Real-time Composition or Computer Improvisation? A composer’s search for intelligent tools in interactive computer music

At several recent conferences and festivals of electroacoustic music, I have been somewhat surprised at the live EA that I have heard. A vast majority of these performances have involved composers sitting behind their computer, clicking on buttons in Max/MSP or SuperCollider, and triggering specific signal processing algorithms, while a musician, playing into a microphone, performs notated music from a score. Not that there is anything wrong with live signal processing, but it points out to me that live electroacoustic music has become conservative. At one such recent conference, a young composer, almost at the point of graduation with a doctorate, mentioned to me that she had not yet composed a live electronic work. Although she felt a bit apprehensive about the certainty of technology onstage, her reticence resulted more from her lack of programming experience. Her advisor suggested that she simply use someone else’s Max/MSP patch, and concentrate upon writing a good piece of music. This struck me as odd for two reasons. Firstly, live EA seems to have reached the level of “orchestral work”, “choir piece”, “solo instrumental work”, “tape work” on the list of required compositions of young composers; but, more importantly, this composer (whom I think is representative of this generation) didn’t seem to have any particular calling to create live EA, but seemed about to do so because it filled out her CV. Has experimentalism gone out of live electroacoustic performance? Firstly, I readily accept that live EA does not require a computer; however, in this paper, I will limit my discussion to the use of the computer in performance. Secondly, many performers treat the computer as an improvising instrument, an example of computer improvisation. If one accepts that improvisation, on its own, is experimental, then it follows that experimentalism in live EA is alive and well. However, compared to how the computer was first used in performance in relation to composition – what Joel Chadabe termed realtime composition, an aspect that has all but disappeared then the contemporary use of the computer within live performance can be argued to be conservative.