texts the author has touched, viewed, read. Prestige of commentators and other participants. Valued links, in which the values of the linker and all his or her other links are also considered. Nature of the language in comments: Positive, negative, interconnected, expanded, clarified, reinterpreted. Percentage of phrases that are valued by a disciplinary community. Obvious attention: Discussions in blogspace, comments in posts, reclarification, and continued discussion. Percentage of a document quoted in other documents. Raw links to the document. Length of time a document has existed. Inclusion of a document in lists of ‘best of’, in syllabi, indexes, and other human-selected distillations. Types of tags assigned to it, the terms used, the authority of the taggers, the authority of the tagging system.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

ERA aims to identify excellence across the full spectrum of Australian research activity and emerging research areas. Meanwhile, a recent CHASS report (Haseman & Jaaniste, 2008) reiterates the imperative to strengthen the evidence base for arts in Australia: Current measures and benchmarking of the contributions of the humanities and creative arts to national innovation are inadequate . . better measures are critical for future models for public support of national innovation. (p. 32)

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In Australia there is currently no academic press able to offer a publishing and peer review platform for the digital assets of academic musicians (and used as part of ERA submissions). Given the preceding discussion, such a hybridised 3.0 vehicle must be established to support the following: • The online dissemination of academic music publications, especially early-stage works, experimental or scholarly material unsuited to the commercial domain but highly relevant in areas of pure research and/or research-based learning, eg: Radio IMERSD (2006). • The aggregation of music academic peerreviewers, with editorial board and equivalent academic structures, eg: National Council of Tertiary Music Schools (NACTMUS) members. • Both secure (peer review) and public access (end-user) web 2.0 frameworks for dissemination of materials, eg: Open Journal Systems (OJS) in concert with a suitable web 2.0 Content Management System (CMS). • Initial Creative Commons licensing, to allow freedom for authors to leverage and further develop their creative works within a wider commercial or academic arena, as required. • A sideline enterprise label to leverage and promote material via commercially accepted production standards, distribution (P&D) and shop-front arrangements for online music, eg: Slow Release Music (WAAPA, 2009). • Recognition by peak bodies, press, industry and government, eg: Music Council of Australia (MCA), Australian Music Centre (AMC), Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), Australian Research Council (ARC). • Knowledge transfer and the enhancement of both peer review and academic capacity, vocabulary, and navigational understanding to utilise such a framework to best advantage. • The realisation of authentic peer review of digital resources criteria as part of an National Competitive Grant (NCG) and/or theme within a Centre of Excellence in Music proposal. Finally, it should be carefully considered how a pilot platform might be branded and operated to best serve and attract intellectual investment across the Australian academic music sector. Authority 3.0 seeks to combine the most promising features of online evolution to date: from web 1.0, utilising established peer review and e-journal mechanisms to monitor the responsibilities associated with publically-funded research; and from web 2.0, to integrate end-user engagement, folksonomies and the viral dissemination of valued works. In such a landscape then, musicians may engage with peer review at multiple levels, while audiences can only benefit from greater access to the meanings behind the creation of music itself.

6

REFERENCES ANAT (1998). Australian network for art and technology. http://www.anat.org.au Ausdance (2007). http://www.ausdance.org.au Bates, D., Nelson, J., Roueché, C., Winters, J. & Wright, C. (2006). Peer review and evaluation of digital resources for the arts and humanities. Final report, ICT Strategy Projects, Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. http://www.history.ac.uk/resources/digitisation/peerreview Craik, J., Davis, G. & Sunderland, N. (2000). Cultural policy and national identity. In G. Davis & M. Keating (Eds.) The future of governance (pp. 158–181). Melbourne: Macmillan. Draper, P. (2009). How online social networks are redefining knowledge, power, 21st century music-making and higher education. Journal of music research online. Adelaide: Music Council of Australia. http://www29.griffith.edu.au/imersd/draper/publications/re search/online_social_networks.pdf Draper, P. (2008). Who’s really doing the stealing? How the music industry’s pathological pursuit of profit and power robs us of innovation. In proceedings of Creating value between commerce and commons conference, 25– 27 June 2008, Brisbane, Australia. http://www29.griffith.edu.au/imersd/draper/publications/re search/draper_whos_really_doing_the_stealing.pdf ERA. (2009). The excellence for research in Australia initiative. Canberra: Australian Government and Australian Research Council. http://www.arc.gov.au/era First Monday (2009). Online e-journal. University of Illinois at Chicago. http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/ab out Haseman B. & Jaaniste, L. (2008). The arts and Australia's national innovation system 1994–2008: Arguments, recommendations, challenges. CHASS Occasional Paper #7. http://www.chass.org.au/papers/pdf/PAP20081101BH.pd f Inter-arts (2009). Australia council, Inter-arts office. http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/about_us/artform_boa rds/inter-arts_office IRLA (2009). Intercollegiate record label association. USA. http://www.studentrecordlabels.com

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Jenson, M. (2007). The new metrics of scholarly authority. Chronicle Review, 53(41), 1–9. http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Metrics-ofScholarly/5449 Keating, P. (1994). Creative nation: Commonwealth cultural policy. Canberra: Australian government. http://www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/contents.html Mortensen, P. (2009). iTunes LP: The first digital album good enough to criticize. Cult of Mac (10 Sept., 2009). http://www.cultofmac.com/itunes-lp-the-first-digitalalbum-good-enough-to-criticize/16132 OJS. (2002). Open journal systems. Public Knowledge Project (PKP), University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Stanford University and Arizona State University. http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs Radio IMERSD (2006). Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University podcasting platform. http://www29.griffith.edu.au/radioimersd RAE. (2008). Research assessment exercise. Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, and the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland. http://www.rae.ac.uk RAM. (2009). The Royal Academy of Music record label, UK. http://www.ram.ac.uk/audioandvideo/Pages Strand, D. (1998). Research in the creative arts. Canberra: Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/eip986/execsum.htm Whitworth, B. & Friedman, R. (2009). Reinventing academic publishing online. First Monday, 14(8). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/ article/view/2609/2248 RQF. (2006). Research quality framework (RQF) retrospective. UniSA. http://www.unisa.edu.au/rqie/rqfhistory WAAPA. (2009). Slow release music. West Australian Academic of performing arts, Edith Cowan university. http://slowrelease.waapamusic.com Wikipedia. (2009a). CMX (file format). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMX_(file_format Wikipedia. (2009b). ESPNU. US University Entertainment and sports programming network. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPNU

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CreateWorld 2009 – Mobile Me: Creativity on the Go, 30 November – 2 December, Brisbane, Australia 

Vertical Integration through Blended Learning: a whole-of-program case study. Matt Hitchcock Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University Brisbane, Queensland, Australia [email protected]

Abstract  The systematic segregation of students into class and year level groupings does not naturally support collaboration and project-based learning. At the same time, the Internet has enabled global social networking which has proven to be a source of engagement and an effective enabler of revised professional practices and artistic collaborations. From 2004 - 2008 a research project developed and interrogated a pedagogically embedded online whole-of-program community designed to reflect the sorts of knowledge sharing structures occurring in professional workplaces through the vertical integration of knowledge, skills awareness and professional attributes in students. Vertical integration in the context of Music Technology curricula is herein defined as the coordinated, purposeful and planned system of sharing teaching and learning roles, linkages and activities in the delivery of education and training across all learner stages. The focus of this paper is on some of the outcomes of the five-year study rather than the processes in development. It is shown that a whole-of-program discussion board, when blended in a face-to-face curriculum, can greatly assist the vertical integration of students in the program, fostering engagement in intellectual and practical pursuits that may be unfamiliar to them, but which they are likely to encounter in their professional careers. 

Keywords  Blended learning, vertical integration, discussion board, professional competencies.

Background  This paper focuses on one program cohort (Music Technology) within an element (The Queensland Conservatorium) of Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. The structure of the program is one typical to Universities, in that program delivery comprises a suite of modularised courses (in our case spanning three years) with a single academic to many students. These circumstances are the same for all courses whether lecture or practical. This has been the situation since the inclusion of music technology at the Conservatorium in the 1970’s. I came to the Conservatorium in 2001 after a long history as a professional practitioner, and over several

Createworld09 – Vertical Integration through Blended Learning

years as an academic became aware of how unprepared many graduates were for life as a creative professional. This was despite the music technology department housing a forward thinking and experienced faculty and an exemplary learning environment. When I started at the Conservatorium I entered an environment where there already existed an emphasis on problem based learning (Sweller, 1988; Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007), scaffolding (Brown et al., 1989; Rogof et al., 1996), and collaboration and mentoring from industry aware and capable staff. Since the mid-late 1990’s the area had self-developed extensive online and electronic resources and used many web-based mechanisms for delivery to students. This was not an environment in crisis, however there still existed a considerable gap between graduates and the demands of higher-end professional practice. The gaps however were not generally in the “know-what” or “know-how”, but more in relation to “being” someone, where “mastering a field of knowledge involves not only “learning about” the subject matter but also “learning to be” a full participant in the field” (Brown & Adler, 2008, p. 4). In this context, learning to “be” is about knowing how to learn, negotiate and appropriate the “ways” of different professions (Wenger et al., 2002). My early research and observations indicated common traits in the student cohorts as: 1. students remained separated into small cliques within year groupings; 2. networking was viewed as unimportant, in other words learning was perceived by students as being about what each individual was able to achieve; 3. learning transfer was poor across classes / year levels; 4. some students retained resilient ‘high-school’ perspectives; 5. there was little cross-year communication or interaction. Additionally, student and staff conversations were mostly held in isolation from the rest of the cohort, resulting in valuable insights being lost to other students and indeed different contexts for the same students. This was especially noticeable when discussions were covering areas that should have crossed course boundaries, and importantly, year level boundaries. Broad and inclusive discussion around learning and professional cultures did not seem to be occurring with depth or consistency. Discussions were predominantly being limited, segmented and compartmentalised by the artificial boundaries of tertiary education structures. With this as a provocation there was a need for the

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replication, more than a simulation, of a professionally oriented community within the music technology area in an effort to integrate professional traits into all aspects of the learning landscape. Accordingly, the need was to create a vertically integrated whole-of-program community that more aptly reflected the sorts of transformative knowledge sharing structures occurring in professional workplaces. Vertical integration in the context of Music Technology curricula is herein defined as the coordinated, purposeful and planned system of sharing teaching and learning roles, linkages and activities in the delivery of education and training across all learner stages. John Seely-Brown, in discussing this transformation from student to someone who has insight into being a practitioner, proposes that: We need to find ways that our students can learn more about learning-to-be much earlier in their education. Today’s students want to create and learn at the same time. They want to pull content into use immediately. They want it situated and actionable— all aspects of learning-to-be, which is also an identity-forming activity. This path bridges the gap between knowledge and knowing. (Brown, 2006, p. 11) The first step then was to establish a learning community with the ability to open the membership base up to as many people as possible. The intention was to include students, academics, alumni and industry professionals. In light of prior experience with creating online communities, the most viable immediate solution not requiring complete upheaval of the tertiary education environment was to create an online whole-of-program community by pedagogically embedding a web-based discussion board that was not tied to any University-based learning management systems, structure or courses. Significantly herein, the tensions between the concept of ‘replication’ and the action being ‘virtual’ were acknowledged, but not allowed to deter the action. The ensuing environment is therefore one that is situated as a blended learning (Bersin, 2004) environment. Defining blended learning  The term ‘blended learning’ has many interpretations. Oliver and Trigwell note the subsequent difficulties for researchers arising from this variance and ensuing lack of clarity: The term ‘blended learning’ is ill-defined and inconsistently used. Whilst its popularity is increasing, its clarity is not. Under any current definition, it is either incoherent or redundant as a concept. Building a tradition of research around the term becomes an impossible project, since without a common conception of its meaning, there can be no coherent way of synthesising the findings of studies, let alone developing a consistent theoretical framework with which to interpret data. (Oliver & Trigwell, 2003, p. 24) Across the literature, ‘blended learning’ is a term that can refer to combining or mixing:


