Developing a critical technical audiovisual performance practice engaging with 'the web' as both medium and subject matter.

Conclusion

Having reached the end of this period of research, and therefore having a portfolio of projects to reflect on, I have gained a number of key understandings that have given shape to my creative practice in its current state.

A working understanding of web audio

This is a simple but foundational one. I do not claim to understand every facet of web audio inside out, and in fact, given the general nature of web development, even if I did that understanding would have to change often to be kept up to date. I do however have a basic understanding of the options available to me for creating audio tools on the web. In particular, my tool of choice for this MA research has been the Web Audio API, and though I have not explored every possible piece of functionality that API makes available, I have a solid understanding of how to initialise and work within an audio context, how to set up various sound sources, how to set up and configure an effects chain on those sources, and how to send the output of that chain to a destination. More importantly, I know how to do what I’ve just described in service of the sonic aesthetics sensibility I describe in the section below.

An approach to composition and planning performances

This starts with the palette of sounds and effects I give myself to work with in the tools I create, and building the projects in this portfolio has given me the chance to experiment with various options. I have a small palette of audio functionality I have reused through my performance pieces, and, where possible, have collected in Sandbox Tool for future use.

They are:

White noise filtered

I have found that is often the starting point and base for creating the sounds that I use. I like having the ability to narrow and widen the Q to control the degree of noisiness vs purity, it feels very analogous to creating visual art wherein you would have control over the roughness of a line or form, in this way it feels expressive and impactful as a gesture.

In all my projects wherein I’m playing white noise through a bandpass filter, the frequency at which the centre of that bandpass is set is never decided in terms of musical notes or scales, conventional or otherwise. In the case of Clock it is mapped to a dataset, and in others it is selectable across large and continuous ranges. This makes the most sense to me, I am creating noise music. It isn’t meant as any kind of comment on traditional or conventional musical constructs, they are just not skills I have in my background, and I have not found them necessary to develop in order to produce sound works I am satisfied with.

Sine tones

The main way I used these in the performance projects is in those instances where the filtered white noise has a very narrow Q, and I like that I can make those contrasting textures in a piece. In the Sandbox Tool I have oscillators as sound sources so I can experiment with this more. I’m particularly interested in the way quickly automating tones at the very low or very high end of the audible spectrum can make textural, percussive effects.

Limited effects (delay, Q factor, panning, and filters)

I have found that I haven’t needed a large range of audio effects to work with because my main aesthetic interest when it comes to the sound components of my work has been the ways in which I can move between different levels of complexity and simplicity, texture and smoothness, and noise and purity. I find I can create a range between these kinds of extremes easily enough with the combination of a limited effects range, randomisation & automation, and layer (the latter two discussed below). At a certain point, adding more effects has seemed to have been an exercise in adding another way to do the same thing.

This choice is also informed by what I have learned from practicing improvising (see Context: Improvisation), wherein I find having less possible things to do helps me focus on listening and being inventive with what I’ve got. This also provides a poetic echo of the DIY/amateur web aesthetic I’ve discussed in (Context: The Web, and Context: Net Art); the beauty that can come from making simple things with simple tools.

Randomisation & Automation

There are two ways I have utilised this within this body of work. Firstly, in Clock, with the timed automation that runs through the entire piece requiring no input from myself (See Project: Clock for details). Randomisation doesn’t come into this instance.

And secondly, the more reusable technique I have developed and will return to, is the feature I have implemented across Scroll, TAB, and Sandbox Tool where the range slider of a given audio effect can be set to randomly jump around at a given interval. I use this as a way of adding and removing complexity, texture, and noise as discussed above.

An approach to performing

As outlined throughout this commentary, I have taken a varied approach to performing across different pieces from planned playing with automation (Clock), to a planned section and an improvised section (Scroll), and then a fully improvised piece (TAB). Note: the improvised bits do have automation in the form of the automated random effect value jumping discussed above, but I don’t believe this constitutes the performance itself being partly automated, as with Clock.

I still see all three modes of performing as being relevant to my practice, and will probably continue to use all three, but improvisation is something that is new and has emerged through undertaking this MA research.

A conceptual thread to continue to explore

Starting out with this research, my idea of a critical technical creative practice of and about the web was just a speculative one. I proposed it as one possible response to my, more broad, interest in cultivating a digital, sound-based, art practice that incorporated coding or software development in a way that was political. I wanted my work to express, and somehow resist, the frustration I felt with ‘big tech’, and the effects, both culturally and materially, I feel it had (and has) on my life. As explained in this commentary, I proposed a focus on the web because of the way my job and my habits tied me to it. I use the internet every day (I am aware that this is not a unique nor unusual situation), and I felt, at the beginning of this research, simultaneously, a lot of enthusiasm and frustration for the web as a subject and as a medium.

The main outcome of the contextual reading and thinking I’ve undertaken for this research is my relationship with the web has changed substantially. I no longer work as a developer, I am systematically coming off all of the social media platforms my works have reflected on, and I am changing my default browser, search engine, and email provider on, what feels like, a weekly basis in order to avoid the encroachment of agentic AI into every facet of my browsing experience.

At the start of this MA research my thinking about the issues I have discussed here was broader and vaguer, and I’ve worked to overcome a trepidation about being too explicit about my positions in the pieces I’ve produced - not wanting to invite criticism I perhaps couldn’t fully articulate a response to. In contrast, now I feel much surer of the position I am putting forward with my practice, and as a result much more able to justify it, and as a result of that much more convinced of its value as an artistic endeavour at all.

To summarise that position: I think the web is a place, and I think despite the fact (just like a physical place) it is full of capitalistic forces vying for our attention and our money and our political allegiances and whatever is, it does not belong to those forces alone. It belongs to everyone who chooses to take part, it is for amateurs, and artists, and enthusiasts of countless weird niche topics. Building and publishing websites as art practice, music making, and performance, is one way to continue and assert that shared ownership over and over again.

What is my practice now?

So what is the outcome of all this? To summarise, it is a critical-technical music and audiovisual performance practice of and about the web. The dominant critical-technical position it puts forth is that an active participation in the web, in the form of using web technologies to build creative projects, serves as a form of resistance to capitalistic forces that would use our passive participation in the web for profit and control. And the way my practice puts forth that position is by demonstrating it. I build websites as artworks and tools, with aesthetics that reference and celebrate the net artists that have come before me, and use those websites to perform experimental, improvised, non-idiomatic computer music. As a musician, I operate within scenes and genres, with cultures and sensibilities that mirror those found in live coding, prioritising openness, criticality, and participation over musical hierarchy or prestige.