SSEYO's Inaugural Internet Koan^oasis Features Brian EnoWorld's 1st Collaborative Virtual Generative Composition April 15, 1998
SSEYO(R) Ltd., UK Internet
company and creator of Koan® software for generative music and sound
environments, today launched the world's first ever collaborative
virtual generative composition, SSEYO Koan^oasis 198. Pioneering
artists, including Brian Eno, BRiTs producer of the year 1996 for David
Bowie's 'Outside', who have contributed to SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 have all
used SSEYO Koan Pro 2 to create their generative components. SSEYO Koan
Pro 2 was last week selected as one of the UK's Millennium Products, so
chosen by the national Design Council run initiative because of their
innovative and forward looking nature.
SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 is an online generative composition created by a
networked community of Koan artists. It allows a group of Koan artists
in their own time to realise, develop and amend their own online
components of a generative sound environment and thus to compose music
in a distributed manner. Artists do not have to be present or online
when the work is "consumed", as is the case with MIDI jamming software.
For the first time, artists all over the world can contribute, off-line
and in their own time, to a low bandwidth generative community project
which anyone in the world can hear 24 hours a day. It opens the doors
to new forms of virtual performance and ultimately interaction. Said
Brian Eno, "Koan^oasis is a kind of global music eco system. Each
composer contributes a musical 'life form' with its own character and
behavior, and the music is the rich, ever-changing ecology of
interactions between the life forms.".
Each SSEYO Koan^oasis is an empty "container" Koan piece placed on a
webpage at SSEYO's website which contains links to a number of Koan
Artist's contributions, each around 1-5Kb, plus a number of small
SoundFonts or samples, typically around 20Kb. When a listener visits
the webpage the linked contributions are downloaded to create a
composite virtual work on the listener's PC. Koan^oases are made
possible by SSEYO's massively Interactive Koan Music Control (IKMC) and
its capability to asynchronously download Koan files and sound samples
in the background. "SSEYO hopes to learn more about the potential of
Internet community creativity and further grow the pioneering online
Koan community through the creation of many genuine shared works of
generative art" said Tim Cole, SSEYO Co-Founder and Managing Director.
"We expect the SSEYO Koan^oases to have the highest production values
possible, given the constraints of bandwidth, soundcards and samples and
we hope that many more similar Koan community experiences will spring up
all over the Internet.".
SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 has been virtually created by artists living in 3
different continents; the artists being Kim Cascone, Pete & Tim Cole,
Tim Didymus, Brian Eno, Andrew Garton, Jason Gibbs, Andy Greenwood,
Greyworld, Mark Harrop, Kaon Koo, David Long and Jamuud of Loop Guru.
Jamuud, author of Koan title "Niskala", said "The Koan^oasis organically
interprets everyone's contribution and creates harmony from chaos with
only a few "unifying" instructions. The Internet makes it possible for
the composer to hear his or her element in context and to update or
renew it as necessary to create a constantly changing vision.". Tim
Didymus, whose Koan title "Float" was recently released, added "The
exciting thing about this development is that a group of trans-global
generative artists have worked together to create an activated online
sound environment for the world's wired population.".
As SSEYO Koan software has incredibly powerful and rich inbuilt support
for Creative Labs AWE range of soundcards, including use of SoundFonts
and special MIDI controller features, the Koan artists contributing to
SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 have taken full advantage of this support to create
a work specifically for these PC soundcards. Users of the Creative Labs
Inspire Internet product can hear the Koan^oasis immediately without
having to separately download the SSEYO IKMC, thus directly benefiting
from Creative Labs integration of the necessary components of the SSEYO
IKMC into Inspire. C. Hock Leow, Vice President Multimedia Division and
Strategic Development, Creative Labs Inc., said "Creative Labs is
pleased that its SoundFont downloadable sound technology forms an
integral part of the 'Ultimate Koan Experience'. SSEYO have long been
supporters of Sound Blaster AWE soundcards. It is very exciting that
our hardware is being used by such innovative artists, in combination
with SSEYO's revolutionary IKMC, to provide AWE owners with such a rich
musical experience on the web.".
One way of ensuring that websites have good music on them is to provide
it! SSEYO intends to create a single consolidated snapshot of the
Koan^oasis 198 piece and any samples used. On request, it will at no
charge allow websites to link to it or to embed the link to it on their
website. A return link to the actual Koan^oasis 198 is all that will be
required. Commented Andrew Shoben, Founder of Greyworld, makers of the
Layer sensing surface which uses Koan, "As well as creating a unique and
fascinating listening experience for visitors to the website, it will
generate further interest for the artists involved in the composition
and provide them with wider Internet exposure.".
Koan is an inherently 'low bandwidth' solution as it adopts a component
approach to the creation of sound environments. The components or
building blocks include a small Koan piece (typically 1kb to 20kb) and
either the hardwired General MIDI sounds on the PC soundcard or
downloaded custom WAV samples or SoundFonts; in either case, the Koan
engine does the generative composition at the target machine providing
an innovative alternative to pre-recorded streamed audio or endlessly
looping MIDI music. Said Jason Gibbs, Technical Director of IMS,
developers of GLPRO, "Koan technology is inspiring and refreshing to
work with. To be able to offer a truly worldwide audience with a
collaborative, ever-changing generative composition, that takes only
seconds to retrieve on-line, is a fantastic achievement.".
With the IKMC, via a webpage and a little VBScript or JavaScript, 200+
Koan parameters can be changed in real-time allowing the creation of
incredible interactive sound environments. SSEYO intends to explore
more listener interactive scenarios where many aspects of the
composition can be controlled or altered by the participating artist or
listener.
SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 Multimedia System requirements (listening):
P120 PC or higher, 16Mb RAM, Windows 95 / NT 4, SSEYO Interactive Koan
Music Control (IKMC), Netscape Navigator 3 or higher or Microsoft
Internet Explorer 3 or higher, Creative Labs AWE SoundCard (e.g. AWE64
or AWE32/SB32) with 512K SoundFont memory, speakers.
SSEYO Koan^oasis 198 Multimedia System requirements (creating):
As above, but also including SSEYO Koan Pro 2.1. Also strongly
recommended is the SSEYO IKMC Platinum version for saving complete
versions of the piece in editable format.
# # # #
SSEYO, Koan, Koan^oasis and the SSEYO logo are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of SSEYO Ltd. in the UK and/or other
countries. Other products mentioned may be trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies and are the sole property of
their respective manufacturers. Specifications subject to change.
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