• online and face-to-face forms of learning; • different web-based technologies in an e-learning context; • pedagogical approaches (e.g. constructivism, behaviorism, and cognitivism); • different foci for learning, or intended learning (Valiathan, 2002)1; • any form of instructional technology (online or not) with any form of face-to-face learning. The most pertinent definitions in this context relate to the blending of online and face-to-face contexts for learning and learning experiences. This is not to diminish the importance of blending of pedagogical approaches, nor Valiathan’s different foci for learning. There is however recognition that: both occur naturally in the Music technology context as a by-product of the pedagogy; and neither forms the primary focus of this research. Subsequently, the following definition is used to create a common understanding of the term blended learning in this context. Blended Learning herein is when there is integration of “online with traditional face-to-face class activities in a planned, pedagogically valuable manner; and where a portion (institutionally defined) of face-to-face time is replaced by online activity.” (Picciano, 2006, p. 3)

Method  A range of methods was used for the data gathering consisting of 3 longitudinal perspectives and three vertical snapshots. Four forms of data gathering evidence across the program (n=60) were then employed: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Discussion board interactions, Interviews (n=8) - purposive sampling (Berg, 2004), Surveys (2006 n=21, 2007 n=35) - purposive sampling, Participant observations (continual / longitudinal).

The longitudinal perspectives come from the participant observations and discussion board interactions, as well as a three-year span between the phase 2 interviews and phase 3-4 surveys. The vertical snapshots come from the interviews and two phases of surveys. Recruitment was voluntary and included low to high achievers, students with various post counts from lowest to highest for the year, and included graduates as well as local, interstate and international students in an age range as diverse as was available to me (17 – 28). The interviews were undertaken after yearly assessments had concluded. A multi-method approach using only qualitative methodologies has been used to reduce any methodological artefacts and ensure that variances in validation reflected variances in traits rather than method

                                                         1

Valiathan (2002) describes blends in terms of the focus for learning, or ‘intended’ learning. Skill-driven learning combines self-paced learning with instructor or facilitator support to develop specific knowledge and skills; attitude-driven learning mixes various events and delivery media to develop specific behaviours; and competencydriven learning blends performance support tools with knowledge management resources and mentoring to develop workplace competencies.

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(Bouchard, 1976). To this end the range of qualitative methodologies utilised were: 1. Action research - Since 2002 all students have been surveyed each semester with a focus on course and program experience. Since 2004, academics also share their observational data at regular intervals. Action research in the area includes; work-integrated learning pathways on campus and in the field (Draper & Hitchcock, 2006; Hitchcock, 2007); perspectives on curriculum in changing contexts (Burt et al., 2007); and program-wide blended learning strategies (Hitchcock & Draper, 2008; Hitchcock, 2008). 2. Participant observation - a completely natural outcome of the circumstances and environment. Given that I was both immersed in the group and a key participant within the setting, the immediately observable details (such as online interactions) and the more hidden details (such as the changes in relational dynamics between students over time) were more easily observed and understandable. Subsequently, a richness of initial data was suggestive of directions and emergent themes for deeper investigation via interview and survey. 3. Grounded Theory - an extension of both action research and participant observation where the data generates theory rather than the other way round. The aim was to discover the theory implicit in the data (Dick, 2005). Herein, some theories have been developed inductively from a corpus of knowledge acquired by myself as both a participant and an observer.

4. Case study - I have taken a case-oriented perspective where suspicion exists of simple additive models. As is common with perspectives influenced by grounded theory, I take the view that I am theorising about the world as the respondents see it rather than how the world could ostensibly be (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), understanding that there is no one single reality, and that there can be more than one set of basic beliefs, or 'paradigms' about what constitutes reality and counts as knowledge (Hanson, 1958; Myers, 2000).

The discussion board is a further form of data with currently over 30,000 posts. Methodological triangulation has occurred in two forms. The first form of triangulation used is the ‘between methods’ approach and takes the form of participant observation, interview/survey, and discussion board posts. The second form of triangulation is reflected in the ‘multiple comparison groups’ and comes as a result of the longitudinal nature of the study. Responses in all surveys/interviews were analysed with themes arising from the student responses. Emergent themes were categorised, sorted and meta-tagged, and then further streamlined and sorted due to thematic overlaps. The stages included data-collection, note-taking, coding, sorting, meta-tagging, categorizing, comparing/merging and then write-up. Finally, the themes, data summary and subsequent interpretations of the data were circulated back to students as a member check or respondent validation (Creswell, 1998), using the principle of face validity (Anastasi, 1954) to review and clarify the content if necessary, and to establish greater trustworthiness in the research process. This strategy was used to establish trustworthiness by giving authority to the participants’ perspectives therefore managing the threat of bias (Padgett, 1998).


Findings:  

Online is different  There is an unfortunate and over-simplistic selfevidence to the statement “online is different”. The importance to the statement, however, is really to be found in the underlying resonance and meaning that students were reflecting on when making this claim. For many students it was a realisation that online personas are not only different, but that a depth of understanding of their peers was made possible in ways not otherwise achievable. Therefore, while the concept may seem self-evident, this in no way detracts from the value or indeed outcomes that students attributed to the concept of “online is different”. This finding contradicts research commonly depicting online social networks and knowledge communities as simple extensions of student lives offline (O’Reilly & Newton, 2002; Picciano, 2006; Driscoll, 2003; Allen et al., 2007). Contrary to previous research however, this study: occurred at a program rather than course level; invited a more extensive membership base than usual; and remained active for a considerably longer period of time than the typical course-based boundaries allow. In music technology, students across year-levels and across time consistently reflected on their new-found awareness of how peers displayed different and sometimes quite contrary personas between the online and face-toface, with this growing awareness contributing to a deeper understanding of their peers. Students reported that they got to know their peers more “fully” or more “completely” via the online space, some even going so far as to say that they “only really got to know some of the students because of the discussion board”. This resulted in the development of relationships and networks that may have otherwise not occurred, certainly contributing to a feeling of greater depth and diversity, therefore quality, amongst the cohort. There is also a newfound general recognition amongst students that diversity is as equally pertinent to their future directions as it is to their backgrounds. The recognition of this brought with it a perception of value in community involvement. The importance of the online space was therefore in affording a deeper understanding of the entire cohort beyond the quickly formed, small and resilient niche groups that were the typical formations found within the program. This is not to suggest that the discussion board was a stand-alone solution to creating learning networks, however it was certainly the online exposure of cohort depth that provoked face-to-face interactions. Apparently therefore, the whole-of-program discussion board provides dimensions of depth and breadth for students that are not being achieved through the face-to-face community. Students not only perceive and use the online space differently to their offline lives, but establish deeper and more extensive learning and social networks via the online interactions. Parity of esteem  The second emergent theme is that of parity of esteem. In this paper, ‘parity of esteem’ is used in two ways. The 3 


first is in relation to a sense of equality between members where the concept of ‘parity of esteem’ presumes that there should exist an awareness of others on which to establish the foundations of esteem (Richardson & CCAE, 1979). Secondly, the need for a parity of esteem can exist where there are perceived inequalities around benchmarks/standards between groups (Banks, 1998). This inequality is apparent where assumptions are made about benchmarks that trivialise or depreciate a particular group while favouring another, for example where students are separated by year level. One example of this can be seen in blanket statements such as “second year students are more advanced than first year students”. Equally as misguided is the ensuing assumption that first year students therefore have little to offer to later year students. Within many of the online interactions we see these assumptions being overturned, with later year students becoming increasingly comfortable with the tenets of parity and first year students feeling empowered by later year students’ willingness to interact as equals rather than as superiors. Through the normal everyday online interactions then, students come to “understand the MT community’s hunger for knowledge and generosity in spreading their wisdoms.” This outcome is a vital contribution to their developing understanding of networks with respect to both value and formation. Students are often able to make more deeply informed decisions in relation to their networks, reporting that the discussion board has broken many barriers for them. The second aspect in relation to parity of esteem pertains to benchmarking. Many students brought this forward as a realisation with reference to how they saw themselves within the community. In this light, parity of esteem can be understood as arising from the capacity to benchmark themselves using standards from across the program rather than limiting themselves to the best in their particular year level. This is not to suggest that the act of benchmarking created parity of esteem, more that positive outcomes from the process of benchmarking led to greater opportunities for parity of esteem to develop than would otherwise have happened. Certainly, this was seen as the case for most students across time and across year levels. This supports literature that suggests parity can significantly enhance the intellectual quality of the learning environment (Swan & Shea, 2005; Picciano, 2006; Garrison et al., 2001). Social ownership and critical mass  One important aspect in the pedagogical use of the discussion board was to not limit students’ social online engagement in any way. The underlying intent was that students should feel ownership and responsibility for the space, and as such would have the freedoms to use the discussion board as they saw fit. Throughout the interviews and surveys, students consistently commented on the personal freedoms associated with the discussion board, stating that the social design and use of the discussion board held a strongly positive significance for


them. What can also be seen in the student responses is a sense of connectedness between students and program, nourished through a sense of personalisation and ownership of the space and their contributions. This connectedness was subsequently perceived by students as arising from the blending of the personal and the academic, where the two came to be recognised as important in combination rather than separation, or where the “inside-of-class and outside-of-class” were blended. It can also be said that the members were taking responsibility for these interactions because of the social aspect, rather than leaving it up to their teachers. Consequently, the volume of activity generated by the students resulted in a critical mass which produced a rich diversity of consistently forthcoming new content. Again, according to the students, this came as a result of the discussion boards not being academically driven to the exclusion of the social. The social freedoms you allowed us on the discussion board were so important. It meant we got to relate to each other on real terms as complete human beings. Additionally, many attributed the achievement of a critical mass to the learning and discovery focus underpinning the social interactions. Across the interviews and the surveys it was apparent that students were increasingly becoming more comfortable with the idea that learning was an integral part of who they were becoming, not just something they ‘did’ when they were on campus. This underlines the importance of aspects such as shared passion and interest outside of the core mission; transmission of personal views about these passions; and social commentary around the areas of interest. This also supports literature that suggests communities must be allowed some latitude to shake themselves free of received wisdom (Brown & Duguid, 1991) to foster a community where students are encouraged to view the social as inseparable from the intellectual development of the self and identity (Erikson, 1959; Sheehy, 1976; Chickering & Reisser, 1993). Enculturation  The theme of enculturation has two aspects. The first aspect of enculturation is the most tangible and is seen in the relationship between new community members and the pre-existing community. This is where new students learn the accepted norms, vocabulary and value emphases of the established community culture. Students commonly stated that the discussion board “massively” helped the speed and depth to which they were not only able see that a community existed, but to further understand the ways of the community toward assimilating its practices and values. The second and subtler aspect is one of subconscious socialisation or appropriation, where appropriation is understood to mean the interpretative process of constructing knowledge from social practice (Rogoff, 1994). This is a slower and more amorphous process whereby cultural shifts within the community over time,

