NowNet Arts Conference 2018

 “Network Music: Artistic and Technological Strategies for Public and Private Networks” took place April 19-22 at IACS with 30 remote locations internationally. Participants attended in-person and online via conferencing and webstream.

Network Music utilizes the internet as a contemporary artistic medium for musicians on both localized networks and geographically spatialized networks. Network Music has proliferated in recent decades in forms for live performance such as telematic ensembles, laptop ensembles, virtual world collaborations, and multidisciplinary work. Artists and technologists in this medium have utilized Internet2 and its international partner networks to achieve live concert-quality productions locally and globally, especially requiring the high-bandwidth and quality of service provided by these networks. Internet2 and its partners are largely available at large research universities so the medium has remained mostly in this research sphere. With the rise of availability of high-bandwidth public networks, Network Music is at a juncture where the medium can become more accessible to the public through a wider range of universities and contemporary arts venues, while the advancements of Internet2 and its partners continue to provide state-of-the-art opportunities to artists and technologists.

Through the papers, workshops, presentations, and concert demonstrations the conference was able to establish proof-of-concept in connecting with both public and private networks, utilizing a variety of technologies on different bandwidths and system configurations, and working across disparate venue spaces, while innovating artistic applications for the medium. The results created a new paradigm of high-level strategies for continued utilization of Internet2 in the medium while opening the field wider to use of public networks in collaboration. As a first-of-a-kind conference on this topic, NowNet Arts will continue expanding and applying this work in future programs.