collaboration

In January 2007, St. Lawrence University opened its new Newell Center for Arts Technology (NCAT). A shared facility with buy-in from visual arts, music, theater, communication, and film studies faculty, along with the campus's Brush Art Gallery, the NCAT replaces departmental labs and serves two purposes: it helps the departments meet their technological needs for teaching and learning; and it serves as a hub for collaborative, interdisciplinary work.

At Johns Hopkins University, a three-person team has developed a project to encourage collaboration between the improvising and non-improvising students at the Peabody Conservatory. The team was made up of Theron Feist, an Information Technology Specialist, Rose Hammer, a Graduate Student in Computer Music, and Michael Formanek, a Peabody Faculty member.

They used digital audio, digital video, and the Max/MSP Programming Environment to create an environment where musicians of all instruments and disciplines were recorded to build a music library of sampled material. The samples can then be put together digitally to create an ensemble that can be accompanied with musicians performing live. The project’s goal is to have the students learn to improvise with the technology as they would on their instruments, and also to be able to incorporate real-time music, either improvised or non-improvised, into the recorded music.