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either via injection of new people or changes in thinking, filter throughout the community. One example can be seen in the shift in students’ thinking about the realities of the commercial post-graduation world, and how their mediadriven beliefs2 could be rationalised by more experienced students and graduates. In this aspect of enculturation, students are developing a shared collection of experiences, best practices and ways of solving problems in such a way as to create a common knowledge base on which they can draw. Participant roles and relationships are refashioned over time, so this more subtle aspect of enculturation then refers to the ease with which members can view and therefore better understand the changing relationship of the community and their place within it. This therefore suggests that engagement with ingrained cultural, social, linguistic and contextual nature of thought and action (Lave & Wenger, 1991) frames social learning through observing and modelling the behaviours, attitudes and emotional reactions of others (Bandura, 1977). Incongruity and multiple perspectives  Real world problems are often complex and ‘messy’ (Ackoff, 1974), with multiple sub-problems that demand a process of rationalising a series of smaller decisions leading toward a final solution for an overall ‘situation’. One of the inherent difficulties for educators is simply in describing or depicting aspects of a situation or ‘problem’ that are realistically beyond a students’ current comprehension, often contain many ambiguities, but are undoubtedly significant aspects to be critically considered toward a cogent solution. There are certainly associations between a students’ tolerance for ambiguity and critical thinking (Furnham, 1995; DeRoma, et al., 2003; Johnson, et al., 1995), with the need therefore to embrace the teaching of ambiguity and incongruity toward the development of integrative independent thinking (Johnson et al., 1995) in the development of professional attributes. It was common on the discussion board to see a single idea evoking a number of simultaneous but different ideas in others. These interactions were then characterised by three features: groups of students across years and across time were involved, multiple ideas branched out from single points of view, and earlier views were re-visited and reshaped as discussions unfolded. Additionally, the 24/7 aspects of the discussion board allowed time to think and respond which in turn enabled incongruities to be played with in a manner that led to more sophisticated solutions. Importantly, this involved students across time and across years, with some conversations being continued for 12 to 18 months after they had been initiated. Further, throughout this process, decisions that were generally agreed upon by the group came under further

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For example, some mistakenly believing that major record labels hire recording engineers and recording producers as ‘staff’ members and that the recording industry will supply jobs at the end of their degree.


scrutiny by others who were enquiring more deeply in an effort to understand intricacies. This process caused temporary disagreement, again leading to the generation of new explanations and a richer understanding of ambiguities within the problem and sub-problems. For many students, this new awareness and subsequent acceptance of incongruity led to a deeper investigation of how and why these differences existed and how they could be reconciled. Furthermore these discursive processes elicited problem-solving skills that were transferrable to multiple contexts - fundamentally a sophisticated process of synthesising in a world of complexity. Not only can this process provide richness and depth not normally attributed to sole effort, but can also be seen as a challenge to students’ individual assumptions and beliefs as they work to create new consensual ‘truths’ (Berger & Luchmann, 1966) thereby learning new frameworks from which to view their world.

Conclusions   Through the display of unfolding online learning journeys, students can provide insights to their ways and means of learning, forming and presenting questions, investigating and researching. The discussion board is seen as a unique intellectual space within which to ‘work’ and ‘play’ at furthering transferrable skills in questioning and reasoning. These become patterns that all members can reflect on, follow and adapt to their individual learning styles (Smith et al., 2004). Additionally, small steps taken by many individuals coalesce into learning of consequence in the entire community (Vaughn & Garrison, 2005). These models of peer-to-peer, academic-to-academic and peer-to-academic interactions are underpinned by parity of esteem. This creates a shared ability to shape a new social and community structure that more closely resembles the sorts of passion based and intrinsically motivated interactions found in professional communities (Brown, 2006). Students have a growing sense of relevance and the ability to relate to others from across the program. Many students are observed to gain confidence in making networks outside their comfort zone as the program-wide discussion board exposes the fact that diversity is welcomed and valued across the program. Unlike course-based discussion forums, engaging in a program-wide community makes it easier for newcomers and the more experienced alike to blend into and comprehend a broad and varied community and to participate in multi-various and complex practices where the complexity more closely represents professional creative work places. This living historical record of program activity further blends fluidly with the face-toface community activities, contributing to enhance active participation in knowledge sharing, networking, movement between expert groups and professional socialisation. This may then afford students the ability to acquire both deep knowledge about a subject (“learning about”) as well as the ability to participate in the practices of a profession

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through productive enquiry and peer-based learning (“learning to be”) (Brown, 2008). Developing professional competencies   Vertical integration via the discussion board has assisted in developing professional competencies in several ways. These include: concepts, theory, interpersonal relationships, social agility, active participation in knowledge sharing and mentoring, identity formation, managing incongruity and the development of professionally aware networks. There now exists in the program an extensive recorded history of community interactions provided by the discussion board, including interactions between current students, alumni, industry professionals and academics, past and present. The discussion board provides an entrée into their cultural norms, vocabulary, and form and function as a “community of learners” (Short & Burke, 1991) where learning is an integral part of practice (Wenger et al., 2002). Through the use of a whole-of-program discussion board, students are exposed to an online environment where socio-cultural interactions between them influence, and are influenced by, the environment with which they are interacting. Students are intellectually engaged through cognitive apprenticeship, developing cognitive presence, deeper understanding, and engagement with meaningful learning. Even before they have met their peers face-toface, participants have the opportunity to decipher existing community patterns and to experience a form of situated cognition (Lave & Wenger, 1991) where the focus of literacy is shifted from one of individual expression to community involvement (Jenkins, 2007).

Limitations of the study  It is recognised and acknowledged that there are several limitations to this study and the underlying research methodologies. One limitation is that the conclusions drawn are limited to the data examined, and although the emergent data has potential relevance to a wider field, the context for the research lies within a single program, in a single discipline, in one university. This has resulted not only in a small sample size, but also a lack of generalisability assessments (Hammersley, 1992) that could have been constructed if the research project had been run across a number of organisations or contexts. This may then mean that findings can only be applied to the situation in which this research was undertaken. It should be noted however that this paper makes no effort to argue for the generalisability of the findings to other contexts. Rather, the results and conclusions are presented as the basis for further study that extends the methodology used here.

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Cat Hope Dr Malcolm Riddoch Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts Edith Cowan University 2 Bradford St Mt Lawley, WA, 6050 Australia

The Vanishing Bass - Possible implications of Internet centric listening on bass perception

[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract Internet streaming and downloads combined with mass consumption of music has involved new compression formats and budget consumer playback hardware for music. A victim of this trend has been the lower end of the sound spectrum, as listeners are becoming less accustomed to bass response through lossy compression formats played back via portable devices such as the ubiquitous iPod. Are listeners losing their ability to distinguish bass quality and the physicality of sound? This paper summarises some of the effects of digital compression for streaming and playback formats on bass frequencies and the impact these have to a new generation of music listeners.

Introduction Whilst important technological developments are being made in sound reproduction and compression, a large market segment of music consumers are downloading music in compressed file sizes to play on mp3 players and/or listening to streaming content online. As a consequence of this online delivery path music is being listened to through pod style headphones and computer headsets that come with this hardware creating a situation where listeners may well lose their ability to perceive the full spectrum of bass frequencies due to ongoing aural training on devices that cannot possibly provide the full range of the bass listening experience. The mainstream adoption and development of Internet based technologies since the mid 90’s has seen a revolution in the way music is delivered to its listeners. Access to mp3 encoding software, a modem and a social network led to the rapid expansion of copyright infringement as legions of music enthusiasts made their ripped Audio CD’s available online. From the beginning it has been the consumers of music that have boldly led the way where traditional music companies have feared to tread, following and pushing to the limits the technological potential of a new digital musical world where almost any style of

music is immediately accessible from the comfort of one’s own home. This online marketplace was at first constrained, by limited modem bandwidth, to the then ubiquitous 128kbps mp3 format and its relatively immature codecs, not to mention limited hard drive space and the expense of CD burning, as well as the skills threshold needed to cover the rip > encode > connect > share > download > listen delivery path. The ‘quality’ of the listening experience was obviously good enough such that ‘accessibility’ overcame all obstacles and drove the expansion of the sharing networks (Blesser and Pilkington, 2000). This listening pathway has developed over the last decade from poorly encoded music replete with audio artefacts shared over fragile networks vulnerable to legal action and played through computer based multimedia speakers by hobbyist enthusiasts into a streamlined and mainstream cultural activity belatedly supported by the mostly as yet still fearful corporate music community. Not only has codec development kept pace along with the maturation of our online social networks and ever increasing bandwidth, we now have an entire generation of Internet skilled music listening youth emerging into an online music experience exemplified by Apple’s automated commercial delivery system. From an iTunes MPEG 4 AAC rip to a mature commercial or sharing network back to iTunes, iPod and earphones. Portability, accessibility, ease of use, mass consumption and storage – any and all musics 24/7 played from any device anywhere is apparently what the marketplace demands. The ‘quality’ of the listening experience is here a captive of its ‘accessibility’ and it is our contention that the musical experience of especially bass frequencies is being lost in the mix.

Full frequency range in music An important part of the music listening experience is held in mastering; the final stage in the creation of a music recording, which involves crafting a full frequency range to shape

a warm sound spectrum enabling important elements of the music to come to the fore, and others to lie in the background. Different instrumental timbres are finely tuned and balanced. The role of bass ranges is important in these balances in a variety of music styles – from defined beats and drones, to the very quality of a singer’s voice. To date, releases are not specifically mastered for online distribution, rather, music is compressed after having been mastered for CD or DVD releases (Eide, 2001). Mastering provides subtle compression, equalisation and gain adjustment to make the recording suitable for commercial release, and many of these subtleties are lost once the final ‘master’ is both subject to compression and then played through consumer headphones.

Lossy compression formats MPEG compression as an industry standardized delivery mechanism is one of the fundamental technologies driving the new Internet based way of listening to music. As a lossy compression format MPEG 1 Layer 3 (mp3) and the newer MPEG 4 codecs allow for a balance between ‘musical quality’ and ease of delivery over bandwidth constrained networks to the music consumer. This ‘accessibility’ does come at the price of a degree of infidelity to the original audio waveform with noise artefacts introduced even at the highest bit rates and audible to those with an audiophile ear trained on high end audio equipment (Atkinson, 2008). This was especially the case early on with immature codecs and the common 128kbps mp3 bitrate. The development of the mp3 format outside of the Fraunhofer framework in projects such as the ongoing open source LAME encoder, along with the widespread adoption of 192kbps bit rates and higher for downloads, continue to improve the audio quality towards that of the uncompressed master. In fact in most cases bit rates above 200kbps are generally indistinguishable from the CD original, at least for the ‘average’ non-audiophile listener on consumer level receivers and speakers (Hydrogenaudio Listening Tests, n.d.). It remains however that encoding practices and skill sets are varied, many users may not even understand what “bit rate” means and many more may be somewhat reticent installing LAME 3.96 and invoking -V2 --vbr-new let alone refining their MPEG compression to suit the music. Apart from some codecs using a high pass filter at lower bit rates the bass frequencies generally fare no worse than mids and highs. Artefacts due to noise and distortion from the encoding process are introduced and resolution and dynamic range will be lost regardless, with some musics suffering more

than others. This problem is only partly addressed in the MPEG 4 AAC standard although it is generally a better compromise than the still dominant mp3. The audiophile debate over quality does seem to miss the point however (Atkinson, 1999) as mp3 and AAC are much more than just lossy digital audio compression formats, they are also a technological medium for a cultural practice (Sterne, 2006) and a way of listening far removed from either the rigours of the mixing desk or high end listening room. Portability and accessibility are the attractions and the destination is budget consumer playback via computer multimedia speakers, home stereo systems, headphones and earphones and it is here that the lack of decent bass resolution is especially apparent.

