#otherbeats: Performing a Participatory Archive of Social Rhythm

Marcel Zaes

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

#otherbeats is a sound piece that lives on the web, or a website that makes sound. The piece is made from an archive of “social” rhythm that I collected from over 50 participants around the globe during the pandemic. Each participant interpreted the prompts that I circulated in their own way while mostly being in isolation and with little to no access to instruments or professional recording technology. The prompts asked them, in several ways, to explore differences between musical concepts such as “tempo,” “beat” “rhythm” or “alternative metronome” in tiny 3-minute performances ideally in the outdoors, and so the collected archive showcases a wide range of approaches to humans keeping time. The collected audio exhibits versions of human-made regularity and manifold ways of deviation thereof. #otherbeats organizes all these audio recordings on a website, with the use of HTML and the Web Audio API, and equips them with a visual appearance that acts at once as a purposely under-explained and nebulous user interface and an immersive experience with the aim to create a sense of getting lost within the sonic and visual ephemera. The rhythm recordings, on the website, are spread and arranged visually in space, and with the Web Audio API, an experience of distance, or proximity respectively, is produced. By scrolling, the user approaches ever new audio files that gradually appear on the virtual “horizon” and become louder, clearer, and dryer. On the other hand, those sounds left behind disappear in the distance. The lowpass filter’s cutoff frequency is lowered, the amount of convolution reverb increased, and the gain reduced. If they click on one of the few clickable items, a JavaScript random algorithm takes them to a new location within the website rather far away and results in a swift change of the sonic carpet. All audio processing is computed directly on the user’s browser with the user’s left-right and top-down scrolling, and clicking, as the sole input variables. The user navigates their own way through the archive of rhythm recordings, all of which play constantly and simultaneously in loop but never quite sync up with one another – given the precarious nature of their making. They find themselves left with a quite blurry visual and sonic space that is ever changing and yet constantly evades being grabbed and pinned down.

Citation

Marcel Zaes. 2021. #otherbeats: Performing a Participatory Archive of Social Rhythm. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.21428/92fbeb44.2f210153 [PDF]

BibTeX Entry

@inproceedings{nime2021_music_17,
 abstract = {#otherbeats is a sound piece that lives on the web, or a website that makes sound. The piece is made from an archive of “social” rhythm that I collected from over 50 participants around the globe during the pandemic. Each participant interpreted the prompts that I circulated in their own way while mostly being in isolation and with little to no access to instruments or professional recording technology. The prompts asked them, in several ways, to explore differences between musical concepts such as “tempo,” “beat” “rhythm” or “alternative metronome” in tiny 3-minute performances ideally in the outdoors, and so the collected archive showcases a wide range of approaches to humans keeping time. The collected audio exhibits versions of human-made regularity and manifold ways of deviation thereof. #otherbeats organizes all these audio recordings on a website, with the use of HTML and the Web Audio API, and equips them with a visual appearance that acts at once as a purposely under-explained and nebulous user interface and an immersive experience with the aim to create a sense of getting lost within the sonic and visual ephemera. The rhythm recordings, on the website, are spread and arranged visually in space, and with the Web Audio API, an experience of distance, or proximity respectively, is produced. By scrolling, the user approaches ever new audio files that gradually appear on the virtual “horizon” and become louder, clearer, and dryer. On the other hand, those sounds left behind disappear in the distance. The lowpass filter’s cutoff frequency is lowered, the amount of convolution reverb increased, and the gain reduced. If they click on one of the few clickable items, a JavaScript random algorithm takes them to a new location within the website rather far away and results in a swift change of the sonic carpet. All audio processing is computed directly on the user’s browser with the user’s left-right and top-down scrolling, and clicking, as the sole input variables. The user navigates their own way through the archive of rhythm recordings, all of which play constantly and simultaneously in loop but never quite sync up with one another – given the precarious nature of their making. They find themselves left with a quite blurry visual and sonic space that is ever changing and yet constantly evades being grabbed and pinned down.},
 address = {Shanghai, China},
 articleno = {17},
 author = {Marcel Zaes},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.21428/92fbeb44.2f210153},
 editor = {Eric Parren and Wei Chen},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 title = {#otherbeats: Performing a Participatory Archive of Social Rhythm},
 track = {Music},
 url = {https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.2f210153},
 year = {2021}
}