Network Musics - Play , Engagement and the Democratization of Performance

The rapid development of network communicationtechnologies has allowed composers to create new ways inwhich to directly engage participants in the exploration of newmusical environments. A number of distinctive aestheticapproaches to the musical application of networks will beoutlined in this paper each of which is mediated andconditioned by the technical and aesthetic foundations of thenetwork technologies themselves. Recent work in the field byartists such as Atau Tanaka and Metraform will be examined, aswill some of the earlier pioneering work in the genre by MaxNeuhaus. While recognizing the historical context ofcollaborative work, the , , author will examine how the strategiesemployed in the work of these artists have helped redefine anew aesthetics of engagement in which play, spatial andtemporal dislocation are amongst the genre's definingcharacteristics