Internet streaming While one possible future of online music distribution, at least for some commercial music models (Last.FM, 2008), lies in the subscription to streaming delivery of content direct to the music consumer’s computer and multimedia playback system, this online radio/TV format is even more constrained by bandwidth problems than mp3 downloads. Earlier modem delivery of streams via streaming mp3 or proprietary formats such as RealAudio required rather severe compression down to around the 56kbps modem limit often involving high pass filters to cut off the lower bass frequencies (the cut off frequency was set at 300Hz on early LAME formats). The resulting often radical audio degradation was clearly audible even on the budget PC based playback systems of the modem era. At today’s broadband bandwidths however, along with the maturation of today’s computer based audio playback, this compression problem is being overcome and the listening experience provided by streaming sites such as Last.FM is nearing the ‘close enough is good enough’ threshold. Shockwave Flash players along with 128kbps and higher mp3 streams have become an Internet standard opening a new publishing avenue for both the larger music labels and independent musicians. It seems unlikely however that this way of organizing a personal music collection will ever displace actually downloading and ‘owning’ a music recording irrespective of whether the radio subscription and its ‘pay to listen’ business model is targeted at today’s PC or tomorrow’s increasingly sophisticated mobile telephony/Internet device. Internet streaming will most probably remain a form of radio playback like AM/FM broadcasting rather than replace the personal music collection once physically embodied in the vinyl/tape/CD and now virtually in gigabytes of MPEG audio

files that can be endlessly copied and transported beyond the online graphic user interface. Either way, whether downloading files to an iPod or subscribing to a personalised streaming music collection on tomorrow’s iPhone, the problem of the vanishing bass in our portable earphone centric music world remains the same.

The hardware problem While mid to late 90’s Internet based audio playback was constrained by the hardware specifications of the average PC sound card’s amplification stages with poor dynamic range and even worse bass response the industry has responded to the market’s requirements for better sound. The post 2000 introduction of Class D true digital audio amplification helped pave the way for today’s plethora of Internet audio consumer devices. Low voltage, low current digital amplification on a budget is no longer a serious impediment to the mass consumer online listening experience The software and hardware technologies at the heart of the new online music listening experience now offer a degree of music fidelity that is ‘close enough’ for the mass of music consumers if not for the audiophile. It is this maturing technology along with the increasing accessibility and ease of use of the online social networks that are driving both the popular demand for online music and the corporate scramble to formulate a business plan to commercialize that demand. The problem here is not the technology itself but rather the music experience it enables. The problem concerning the vanishing bass revolves around the shift in listening practices from a music collection based on vinyl, tape or CD - played back on a variety of home stereo Hi Fi systems or portable ‘boom boxes’ - towards massive collections organized on the PC and played back on iPod style mp3 players and the ubiquitous earphone. While earlier portable devices such as the Sony Walkman allowed for cassette tape, CD and MiniDisc playback these listening devices were peripheral add-ons to the mainstream music experience. It is only now with the emergence of the so-called iPod generation that headphones and earphones have become central to our digitally enabled ears. The main problem therefore lies in the difference between a full spectrum or embodied bass experience in an acoustic space, and the bass impoverished listening experience of MPEG compressed headphone/earphone audio on today’s Internet centric audio devices. Bass is perhaps the most difficult part of the frequency spectrum to faithfully reproduce in consumer playback systems simply due to

the physical limitations of small speaker cones and especially where MPEG compression has already limited the dynamic range and detail of the bass response. In the case of consumer headphones and earphones the listener is even further removed from an optimal bass listening experience. While today’s headphones are manufactured with a similar bass response range to consumer Hi Fi speakers, down to as low as 18Hz in many consumer models with various sophisticated techniques to compensate for roll off below 30Hz, it remains that headphones by their very nature fail to replicate one important feature of our perception of low frequency sound waves. Even if you can ‘hear’ as much bass, you cannot feel it in or on your body with headphones the way you can with external speakers resonating in an acoustic space. This physical ‘feeling’ of bass is an essential part of music listening.

Low frequency and the body What Philip Sherburne calls the ’micromaterialization of music’ results in loss of both high and low frequency extremes (Sherburne, 2003). Compression algorithms generally remove frequencies considered inaudible for the listener in an attempt to mimic the psychoacoustic masking phenomena apparent in human auditory perception. These psychoacoustic models however do not consider the way the body absorbs sound. Low frequency sound is audibly perceptible to the ear down to around 16Hz below which tonal recognition quickly degrades. Lower frequency bass ‘noise’ is perceptible down to 1Hz or lower although the sensitivity thresholds are extremely high, typically climbing from around 46dB at 50Hz to 107dB at 4HZ. Interestingly, older listeners are generally found to be 6-7dB less sensitive to low frequency sound than their younger counterparts (Watanabe and Møller, 1990). Now while consumer playback hardware is often rated to 20Hz ± 3-6 dB, with bass reflex porting used on most speakers to extend the bass response, the acoustic listening space itself can have a bass resonance from around 35Hz for dimensions around 5M and as low as 5-10Hz if acting as a Helmholtz resonator (Leventhall, 2003). Although these acoustic bass resonances are a problem for the acoustic engineer designing a sound studio they are a natural part of any musical listening experience sans headphones (Platz and Wharton, 1996). Skilled conductors for example will adjust the performance of an orchestral ensemble to the acoustic properties of the concert space. Furthermore, we do not perceive all bass frequencies merely with our ears. Low frequency perception is a whole body phenomenon. Research into infrasonic and low fre-

quency noise has discovered that a certain amount of bass is absorbed through the body, and at a certain volume the body cannot differentiate hearing though the ears or other organs. The largest organ of our body, our skin, has a number of receptors such as the Merkel cell, Meissners corpuscles and Pancinian corpuscles that respond to sonic vibrations. This sonic sensitivity may be particularly important at very low frequencies where the brain cannot discriminate the tonality of the auditory sensation (generally below 16-18Hz as noted above) with sensitivity decreasing as frequency increases and auditory perception via the ear takes over (Levinthall, 2003). It should be noted that this whole body low frequency skin reception is not the same as that provided by vibration devices such as ‘bass shakers’ that can be added to a listening or gaming chair to simulate the ‘bass kick’ of a subwoofer using infrasonic signals. Lastly, internal body resonance, probably due to the structure of the rib cage, also plays an important part in bass perception. Depending on body build these peak at around 3080Hz and are perceptible at high amplitudes, typically 100+ dB (Takahashi and Maeda, 2002) but may also play a part in lower amplitude bass perception. Whilst the low frequency effects of 5.1 surround sound systems often employed in home theatres, as well as the addition of subwoofers to home stereo systems, will allow for body resonance and skin reception they use a technique that separates the bass from a full, ‘heard’, audio mix. Although bass frequencies are generally omnidirectional, their source in this case can often be felt as separate from other layers of the music. Bass shakers used in modified car boots are another example of this ‘separated’ listening and, whilst catering to the rhythmic and structural role of bass in music, do not necessarily enhance the timbre of the bass components within instruments. Given this spatialized, embodied nature of our bass perception, the bass listening experience is severely limited by the physical limitations of headphone and small speaker design. Effective bass response requires a resonating cabinet and a live acoustic space that headphones - whether closed, noise cancelling, canalphone or ported – simply cannot provide.

Aural training and music perception The psycho-physiological effects of repetitive listening training are well documented. Aural training leads to frequency and pattern discrimination, due to brain plasticity, with improved sensitivity to the trained frequencies and measurable cortical changes in the brain, an effect often used in the treatment of speech

disorders and noise sensitivity (Pantev et al, 1998). The human brain is especially responsive to musical tones and this sensitivity is already apparent in new born infants but is also a dynamic feature of our fully matured brains which exhibit both “sensitive tuning” in response to different musical tones as well as “contour or pattern sensitivity” to different musical sequences (Weinberger, 2004). Neural retuning of these musical pathways is ongoing throughout our young and adult lives where axonal growth is stimulated by the strong, repeated signals generated by attentively listening to certain forms of music over others. This ‘cellular learning’ or retuning is persistent as loss of axonal connections is much slower than growing them and prolonged retuning caused by the prolonged stimulation of a neuronal pathway, such as occurs with musicians constantly returning their attention to their music, results in measurable physical changes to the brain as axonal branching increases. These changes can last a lifetime and whilst particularly pronounced in musicians are also a natural effect of the aural training the music consumer undergoes when listening to their favourite tunes. It is this psychoacoustic retuning effect that is of concern in regards to the technologically driven shift in music listening towards an iPod/earphone centric world of musical experience. Does regular listening to a particular limited bandwidth on earphone playback significantly retune the listener’s auditory perception? Just as musicians are trained to recognise pitch relationships through solfege and other methods, does the shift to a particular mode of bass impoverished listening affect the frequency discrimination and bass perception of the so-called iPod generation via the psychoacoustics of aural training? If so, this aural training could result in a decreased sensitivity to low frequencies and thus an inability to fully resolve the rich detail of bass in the musical listening experience. Important music from the past, where a great deal of attention has been given to shaping and mixing the bass sound, may no longer be fully appreciated as its composers intended as a new generation of listeners tunes out to the vanishing bass. Certain music genres and productions have a dedication to frequency range detail – the bass of Bootsy Collins on Motown recordings for example, or the famous Telarc Label recordings of classical masterworks. The care given to the mastering and indeed the craft involved in replicating the live instrument sound faithfully can be lost if it is not able to be studied or heard in mainstream music distribution. Once aurally trained to the vanishing bass will listeners be able to discern what makes a Bootsy Collins bass sound different?

The impact of reduced formats Perhaps the music industry is moving away from the recording being the central focus for a musical work, and we are heading to a time where live performance, with suitable acoustics and sound reinforcement systems, will be the place to experience music fully. The omnipresence of file sharing supports this trend, in many countries the majority of music is downloaded using the aforementioned compression formats, and the full quality listening experience is not an expectation or demand. However, data mining services allow music creators to track where and when their music is streamed on the Internet. This allows targeting of markets that could also promote music in other formats. But are young music consumers being trained to accept music without bass detail? Does this mean that the crafted sounds of the past will be lost, leaving fundamental musical concepts such as harmony and rhythm to function without a full range of timbre or the careful craft of mastering that has become a very important element of the audio engineering craft. What are the implications for music students for example? Will their training be effected when they spend up to 3 times longer listening to MPEG compressed recordings in earphones to and from study or work, compared to the amount of time they spend listening to true, acoustic sounds during their practice or rehearsal? Of more concern perhaps, is the trend for archival activity online to use MPEG compression. Sites such as archive.org enable contributors to decide on the format they choose, whilst claiming that “Libraries exist to preserve society's cultural artefacts” (Internet Archive: About IA, n.d.). The audio playback of materials on these public archives will almost always be on portable devices or computers themselves. If not enough care to the aforementioned details is taken, only certain elements of these audio artefacts will be retained, and our perception will have shifted as to render us unable to know what to look for. Without the mechanism to accurately memorise, store or listen to the variety and detail inherent in the many elements of music and its recording, our time may indeed be robbed of some of its most important cultural artefacts - like floppy discs without reading machines.

