Music in Perpetual Beta
Paul Draper, Frank Millward · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2016
This article interrogates the processes underpinning the co-creation of musical works by the authors in Australia and the UK who use asynchronous online file exchange both as a research tool and as a creative device. Conventional immediacy is drawn into a histological context when improvised audio stems become displaced musical conversations to be further studied and responded to via emergent action cycle themes and multi-dimensional possibilities according to David Borgo's notion of Phase Spaces. In this a number of trajectories are refined and revealed: from open-ended exchanges, to completed works, through to live performance and interpretation realities which undermine the somewhat artificial idea of a critical edition or recording as 'closure'. Because the authors have maintained successful music careers pre dot-com bubble, this article also takes the opportunity to reflect upon the contemporary environment and in terms of possible futures for on-line music-making technologies.