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Virtual environments for creative work in collaborative music-making

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Abstract

Virtual environments are beginning to allow musicians to perform collaboratively in real time at a distance, coordinating on timing and conceptualization. The development of virtual spaces for collaboration necessitates more clearly specified theorizing about the nature of physical copresence in music-making: how the available communicative cues are likely to affect the nature of visually mediated rehearsal and performance. Pilot data for a project carried out at the New School for Social Research demonstrate some important factors relevant to designing remote spaces for musical collaboration, and suggest that virtual environments for musical collaboration could actually enhance the feeling of being together that creative musical expression requires.

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Acknowledgments

This work received partial support from NSF grant nos. IIS-0081550 and SES-0551294. Special thanks to Kamala Sankaram and Allen Jones for assistance with collecting and digitizing the pilot data, to Martin Mueller at the New School’s Jazz & Contemporary Music program for access to rehearsal rooms, and to the reviewers for useful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, F330, New School for Social Research, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Michael F. Schober

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  1. Michael F. Schober
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Correspondence to Michael F. Schober.

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Schober, M.F. Virtual environments for creative work in collaborative music-making. Virtual Reality 10, 85–94 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-006-0049-z

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