References Atkinson, J. 1999. “Mp3 and the Marginalization of High End Audio”, Stereophile, February: 22. Atkinson, J. 2008. “MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD”, Stereophile, March: 31. Blesser, B. and Pilkington, D. 2000. "Global Para-

digm Shifts in the Audio Industry", Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Vol. 48, Nos. 9 and 10. Brand, S. 2003. “Escaping the Digital Dark Age” Library Journal, June, vol. 124, Issue 2, pp. 4649. Eide, Ø. 2001. “Bob Ludwig”, Mix, 1 December. Goblin, P. 1999. ”Sound Material: A New Reception”, Leonardo, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 317-323. Hydrogenaudio Listening Tests. n.d. Retrieved on 23/4/08 from http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?titl e=Hydrogenaudio_Listening_Tests#MP3 Internet Archive: About IA. n.d. Retrieved on 22/4/08 from http://www.archive.org/about/about.php Last.FM. 2008. “Free the Music”, Last.FM – The Blog. Retrieved on 22/4/08 from http://blog.last.fm/2008/01/23/free-themusic Leventhall, G. 2003. A Review of Published Research on Low Frequency Noise and its Effects. DEFRA, London. Pantev, C., Oostenveld, R. A. E., Ross, B., Roberts, L. E. and Hoke, M. 1998. “Increased auditory cortical response in musicians”, Nature, April 23 392 (6678), pp. 811-814.

Platz , R. and Wharton, F. 1995. “More Than Just Notes: Psychoacoustics and Composition”, Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 5, pp. 23-28. Rumsey, F. and McCormick, T. 2006. Sound and Recording: An Introduction. Focal Press, London. Sherburne, P. 2003. “Digital DJing App that Pulls You In”, Grooves, Vol. 10, pp. 46-47. Sterne, J. 2006. “The mp3 as cultural artifact”, New Media Society, Vol. 8, pp. 825-842. Takahashi, Y. and Maeda, S. 2002. “Measurement of human body surface vibration induced by complex low frequency noise”, 10th International Meeting Low Frequency Noise and Vibration and its Control, pp. 135-142. York, UK. Watanabe, T., and Møller, H. 1990. “Low frequency hearing thresholds in pressure field and free field”, Journal of Low Frequency Noise Vibration, 9, pp. 106-115. Weinberger, N. M. 2004. “Music and the brain”, Scientific American, 291(5), pp. 88–95. [Brand Goblin Rumsey aren’t cited in text]

AUC Createworld09 Conference

Inside-Out Flutes: The Emergence of the Transformative Meta-flautist Jean Penny Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University Brisbane, Queensland, Australia [email protected]

ABSTRACT As musical and performance practices have evolved over the last half-century, the realm of the solo flautist has expanded to encompass an extensive array of emerging techniques and technologies. This paper discusses the performance of music for flute and electronics from the perspective of the flautist, the impact of technological interventions and the new performative elements introduced by this genre. The focus is on elements of performance that generate change, such as transformations of sonority, re-activated spaces, altered physicality and perceptions of performer identity, that occur in a digitally interactive environment. The “meta-flautist” emerges through a series of encounters – of performer, instrument, equipment, computer, technologist, space, and composer - and the construction of the instrumentalist-computer relationship. The aim is to reveal elements of the inside story of performance, where practices are constructed, revealed and re-defined.

INTRODUCTION The interface of performance and electronics generates changes in perceptions, understandings, connections and musical interactivity. This paper draws together flutes, technology and performance in a discussion exploring the impact of digitally activated environments on instrumentalists, and performative responses to a variety of platforms. The impact of technological interventions on performance is primarily grounded in the techniques demanded of the genre, the sonic, physical and implied repositioning of the soloist and sound technician in the performance space, an expansion of musical sonority and newly defined relationships. Extended flute techniques, electronic techniques and expanded performance elements create a new sonic world, open doors to change, transform perceptions of oneself as an instrumentalist, and engender a reappraisal and new understanding of performance practice. The traditional idea of the flute has evolved to become a meta-instrument, an interface between human and computer technology where precisely specified virtual spaces can create new perspectives and shifts in emphasis, where new partnerships form and expanded performance practices are fostered. As well as the new equipment and new physical and mental demands, flute music can now include the smallest perceivable sounds, the interior of sounds, as well as huge expansions of sound and stunning diffusion. There is a radical shift in playing an instrument in a technologically expanded environment as the parameters of the instrument itself change, as the sounds move around in new spatial dynamics, and the power and positions of instrument and player change. The performance space becomes a place for interaction with digital technologies, and an integral element in interpretation – its edges, density, and activity change. Much is invisible and intangible;

at times the source of sounds is not apparent, or is generated from outside the body, altering the perception of body-instrument-sound expectations, or the intimacy of the musician-instrument can become revealed as an expanded projection of self. This transformed meta-flautist consists of an array of elements that come together in an integrated ensemble, where the computer is the cohort, and exchanges between body, instrument and electronics meet in a new entity. Early works for flute and electronics largely involved working with fixed media, such as tape or CD accompaniment. In works such as Richard Karpen’s Exchange for flute and CD (1987) the tempi of the computer generated material force the flautist along at break-neck speed, imbuing the performance with a feeling of captivity, of a wish to escape by getting to the end - and a longing for the accompanying euphoria that a successful arrival brings. Technologies began to move away from this format to some extent from 1987, when score following was developed and used by such composers as Phillipe Manoury 1 and others. Tracing the musician’s responses to these shifting emphases in real-time performance, and transforming them into articulated documentation was a goal of my recently completed doctoral research, The Extended Flautist: Techniques, technologies and performer perceptions in music for flute and electronics (Penny, 2009). In this practice-led project, I used the experience of performance to investigate performer responses, specifically flautist responses, to playing in an electroacoustic environment. Two recitals provided the material and real-time experience of performance involving spatialisation and interactive live electronics for this study. This project was impelled by an intrigue with the changes I found in my own performance practice, and a desire to explore the rapidly expanding flute and electronics genre from a personal perspective. Many elements emerged as highly important in this investigation, and here I will relate a selection of these to specific works and technological platforms. AMPLIFICATION: THE POWER OF PROJECTION The first, and most obvious electroacoustic effect is amplification. Amplification is positively ubiquitous in this era to such an extent that acoustic music is starting to hold a re-newed attraction in some post-electronic performance circles. Amplification in the classically based flute music of western art music, however, remains something of a novelty. Its effect in changing power balances, generating an ability to use sounds that would be otherwise inaudible, to manipulate the flute tone in minute or massive ways, to create a startling sense of intimacy, repositioning the soloist in the performance space and providing the base for digital transformations generates an exciting and immediate change of scene – an array of new expectations, concepts and performative responses. Vivid effects can be created through amplifying “impossible” sounds such as very soft intimate tongue or key clicks, breath tones or fragile multiphonics. These sounds are often unstable and swinging, evoking uncertainty in player and listener. Amplified whistle tones suggest distance and may be used to depict a distant character or thought. Changes in vibrato intensity and speed can give a shimmering colour variation with amplification, especially in combination with reverberation. Other techniques may include combined flute tone and voice or breath, which can introduce a grainy, indistinct tone that is quite malleable with amplification. New dramatic elements join the performance, with implied, veiled or commanding characters mixed with the flute. 1

Manoury’s Jupiter for flute and electronics was the first work to use score following technologies, developed by researchers including Barry Vercoe, Miller Puckette and Manoury.

Amplified microtones and overtones can be mixed together effectively to distort pitch; and magnified percussive sounds bring completely contrasting sonic worlds into play with, for example, sharp, metallic key slaps or muffled articulations. Breath tones are an important and surprisingly intense element in this soundscape. The transformation of the breath tone, from its lowly position of extraneous noise needing eradication (as expected in conventional flute music) to a highly suggestive expressive element is a short but momentous journey. A variety of techniques may meld together, such as embouchure based techniques, tubular breath tones, and various quantities of normal resonant tone, or voice, multiphonics, or articulations, creating a profusion of sound choices. The breath tone becomes a new expressive tool, creating a new layer of colour and meaning, an illusion of proximity, of extending the inner self into the music and out into the hall, and a connector of inner and outer identities. The amplification may not even be immensely apparent, as in Mario Lavista’s Canto del alba for amplified flute (1979/2003), where microsounds are gently reinforced. Multiphonics, microtones, breath tone, altered timbre fingerings, whistle tones, harmonics, glissandi, voice and flute tone, varied vibrato, and the occasional resonant passage all become balanced and effective in this work through light amplification. A startling sense of place, of sitting in a beautiful forest, is evoked in an atmosphere of mindful meditation. The feeling generated by engagement with the music and the impact of the various techniques has a transforming effect, here illustrated from the performer’s perspective: An astonishing sense of anticipation is felt, the imminent connection to notes, the opening multiphonic, the breath that imbues this work with meditative and seductive style; quarter tones, altered tone fingerings, strands of tones linking and separating, spaces in sounds, spaces of sounds. Here in performance, the spinning threads construct the evocative soundscape, transporting us into the music. The breathing reflects a stylized gesture, locating the performer at once in that sound, and coming from that sound. An immersion is created, we glide together: the audience’s attention is palpable. The flute becomes a body extension, part flesh, part conduit, simultaneously directing and following the performance. Dreams again, of perfection and ease. This performance is difficult, there is so much at stake, what if, what if… My thoughts become the notes, travelers across the page, the room…. What a sweet sound, what a beautiful song of yearning, of wafting and dreaming. The music appears to move, to build invisible textures and structures, to draw us in. The amplification is amazing, it projects strength and colours, it provokes confidence and definition, it is in love with whistle tones so hard to pitch, it throws a resonant phrase to the back wall, it creates amazing whirls of harmonics and glissandi. An unimagined delicacy of tone arrives, a shimmering vibrato slides through the room, a sharp accent penetrates the fragile timbres. We are in a forest? What a place this is! I will blow on my flute forever here. (Penny, Journal entry,

2007)

REVERBERATION: ILLUSIONS AND DELUSIONS Reverberation and delay used in flute compositions are primarily textural effects that expand the soundscape to create a sense of place, multiple voices and specific atmospheres. Polyphonic build up and enlarged tonal spaces create a sense of immersion for the player, giving an imagined sense of support, and dialogue with the musical material or implied hidden persona. Katharine Norman suggests that reverberation puts a sound in a place, the echo confirming its existence. (Norman,

