Net Diaspora's: Maintaining Cultural Practices for Displaced People through Networked Music Performance
Net Diaspora's is an Internet music project that enables asylum seekers, refugee and migrant musicians in interstate urban and regional areas to collaborate and perform culture specific musical repertoires online. The project aims to provide an opportunity for dispersed musicians and audiences to reconnect with, maintain, and develop social and cultural practices through sustainable online musical collaborations and real-world performances.
The project aims to examine:
- The development of musical repertoires online, and the ways in which specific idiomatic musical devices are used by musicians for self-expression, and the transmission of social and cultural meaning
- How the network as a site of collaborative interaction may influence the rendition of established cultural works and the development of new performance practices
- The impact of culture-specific collaborative interaction on participants’ experiences of displacement, and how these programs can be managed and sustained by the participants themselves.
Supported by Settlement Services International, Sydney, and Creative and Cognition Studios, University of Technology, Sydney.
Ethernet Orchestra
Intercultural Engagement in Tele-Improvisation
Ethernet Orchestra is an Internet based networked music ensemble exploring intercultural improvisatory collaboration through telematic audio platforms. The ensemble features musicians from a diverse range of cultures and musical traditions, and combines an array of instruments, including Mongolian horse fiddle & throat singing, tabla, Persian tanbur & tar, blended with Buchla synthesizer, voice, guitar, trumpet, sax and electronics.
Project website
The project provides opportunities for hitherto improbable meetings between cross-cultural musicians and sound artists to explore new methods and approaches to intercultural tele-improvisation. See publishing for articles and papers on current research.
The ensemble have just released their debut album Diaspora through the Chilean net label Pueblo Nuevo. It is available to download for free under Creative Commons license, 2015.
Ethernet Orchestra at University of New England, Lanes Festival, Sydney 2015
Live performances include Lanes Festival, University of New England, Sydney 2015, People's Republic of Australasia, Sydney 2015, ZERO SPACE Conference 2013 at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, UpStage Festival of Cyberformance, 2012, 2nd Tehran Digital Art Exhibition, Tehran, 2011.
[ZERO SPACE] 2013
Conference on Distance and Interaction
Paper presentation and telematic performance featuring Ethernet Orchestra; Roger Mills (Processed Trumpets) Sydney, Peyman Sayyadi (Tanbour) Montreal, Canada, Chris Vine (Guitar) Londrina, Brazil.
The interdisciplinary ZeroSpace Conference on Distance and Interaction brought together scholars and artists examining aesthetic, cultural, technological and environmental issues of distance and interaction in the 21st Century. Performances featured works employing telematic and network technology, and exploring conceptual notions of distance.
Oceans Bewteen Sound - UpStage Festival of Cyberformance
12th December, 2012
Networked audio-visual performance featuring on;ine VJ Graziano mixing visual collages to the ensembles improvisations.
Oceans between Sound considers the ebb and flow of network data as metaphor for the world oceans separating the members of the ensemble and their dispersed lives.
watch eFlyer
Cyposium 2012 , 12th October 2012
Online symposium on cyberformance
Presentation given in the online platform Waterwheel Tap featuring developing multimodal case study analysis of intercultural tele-improvisation.
Click image to watch presentation
Cyberformance Symposium was hosted by UpStage, the Waterwheel Tap and independent cyberformers, where participants discussed their online performances and practices with other artists, researchers and other interested participants.
TADAEX 2nd Tehran Annual Digital Art Exhibition, 12th July 2012
Invited presentation of recent journal article Listening Through The Firewall: Semiotics of Sound in Networked Improvisation (Organised Sound, Vol.17 No.1). This was followed by a networked improvisatory performance with Tehran based oud player Benham Moayerian in the Moshen gallery, Tehran.
TADAEX is an annual program featuring a mixture of contemporary art practices with a commitment to share, introduce and promote digital and interdisciplinary art with the help of international platforms such as ARS Electronica, Openframeworks.cc, Association of Neoroaesthetics and VisualBerlin.de.
Distant Presences III Networked A/V performance featuring Ethernet Orchestra and live networked visuals by Graziano Milano
O-TOWN SOUND NYC- 12th November 2011
This unique A/V performance featured the late Richard Lainhart and Roger Mills performing in a one off live event with Yavuz Uydu (AU) and Hervé Perez (UK). Networked live cinema mixing by Graziano Milano in the online A/V interface VisitorsStudio. Remote listeners experienced the audio visual performance online. Details here.
DRHA conference, 4-7th September 2011 at the University of Nottingham Ningbo Campus, China. Paper presentation included a live networked performance featuring Chinese Guzheng musicians Tao Han and Mao Danheng playing with the Ethernet Orchestra. Unfortunately the performance was abandoned due to Internet access problems resulting in a live collocated improvisation.
ISEA2011 - Paper presentation, 15th September 17:00-18:40 Sabanci Centre Room 4, Sabanci University, Istanbul. ISEA conference and festival ran concurrently to the Istanbul Biennale. View paper.
ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference , Atlanta, Georgia, 3-6th November 2011. One of twelve selected papers for presentation at the graduate student symposium. More details.
Guest Lecture 11th November 2011, Pauline Oliveros Doctoral Research Group, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Albany, USA.
2010 paper presentations and performances include NIME++2010 Dislocated Sound: A Survey of Improvisation in Networked Audio Platforms pdf can be downloaded from here.
5th International Conference on Multimodality 2010, University of Technology, Sydney - Paper presentation and live improvised performance with Prof. Theo van Leeuwen.
"Distant Presences" - Telematic Audiovisual Radio Performance
Ethernet Orchestra witrh live networked VJ's, on FBi Radio, Sydney 94.5 FM Sydney and A/V platform Visitors Studio.
Click image to view audio-visual performance
Sunday 20th June 9-10 pm (Sydney) 12-1 pm (UK) 1-2pm (Central Europe) 8-9 am (Londrina, Brazil).
"Distant Presences" is an improvised sound work which reflects the nature and aesthetic of the ensembles dispersed interaction. As divergent musical cultures meet in improvisation, the work is a meditation on the multifarious nature of location and being. It forms part of an ongoing series of networked improvisations curated by Furthernoise.org for "Explorations in Sound" Vol 5.
Featuring Live Performances from:
Sydney, Australia.
Bukhchuluun Ganburged (Mongolian Horse fiddle and throat singing)
Yavuz Uydu (Turkish Oud and Bendir)
Roger Mills (Processed Trumpets)
Londrina, Brazil - Chris Vine (Guitar)
Braunschweig, Germany – Martin Slawig (Laptop Electronics and Max/MSP processing)
VJ's
London, United Kingdom - Graziano Milano.
Munich, Germany - Helen Varley Jamieson.
Sydney, Australia - Neil Jenkins.
Thanks to FBi Radio, Sydney and Brooke Olsen at Sunday Night at The Movies.
Ethernet Orchestra live at NIME++2010
Live Networked Music Performance
Bon Marche Studio, University of Technology, Sydney, 17th June, 2010.
Featuring:
Sydney.
Bukhchuluun Ganburged (Mongolian horse fiddle and throat singing)
Roger Mills (Processed trumpets)
Braunschweig, Germany.
Martin Slawig (Laptop electronics and Max/MSP processing)
Ethernet Orchestra Ensemble Live @ Refraction
University of Technology Sydney, 2nd September 2009.
Debut live networked performance for the Ethernet Orchestra ensemble featuring:
Sydney, Australia.
Roger Mills (Processed Trumpet and Moog)
Yauvz Uydu (Oud & Bendir)
Oslo, Norway.
Mark Francombe (Processed Guitar)