Bits and Bobs

Yuwei Lin

Lecturer in Future MediaSchool of Arts and Media

University of Salford

y.lin @ salford.ac.uk

Something about myself

Getting my hands dirty

What I will cover today

● Remixing and Reusing ● Spreadable Media● Open Source, Music and hacking● Inter-disciplinarity and collaboration

● Music in games● gamifying music

● Challenges● Emergent technologies

Reusing and Remixing

● Nothing new

● “The aesthetic of borrowing and sampling is as old as Western music itself. Long before hip-hop artists were taking existing ideas and sounds and splicing them into their songs, composers of the Baroque were recycling themes from themselves and others. Bach is the most obvious example.”

http://www.wqxr.org/#!/articles/album-week/2012/jan/01/js-bach-recycling-and-reusing-always-reinventing/

Bach and Music reused

● Bach recycled and reused music – Many of Bach’s cantatas contained themes that were recycled from elsewhere.

● Sweetbox's “Everything's Gonna Be Alright" (based on J. S. Bach's Ouverture No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068)

Variations and Reusing Tunes

● Mozart's Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman", K. 265/300e, a piano composition, widely known as 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' these days.

● Mozart wrote many variations of his own music

● Improvisation● Composing variations is a way of recycling and reusing

music● Variations were considered as new pieces; reusing

music is not infringing copyrights of the original● The concept of 'variations' is similar to forking software (as

seen in free/open source software)

Freedom of information / data

Freedom to play, to create, to modify

Harlem Shakes Viral Videos

● The MediaCityUK example -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQRJiK03SKQ

● Another example - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJ8CaxRFhM

● A compilation of some fav videos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlPh_ycy62s

● English National Ballet does Harlem Shake http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2013/feb/28/english-national-ballet-harlem-shake-video

● http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/22/harlem-shake-tops-us-charts

● Harlem reacts to Harlem Shake videos - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGH2HEgWppc

Contemporary Pop

● One Pound Fish ● PSY and Gangnam Style

Spreadable Media- Memes, virals, Web 2.0, Social Media -

● http://spreadablemedia.org/

● Spreadable Media maps fundamental changes taking place in our contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution and many of us are directly involved in the circulation of content. It contrasts "stickiness" - aggregating attention in centralized places - with "spreadability" - dispersing content widely through both formal and informal networks, some approved, many unauthorized.

● Spreadable Media examines the nature of audience engagement, the environment of participation, the way appraisal creates value, and the transnational flows at the heart of these phenomena. It delineates the elements that make content more spreadable and highlights emerging media business models built for a world of participatory circulation.

Digital Music and Subculture – Sharing Files and Sharing Styles

● http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1122/1042

● In this paper, the author proposes a new approach for the study of online music sharing communities, drawing from popular music studies and cyberethnography. The author describes how issues familiar to popular music scholars — identity and difference, subculture and genre hybridity, and the political economy of technology and music production and consumption — find homologues in the dynamics of online communication, centering around issues of anonymity and trust, identity experimentation, and online communication as a form of "productive consumption." Subculture is viewed as an entry point into the analysis of online media sharing, in light of the user–driven, interactive experience of online culture. An understanding of the "user–driven" dynamics of music audience subcultures is an invaluable tool in not only forecasting the future of online music consumption patterns, but in understanding other online social dynamics as well.

The Art of Immersion

● Frank Rose - http://www.artofimmersion.com/● The blurring of author and audience: Whose

story is it?● The blurring of story and game: How do you

engage with it?● The blurring of entertainment and marketing:

What function does it serve?● The blurring of fiction and reality: Where does

one end and the other begin?

User-generated content

● Approaches: re-mix, re-contextualise, re-purpose, re-use,

● Why people did it?● Just for fun● ?

Fans and Crowdfunding

● Kickstarter● IndieGoGo● Flattr (social micropayments) http://flattr.com/● http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/crowdfunding-

sites/

Interdisciplinarity

Collaboration

Music in Games

● Journey – Winner of BAFTA Original Music, Audio Achievement, Artistic Achievement, Game Design, Online Multiplayer in 2013 http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/

● The Unfinished Swan – Winner of BAFTA Game Innovation and Debut Game in 2013 http://giantsparrow.com/games/swan/

● Gamifying Music - CBBC music games.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/games/by/type/musicgames

Open Source and Music

● Amateurs● Make it available● Make your own

Free/open source tools for musicians

● JACK (Audio Connection Kit)● JACK is at the cutting edge of professional media

software, and powers the● most powerful Free Software applications in the field,

including:

- Ardour: http://ardour.org/

- Hydrogen: http://www.hydrogen-music.org

- Blender: http://www.blender.org/

- VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

- PureData: http://puredata.info/

Music and Interactivity

● Raspberry Pi - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2013/mar/01/raspberry-pi-design-museum

● Arduino ● Streaming operas (Digital Operas) (National

Theatre Live)● Gamifying music

Music and Hacking- Ruben's Tube -

What's wrong with Web 2.0, user-generated content, and going viral?

Surveillance

Downsides of Harlem Shakes Viral Videos

● Australian miners fired for 'Harlem Shake'

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/04/harlem-shake-australian-miners

● Employers monitor workers' performance on the Internet (through Facebook for example)

● Big brother / surveillance culture

Credits and Licences

● Content by <Put Your Name>http://<PutYourWebsite>License: <Put Your License>

● Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/● GNU/Linux software usually licensed under

GPL (General Public Licence)● GNU FDL (GNU Free Documentation licence)● http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

Quality vs. Playfulness

Professionalism vs. Amateurism

Emergent Technologies

● Eye-tracking devices – e-Reader or smart phones that track your eyes and turn pages for you ● Samsung's new smartphone will track eyes to scroll pages

● http://www.extremetech.com/computing/150031-samsung-galaxy-s4-to-feature-eye-tracking-tech-though-were-not-entirely-sure-how

● Pattern recognition AI software can search tunes and identify the right pieces for you

● Location-based or context-aware music production and consumption (e.g., soundscaping, immersion, interactivity)

● Interdisciplinarity

● The future will (still) be about convergence. While things will be aggregated, stored in the cloud and to be consumed anytime anywhere, which in turn will allow individual tastes to be differentiated and satisfied (to tailour, to contextualise, and to customise).

This set of slides is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported)

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/