2004) This effect is a feature in much of Kaija Saariaho’s flute music, where reverberation has a strong influence on perception of space and placement. In NoaNoa (1999), for example, reverberation is used throughout to create sustained tones, introduce multiple voices and to add structural richness. A sense of the music existing as your whole world occurs in the performance of this work, through an immersive sound environment and the fully entrained attitude demanded of the techniques and interpretation. One’s whole body is participating here: chest, abdomen, vocal cords, arms, hands, legs, feet, throat, mouth, ears, eyes and mind. The surrounding virtual spaces appear to confirm the sense of involvement. In Thea Musgrave’s Narcissus (1988), the delay effect is used to invoke the character of the reflection. The mental chaos of Narcissus is depicted with a build up of the echoes and resultant harmonisation effects. For the performer, this creates an engagement with self-immersion, spatialisation of self through the reflective layering, dialogue, distortion and harmonisation of the tone. The delay sits at times at an easy distance, at others extremely close, and at others in harmonization and altered pitch. In performance, the impression of one’s own sound coming straight back as a new voice can be astonishing at first, but here serves as a brilliant underpinning of the dramatic character of the piece. This revelation has an empowering impact on interpretative understanding, intensifying the depiction of deluded megalomania evoked by the personality of Narcissus. Reverberation in Georg Hajdu’s Sleeplessness (1987, revised 1997) creates an atmosphere of anxiety, of aloneness and of the dimensions of the rooms of a house. Written for 3 flutes and Max/ MSP, Sleeplessness is episodic in structure, moving through sections for low flute (bass or contrabass), high flute (piccolo or concert flute), and finally the middle range alto flute. The electronics add undercurrents, especially through reverberation, capturing feelings of shakiness and nervous twitches. Shadows and confusion are also conjured up, through the harmonization effects, introducing new characters and voices. In this work the listener becomes situated within the house, the drama unfolding first in the living room, then bedroom and bathroom. This spatial metaphor for the psyche of the self, moving agitatedly through states (or rooms) of unease, is created through a repertoire of sound effects melded with the flute line. The reverberated staccatos and the harmonizations imply spaces through echoes and shadowed musical lines. These echoes confirm and surround the sound in the space, indicating dimensions of the place as well as emotional responses. Low, indistinct pitches imply intimacy; high screeching pitches signify panic. Unfocussed flute sounds, or rustle sounds, blur the edges of these spaces, and rushed sequences represent an agitated, restlessness within this confined area. EMBODIED GESTURE A focus on the microcosm of performance techniques inevitably leads to the highlighting of body use in performance. Technological influences increase bodily awareness in the performer, and change the meaning of movements in numerous ways. Most apparent is a striking increase in selfawareness, a magnification that correlates to the microphone effect. An intense focus on micro techniques highlights muscular awareness of embouchure flexibility and fluidity, throat relaxation, internal mouth shaping, and air pressure control, all of which require a relaxed and alert condition. Specific body movements open up a new world of cause and effect in combination with electronics, new ways to construct meaning in performance, and ways to establish transparency or obscuration.

The physical requirements of movements normally associated with playing the flute may confirm meaning through gesture, but additional actions such as pedaling or computer interaction extend this into a wider spectrum. Minute shifts of embouchure or breath, throat or fingers; large arm, leg or full body movements; all alter balance, muscular and visceral responses. Using the foot for pedaling creates a new set of balancing requirements, which in turn vigorously influences posture, breath and playing position. Whole body gestures may also be used to trigger events, creating intense focus and movement. The effects for both the Saariaho and Hajdu works mentioned here are activated through a MIDI pedal and Max/MSP. The pedaling techniques bring a strong sense of physicality to the performance, as leg and whole body muscle use rebalance the flautist, and engage with the propulsion and drama of the music. Warren Burt’s Mantrae For Flute and Live Electronics (2007) is an interactive work that explores the connections between the individual and the world. Stillness and movement, inner calm and chaotic change are juxtaposed in a setting that transforms physical movement into sonic forms. The shifting relations of the self to a digital other, the responses and controls, are activated through motion capture and sound modification, using Plogue Bidule as the host program for the processing and Cycling 74’s Hipno sound processing modules. In this work the flautist is instructed to intensely focus on each of the three mantrae and to also move randomly from one to another, and hence stand to stand. The flute begins solo, with the electronics appearing after the first thirty seconds. Then the flute sound is processed through the plug-in effects, which are programmed to change through Modulator / V Motion as the flautist sets off the camera / motion sensor by moving from stand to stand. The conceptual layers of meaning are revealed through the technological processes in this work, the intense chanter (the flautist) being surrounded by the sonic material of plug-in effects. The most dominant performative imperative of Mantrae is physicality, as full body gesture activates a whole sonic world, converting gesture into digital sound. From the outside, the body becomes the visual prompt, the revealer of process, the audience informer. The meaning of the piece, the trajectory of flute chanting, the (dis)connections to the outer world become focused through the image of performer. Intensity of purpose, sensed through musculature and postures of concentration, discloses the conceptual basis of the work, the centrality of the individual within the disarray of life. The invisible presence of the transformative technologies, the motion tracking and effect triggering, are representations of perceived connection, a linking fabric between gestures of exchange. The flute sounds are traditional at the source, resonant, articulate, and impelled. The altered sounds emanating from the loud speakers bear little relationship to this focused flautist; they are nebulous connections, the sounds of otherness. The technology creates the communication, and the dichotomy. The overlap, the linking performance gesture is changed into the technological gesture, the sonic changes incurred by the computer plug-in software, connect movement with sound texture and timbre, the ‘extended flautist’ here becomes a representation of individual and global relationships. The experience of performing Mantrae is an unfolding focus on motion and location. New balances and sensations evolve, challenging acquired performance knowledge, and merging with the desire to be completely free within this circle, to attempt to move with abandon, swiftness and grace, to

dissolve into the music, to become the meditation through a semi-immersion. The movements are sharp and fast, turning with seeming unpredictability from one stand to another. There is some awkwardness, some difficulty sustaining vision of the scores, moving without unravelling basic flute playing techniques and postures. Modulating this potential for instability begins a search for greater fluidity and cohesion, a shaping of the matrix of patterns INVISIBLE ALTERITIES In contrast to Burt’s piece is the connective environment activated by Max/MSP in Russell Pinkston’s Lizamander (2003). In this work pitch and threshold triggering occurs as driving rhythms are built in real time from the live flute sound. There is no visible triggering at all as the live electronic processing occurs as a result of sonic triggering – when the flute plays certain notes, or moves above a certain pitch threshold, sound effects are triggered, and the work progresses. This technique appears on the surface to be simple but it demands care in presentation. The acoustic space, for example, has a critical effect on the functioning. A pure clear pitch is needed, and if the reverberation in the space is too great, for instance, the computer has difficulty picking up the correct sound and the piece does not progress, and sound effects do not occur. Working as an invisible partner, the electronics encourage a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The interactivity may be imperceptible to an audience and sound events may lose their definition and source. Unawareness of processes and misunderstanding of intent can occur, the sense of the open or closed environment of the electroacoustic concert can alienate, the visual scene can be informing or confusing, the changed physical manners can surprise and provoke question. Alternatively, the audience may respond with pleasure to a repositioning of performer, to illusions of intimacy, to complex sound configurations and challenged expectations. CONCLUSION: EMERGING META-INSTRUMENT ENTITIES The performing flautist entity has thus transformed into a meta-instrument – an integrated ensemble that reflects the expanded identity, the new capacities and relationship dynamics, the ecology of sounds, processes, machines and people. This symbiosis generates changes of attitude that give permissions, controls and scope for expanded roles, expanded space and integrated narratives. Relationships of flautist to instrument, flautist to technology, and flautist to technologist are altered, adjusted and expanded. The computer has become the cohort, the accomplice in musical adventures, and knowledge of technological processes greatly enhances this development. New performative patterns are added to the body, new cognitive responses and a new sense of a multiplicitous identity is generated. This construct assimilates and extends the concept of ‘flautist’ through exterior, visible means and interior awareness and expression of the self. Simon Emmerson (2007) describes the instrument as an extension of the performer’s identity. If this is accepted, the instrument in combination with electronics can be considered a further expanded identity, that takes excursions into unusual sound and performance parameters, and altered spatial perceptions. The flautist can revel in the increased ease of projection, the empowering scale of refinement, and the capacities for enriched and engaging encounters provided by this environment. Dancer and academic, Susan Kozel, states that the computer “is not just an instrument . . . or the interval between clicking and getting somewhere else” (2008, p. 186). This comment provokes investigation of the meaning and realization of interactive technologies and instrumental performance. There is more than a duality here – the meta-instrument is a force greater than its

individual components, with transformative potentials worthy of deep attention. These technologically based encounters, the interconnections of machine and body, of machine and sound have the potential to profoundly inform us by questioning the nature of performance activities and relationships, through exploring human senses and extended lived experience.

REFERENCES Burt, W. (2007). Mantrae for flute and live electronics [Score]. Self published. Emmerson, S. (Ed.) (2000). Music, Electronic Media and Culture. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Hajdu, G. (1997). Sleeplessness for flutes, live electronics and narrator. [Score] Hamburg, GbH: Peer Music Classical. Kozel, S. (2008). Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lavista, M. (2003). Canto del alba para flauta amplificada. (3rd ed.). [Score]. Mexico: Ediciones Mexicanas de Musica. Musgrave, T. (1988). Narcissus for Solo Flute and Digital Delay. [Score}. London, UK: Novello. Norman, K. (2004). Sounding Art: Eight Literary Excursions Through Electronic Music. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Pinkston, R. (2003). Lizamander for flute and Max/MSP. [Score]. Self published. Penny, J. (2009). The Extended Flautist: techniques, technologies and performer perceptions in music for flute and electronics. DMA dissertation, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. Penny, J. (2008) Amplified breath: (dis)embodied habitat. Published in Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval: Genesis of Meaning in Sound and Music, 5th International Symposium, CMMR 2008, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2008. Berlin, Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. Saariaho, K. (1999). NoaNoa for flute and electronics. [Score] London, UK: Chester Music.


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CREATEWORLD - IPRAC - TWITTERING TO SURVIVE PRACTICUM DR JASON ZAGAMI       SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES, GOLD COAST CAMPUS  GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY   [email protected]  

Abstract This study reports on student use of iPhones to maintain a strong social network during work integrated learning placements. Work integrated learning can be particularly intense and emotional experiences, particularly for education students in which it represents a pass-fail barrier for entry into the field. Using the twitter micro blogging service and iPhone mobile devices, students were encouraged to share the 'trivia' of their placement experience and through this sharing of seemingly mundane experiences establish a supportive learning environment. The play associated with the use of mobile devices for social networking reduced inhibitions in student sharing of their work integrated learning experiences and promoted shared learning experiences that reduced individual perceptions of isolation and uncertainty.

Most pre-service education students experience anxiety about work integrated learning placement or teaching practicum (Murray-Harvey, Slee, Lawson, Silins, Banfield & Russel, 2000) and this stress is based on student perceptions of the demands placed on them (expresses concerns) associated with the practicum, and their resources for coping (reported strategies). MacDonald (1993), Cambell-Evans & Maloney (1995), Capel (1997), D'Rozario & Wong (1996), Elkerton (1994), Moreton, Vesco, Williams & Awender (1997) have described teaching practicum as the most stressful component of teacher preparation courses which generally focus "more on methodology and less on preparing preservice teachers to cope with the inevitable anxieties and stress associated with students' roles, relationships, and responsibilities of teaching" (Murray-Harvey, et al, 2000). The attrition of preservice, novice, and experienced teachers is a widespread problem (Chaplain, 2008). In England, about 40% of those who embark on a training course (on all routes) never become teachers, and of those who do become teachers, about 40% are not teaching 5 years later (Kyriacou & Kunc, 2007). In the USA as few as 50% of pre-service teachers enter and remain in the US school system for longer than three years with many leaving to find less-stressful careers (Black-Branch & Lamont, 1998). Teaching has consistently been ranked as a high stress occupation (Beer & Beer, 1992; Borg, Riding, & Falzon, 1991), stress among pre-service teachers is less well researched, perhaps in part because (Murray-Harvey et al., 2000) it is viewed as a normal part of teacher development and therefore accepted as a natural element of the transition from novice to qualified teacher. Many pre-service student teachers discontinue with their studies due to excessive anxiety (Sanderson, 2003) with the most powerful predictor of retention among pre-service teachers being how much pleasure they anticipate they will get from the job, but the reality of teaching during practicum often results in their optimism being dampened (Veenman, 1984). While it is recognised that the most stressful component of teacher education is the practicum (Kyriacou & Stephens, 1999; Macdonald, 1993), it is generally expected by teacher preparation courses that the ‘wit and experience’ (Biggs, 1990) of students will ameliorate their concerns. While some universities offer units that touch on how to handle anxiety during the teaching practicum (Campbell & Uusimaki, 2006) it is argued (Black-Branch & Lamont, 1998) that teacher education programs have at least an ethical, if not a legal and professional responsibility, to provide support for pre-service teachers who are under high levels of stress during their teaching practicum.



Pre-service teachers have a range of concerns, balancing practicum and personal commitments, coping with the teaching workload, managing time, and concerns about others' expectations of their competence. Students develop a range of strategies to help cope with practicum stresses, of particular importance is the use of social support networks to develop and maintain coping strategies while on teaching practicum. Such networks may be newly established (in the case of supervising teachers) or existing (such as family and friends). Where a pre-service teacher is isolated from their existing social networks and have difficulty in developing new networks, a significant component of their coping strategy may be unavailable. While it is strongly suggested that pre-service teachers should do their practicum in pairs or clusters rather than isolated from their peers (Samaras & Gismondi, 1998; Tom, 1997; Winitzky, Stoddart, & O’Keefe, 1992), where this is not possible, social networking technologies may be able to assist in reducing practicum stress by sustaining social networks at a distance. In this study, 25 Primary School Graduate Diploma pre-service teachers on their first six week practicum experience were loaned Apple iPhones to enable them to sustain a social network using mobile devices and the social networking micro-blogging service - Twitter. The 25 students were randomly selected from 49 volunteers drawn from a cohort of approximately 200 primary school preservice teachers completing a one-year graduate diploma of education. All volunteers were required not to have used social networking software in the last 3 months. From the remaining pool of 24 students, a control group of 20 pre-service teachers was also studied; this group was not provided with a mobile device or used social networking services during the period of the study. In the week following their six-week practicum placement, students were surveyed on their experiences during their practicum placement and their micro-blog conversations analysed. Students in the mobile social network group were loaned a second-generation Apple iPhone with Twitter applets installed to provide mobile connectivity to a social networked comprising the 25 members of the mobile social network group. Students were provided with prepaid SIM cards with sufficient credit to facilitate use over the 6-week period. Pre -service teachers in the mobile device group were also provided with approximately 30 minutes of instruction on using the devices and the social networking software service Twitter. Over the six-week period, students in the mobile social network group used the personal device on a daily basis to record and share their thoughts and experiences during their teaching. No specific expectations or instructions were provided to the mobile social networking group on what to include in their micro-blog posts. From analysis of micro-blog messages during the study, students used the social network for five main purposes. Activity sharing, Achievement sharing, Attitude sharing, Resource sharing, and Event sharing. The following micro-blog postings are representative of the five categories. Activity sharing - this provided members of the network general information on the types of activities that other members were engaged in during their practicum placement. "Day of marking and writing reflections" "First full day oh the joys" "Teaching all day. A bunch of projects to mark should be a fun and exciting night of marking" "Now for a half day/stand up comedy. Should be a good afternoon" "Teaching all day. A bunch of projects to mark should be a fun and exciting night of marking" "Just finished teaching decimals to grade 7's. The class turned into long division. Now to teach technology" Marking then the movie Holes and then outside time. The movies has Shai leboueff so it must be good" "Slowly learning german while creating a work sheet for math" "Making poo today! (helps the students understand the digestive system)....haha"



"Just recorded my first rap track. It had some phat beats yo" "The high cheese hand shake is catching on. All the cool kids are doing it" "My students are chanting duck, duck, goose.....its causing a riot and I am laughing too hard to stop it!!!" "about to teach a math lesson based on grilled cheese consumption" "fun state of origin game this morning to teach good sportsmanship...GO THE BLUES!!!" "The nervous system is a hard concept...... Let's try teaching it to 10 year olds!!!!" "About to teach my first math class on percents and fractions going to be 150% awesome" "Lots of behavioural issues on this sunny Tuesday!" "The students are loving the iphone in their class!" "Getting observed by the liaison today,wish me luck" "Lesson planning and rubric making all day." "Going to be a great day. Half day of teaching and then a debrief session with classmates at the S club" "Friday and there is a substitute, lesson planning for this cat" "Sub today and my unit starts after little tea. Should be a good day" "Mr XXXXX needs to work on his cursive writing now and yes you can go to the toilet" "Taught measurement today. Teaching Ned Kelly tomorrow...or at least Sydney Nolan's interpretation. Should be covered in paint by day end!"

Achievement sharing - this provided an opportunity for members to publicly express their successes or failures to a supportive community. "Full day going well" "Full day of teaching went well. Loved the fact that it was photo day and I am in the class photo and grad photo." "Another successful lesson" "A teacher of many years thought my artwork was fabulous, ya I'm that good" "Testing my behavioural management...witnessed a complete melt down..throwing chairs, hitting, biting, spitting, yelling...wow what a day!" "All day to do work and I am up late doing it. I feel like I have acquired the attention span of my grade 7's." "Math lesson was awful but grammar made up for it" "complex sentences you will be the death of me" " I got in trouble for using I'd too much :P" "Worst day"

Attitude sharing - this provided members an opportunity to express how they were coping with the practicum experience. "Liking sports day today! Sitting under the teachers lounge all day. Gotta love the teaching lifestyle!!!!" "Blown away by the projects so far for the technology going to be fun to mark. Also some of them wrote raps and can't wait to lay down the tracks" "well getting there, preps can be little rat bags but ya gotta luv em!! tomorrow will be a fun day!! getting hooked on teaching,yay!!" "Did my first observation report today. Just felt like a good time to start" "what a week...taking a special ed class to gymnastics is more tiring for the teachers then the students i think!" "A kid just said her grandpa is dying this Christmas so she could get coloured paper to draw on. wow! :P" "'Miss XXXXX, you look beautiful today, you look like a princess' awww i love prep" "Easy Friday. Currently skipping a staff meeting. Beginning to get a little thirsty" "Last week if prac time to do some work!" "Easy morning of lesson making and relaxing then doing warm fuzzies with the class. Making a difference one lesson at a time." "Hey guys, what a blast. 32 little faces staring up at me as I indoctrinate them with utter crap!" "One week down, 5 to go. I *heart* prac =)" "WE had no closure today, a full days teaching and my bed sounds like a holiday



destination I am not going to enjoy for a while!" "week two done! preparing for my full day on monday... what a weekend" "Another day to tick off at 3, only 3 more to go" "I am going to cry tomorrow, Miss XXXXX. Don't leave me!!" "Friday is my favourite day of the week!" "Looking forward to a big taste of home this weekend...." "Now...drinking and recovering."

Resource sharing - this provided a forum for members to directly support each other in lesson preparation. "Any of your schools still doing outcomes based learning? Help required, back in the dark ages here." "Have you guys found any really useful interactive websites for maths?" "Thank you for the websites. Anyone know a good site to find outcomes like the KLAs" "interactive maths websites: http://resources.oswego.org/ not a bad one!" "http://bit.ly/IgOJ1 not bad for area/perimeter" "XXXXXX try enchantedlearning.com.au"

Event sharing - in which members could relate their thought on a shared event. "The weekend went by way to fast. Still have so much work this week. The strike will come in handy to get things done" "needs more sleep.. thank goodness for the strike!!" "Enjoying the strike!" "I love a good strike. A sleep in some relaxing and now working on my technology unit." "good day off... now mentally preparing for my half day of teaching, and its raining! Not sure how this rain will affect the kids attention spans" "No power? No problem... Nap time!!!! Stay dry Gold Coast! =)" "Nothing worse than a wet hump day. This weather should make for an interesting Wednesday. Meeting with XXXXX today as well" "I thought we were in a drought...,"

Analysis of the times when micro-blogs were produced revealed that approximately 70% of posts were made during school hours and supports the argument that for use of a mobile device as it allows participants the opportunity to produce micro-blogs at convenient times and close to the event/activity related to the post. This was reinforced in student surveys in which 85% of students reported that the immediate availability of the mobile device was of significant or very significant to their regular use of the micro-blogging service. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very significantly and 1 being very insignificantly, students responded to the question of how stressful they found their practicum experience. Table 1 Practicum Stress How stressful did you find Mobile Social Network you practicum? Group (n=25)

Control Group (n=20)

Difference

Pre-service teachers with access to other social networks

3.46 (n=19)

3.80 (n=16)

+0.34

Pre-service teachers placed in isolated practicum’s

3.68 (n=6)

4.00 (n=4)

+0.32



The difference between pre-service teachers using mobile devices and those without access to such devices suggests that access to mobile social networking devices provides some benefit to reducing stress during teaching practicum. A similar difference was recorded by students in isolated practicum placement but the sample size was insufficient to support that a mobile social network can act as the equivalent to a traditional social network in reducing stress during teaching practicum. Of the 14 students in the mobile social network group that reported significantly stressful events during their practicum, 75% indicated that the ability to share the experience with their online social network was a significant or very significant component of their coping strategy. 10% of the mobile social networking group indicated that they would not have successfully completed the practicum experience without the support of their social networks. Of 12 students in the control group that reported significantly stressful events during their practicum, 70% indicated that the ability to share the experience with their social network was a significant or very significant component of their coping strategy. 15% of the control group indicated that they would not have successfully completed the practicum experience without the support of their social networks. The number of participants in both the mobile social network and control groups did not provide sufficient numbers of isolated practicum experiences in which students were separated from their existing social networks to effectively differentiate between the two groups. Both groups strongly supported the importance of social networks in reducing stress during practicum placements but the effectiveness of mobile devices in providing access to a social network at a distance could not be substantiated, as most participants were able to draw upon existing social networks and were not reliant on the mobile device during stressful events. This study has shown that pre-service teachers can use a mobile social network for five main purposes during their teaching practicum: Activity sharing, Achievement sharing, Attitude sharing, Resource sharing, and Event sharing. It supports the use of mobile devices to provide the capacity to share experiences as close to the event as possible, and provides support to the importance of social networks in reducing stress in teaching practicum. The sample size was insufficient to clearly demonstrate that mobile social networking is more or less effective than traditional social networks or that a mobile social network can act as the equivalent to a traditional social network in reducing stress during teaching practicum.

References Beer, J. & Beer, J. (1992). Burnout and stress, depression and self-esteem of teachers. Psychological Reports, 71, 1331–1336. Biggs, J. (1990). Teaching design for learning. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Brisbane, Australia, 6-9 July, 1990. Black-Branch, J. & Lamont, W. (1998). Duty of care and teacher wellness: A rationale for providing support services in colleges of education. Journal of Collective Negotiations, 27 (3), 175-193. Borg, M., Riding, R. & Falzon, J. (1991). Stress in teaching: A study of occupational stress and its determinants, job satisfaction and career commitment among primary school teachers. Educational Psychology, 11, 59–75. Cambell-Evans, G. & Maloney, C. (1995). Trying to make a difference: Re-thinking the practicum. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Australian Association for research in Education, Hobart, Australia, 26-30 November, 1995. Campbell, M. & Uusimaki, L. (2006) A pilot study in challenging pre-service education students’



anxieties about their practical experiences in professional education. In Haigh, Mavis and Beddoe, Elizabeth and Rose, Dennis, Eds. Proceedings Practical Experiences in Professional Education Conference, pages pp. 60-67, Auckland, New Zealand. Capel, S. (1997). Changes in students' anxieties and concerns after their first and second teaching practices. Educational Research. 39, 211-228. Chaplain, R. (2008). Stress and psychological distress among trainee secondary teachers in England. Educational Psychology. 28(2), 195-209. D'Rozario, V. & Wong, A. (1996). A study of practicum-related stresses in a sample of first year student teachers in Singapore. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Singapore Educational Research Association and Australian Association for Research in Education, Singapore, 25-29 November 1996. Elkerton, C. (1994). Stress and the pre-service teacher. The Teacher Educator. 22(1), 2-8. Kyriacou, C. & Kunc, R. (2007). Beginning teachers' expectations of teaching, Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(8), 1246-1257. Kyriacou, C. & Stephens, P. (1999). Student teachers’ concerns during teaching practice. Evaluation and Research in Education, 13, 18–31. MacDonald, C. (1993). Coping with stress during the teaching practicum: The student teacher's perspective. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research. 39, 407-418. Murray-Harvey, R., Slee, P., Lawson, M., Silins, H., Banfield, G. & Russell, A. (2000). Under stress: The concerns and coping strategies of teacher education students. European Journal of Teacher Education, 23(1), 19-35. Moreton, L., Vesco, R., Williams, N. & Awender, M. (1997). Student teacher anxieties related to class management, pedagogy, evaluation, and staff relations. British Journal of Educational Psychology. 67, 69-89. Samaras, A. & Gismondi, S. (1998). Scaffolds in the field: Vygotskian interpretation in a teacher education program. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14(7), 715-733 Sanderson, D. (2003). Maximizing the student teaching experience: Cooperating teachers share strategies for success. Retrieved July 5, 2005, from http://www.usca.edu/essays/vol72003/sanderson.pdf Tom, A. (1997). Redesigning teacher education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Veenman, S. (1984). Perceived problems of beginning teachers. Review of Educational Research, 54, 143–178. Winitzky, N., Stoddard, T. & O’Keefe, P. (1992). Great expectations: Emergent professional development schools. Journal of Teacher Education, 43(1), 3-18.


CW2009 - IPRAC - USE OF SPONTANEOUS RECORDING DEVICES TO ENHANCE DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS DR JASON ZAGAMI       SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES, GOLD COAST CAMPUS  GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY   [email protected]   Abstract 25 pre-service teachers were provided with iPhones for use on practicum placement to capture artifacts for digital portfolios and compared with the digital portfolios generated by 20 pre-service students who did not have access to mobile recording devices. The ease and immediacy of access to mobile devices to record spontaneous events increased the number and scope of multimedia artifacts created. This then supported the development of narratives to student digital portfolios and supported improved reflection on the practicum learning experience.

The use of digital portfolios in pre-service education courses (Topp, Goeman & Clark, 2003) as a means of documenting student learning and encouraging reflection on the student learning process (Sung, et al., 2009) is increasing. Some pre-service education courses have developed digital portfolios into a single comprehensive assessment instrument that covers their entire pre-service teacher program (Fapojuwo, 2005) while many others are at the stage of exploring the effectiveness of digital portfolios to contribute to the overall pre-service teacher learning experience. Pre-service teachers who have been required to develop digital portfolios as part of their pr-eservice teacher education program have generally perceived portfolio assessment as a more authentic method of assessing their learning (Wilson, Wright, & Stallworth, 2003). Digital portfolios are increasingly seen as a form of digital storytelling (Kearney, 2009) in which the author, the student, weaves a narrative of their learning experiences. Multimedia in a digital portfolio extends the ability of students to present their stories through images, video, and audio recordings. The framing of collected artifacts as a rich, informative story places increased responsibilities on students to introduce a structure to their narratives. With this structure comes a planning process and the development of an explicit process of artifact collection. Multimedia rich digital portfolios also enable enhanced synthesis and analysis of the learning experiences associated with portfolio artifacts (Kearney, 2009) that in turn supports improvements in reflective metacognition. Digital portfolios involve the collection of artifacts and the presentation of these artifacts in a digital medium. While it is possible to collect analogue artifacts and convert these to digital artifacts for inclusion in a portfolio, for example scanning of paper documents, the process is cumbersome and often laborious. To facilitate this process, some universities have provided students on practicum placements with laptops (Kariuki & Turner, 2001) but students continue to report difficulties in capturing digital artifacts during classroom activities due to the disruptive nature of recording tools (Kearney, 2009). The digitization of analogue artifacts also lack immediacy, often occurring days or weeks after the artifact was used and this dislocation makes the contextualisation of the artifact in the digital portfolio difficult, reducing the effectiveness of the artifact for deep reflection on the learning processes occurring when the artifact was captured. With limited improvement in pre-service teacher reflection (Wilson, Wright, & Stallworth, 2003) being reported in large-scale implementations of digital portfolios, this study has investigated the impact of mobile recording devices on digital portfolio development. In the study, 25 primary school Graduate Diploma pre-service teachers on their first six-week practicum experience were loaned


Apple iPhones to use in artifact collection. The group was randomly selected from 49 volunteers drawn from a cohort of approximately 200 primary school pre-service teachers completing a one-year graduate diploma of education. From the remaining pool of 24 students, a control group of 20 preservice teachers was also studied; this group also developed a digital portfolio but was not provided with a mobile device or instruction on their use. In the week following their six-week practicum placement, students were assessed by means of a reflective essay on their ability to reflect on their learning during the practicum experience. This assessment, which was conducted across the entire practicum cohort (n>200), was used as a measure of comparison between the mobile device group and the control group with respect to the influence of mobile devices on student capacity to reflect on their practicum experience. Students in both groups were interviewed and their digital portfolios examined. Students in the mobile device group were loaned a second-generation Apple iPhone with the capacity to record digital images, sound and take notes. Pre-service students in the mobile device group were provided with approximately 30 minutes of instruction on using the devices to record still images, sound/voice recordings and text-based note taking. Pre-service students in both the mobile device group and in the control group were provided with approximately two hours of instruction on the usefulness of narrative development in presentation of digital portfolios as part of their scheduled coursework. Over a six week period, students in the mobile device group used their personal device on a daily basis to record artifacts generated during their teaching that included images from whiteboards or lesson activities, conversations with students, images and recordings of student presentations, preservice teacher debriefs with supervisors, etc. No specific expectations or instructions were provided to either group on what to include in their digital portfolios beyond standard expectations set by the university practicum office. Students in the mobile device group reported that the convenience and ready availability of the mobile device was a very significant factor in their ability to generate multimedia artifacts of their practicum experiences. They also reported that in many instances, the opportunity to capture an artifact would have been lost if the device was not immediately to hand as many artifacts in a primary classroom existed for a very short time periods and occurred spontaneously, making prior planning to have a recording device available difficult. Several students reported missed opportunities when the devices were left in a bag or desk, even when only a few meters distant. Soon into the process, more than 70% of students using mobile devices began to incorporate the collection of digital portfolio artifacts into their lesson planning. This was not evidenced at all in the control group. Pre-service teachers reported increased consideration of how each individual day or learning activity would contribute to their digital portfolio, and as a result, they’re overall learning during the practicum experience. As can be seen from Tables 1, 2 and 3, the process of artifact collection planning and a continuous process of artifact collection resulted in improvements to the reflective process. Pre-service teachers using the mobile devices took much more interest in the creation of a narrative to their digital portfolios. 72% compared to 10% in the control developed their digital portfolio into a structured narrative of their learning experience. Table 1 Narrative Development Group Mobile Devices with narrative development

Reflective Essay (Mean) 88% (n=18)

Mobile Devices with no narrative in portfolio

69% (n=7)

Control with narrative development

80% (n=2)

Control with no narrative in portfolio

64% (n=18)


Another unexpected aspect of the use of mobile devices for the collection of artifacts was a propensity for students to want to share the artifacts collected with their peers. 65% of pre-service students in the mobile device group shared at least one artifact with another student on practicum placement with 10% sharing over 50 artifacts. Within the control group no pre-service student shared an artifact with another student on practicum placement. The ease at which mobile devices facilitate a sharing of learning experiences represents an additional positive influence on the reflective process. Table 2 Artifact Sharing Sharing Did not share artifacts

Reflective Essay (Mean) 81% (n=9)

Shared some artifacts

87% (n=10)

Shared > 20 artifacts

92% (n=6)

The use of multimedia in pre-service digital portfolios was not confined to the mobile device group. 30% of the control group included at least on multimedia artifact, in all cases these were images, and Table 3 provides a comparison between the inclusion of multimedia artifacts and demonstrated reflection on the learning experience. Table 3 Artifact Generation Artifacts No multimedia artifacts

Mobile Device group Reflective Essay (Mean) NA% (n=0)

Control group - Reflective Essay (Mean) 62% (n=14)

1-10 multimedia artifacts

72% (n=2)

75% (n=4)

11-50 multimedia artifacts

83% (n=12)

82% (n=2)

>50 multimedia artifacts

89% (n=11)

NA% (n=0)

Findings Pre-service teacher use of mobile devices in this study resulted in a number of findings that inform future use of mobile devices for the development of digital portfolios. The immediacy of access to mobile devices to record spontaneous events as they occurred was of paramount importance in a rapidly changing primary classroom environment. The ease at which multimedia artifacts could be created and included in a collection of artifacts for use in pre-service student digital portfolios greatly increased the quantity and scope of multimedia artifacts included in pre-service teacher digital portfolios. The generation of multimedia artifacts increased the likelihood of students developing a narrative for their digital portfolios as opposed to treating the task of digital portfolio creation as a post practicum document archival exercise. Sharing of digital artifacts through the mobile devices increased the scope of student practicum experience and provided increased opportunities to examine their practicum


experience from different perspectives. Finally, the development of digital portfolios of pre-service teaching practicum experiences in which a range of multimedia elements are incorporated to provide a rich narrative improved student reflections on their learning experience.

References Wilson, K., Wright, V. & Stallworth, J. (2003). Secondary Preservice Teachers' Development of Electronic Portfolios: An Examination of Perceptions. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 11: 45-49. Fapojuwo, M. (2005). Multimedia Capstone Digital Portfolio Assessment: A Comprehensive Assessment Tool for Pre-Service "Product of Learning" That Meets Current Accreditation Standards. Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2005, Phoenix, AZ, USA, AACE. Sung, Y., Chang, K., Yu, W. & Chang, T. (2009). "Supporting teachers' reflection and learning through structured digital teaching portfolios." Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25(4): 375385. Kariuki, M. & Turner, S. (2001). Creating Electronic Portfolios Using Laptops: A Learning Experience for Preservice Teachers, Elementary School Pupils, and Elementary School Teachers. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 9: 22-28. Strickland, J., Moulton, S. & Strickland, A. (2005). One Large Technology Leap for Pre-Service Teachers; One Small Step for Humankind. In P. Kommers & G. Richards (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2005 (pp. 2350-2351). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/20424. Kearney, M. (2009). Investigating Digital Storytelling and Portfolios in Teacher Education. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2009 (pp. 1987-1996). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/31749. Topp, N., Goeman, B. & Clark, P. (2003). Extending Pre-service Teacher Learning with a Digital Portfolio. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2003 (pp. 39-41). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/17822.

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