webmusicking news and views

Heidegger's Equipment & A Diminishing Equipmental World

2009-07-03T12:21:00.011-04:00

Heidegger as a 20th century philosopher uses a technical term that anticipates the instrumental way that we connect through a digital world. This particular instrumentality is equipment, a way of engaging yourself with the world in a way that extracts and creates meaning. Thus we have seen our equipment become more and more sophisticated as instruments of inquiry, connectedness, and creation. As our equipment evolves, it becomes less and less a material object and more and more a process of engagement

The big ideas blog provides an insightful description of Heidegger's notion of equipment:

In Being and Time was the idea of “equipment” — Das Zeug — as a picture of our relationship with the mundane world...Being and Time begins with “everydayness”, and in a way the whole book is a meditation on how we can be thinking subjects who just get on with things, without constantly having ontological crises, despite the fact that nobody understands what a subject is, or what the universe is in which the subject exists, or what existence is, or really much of anything.
The “everydayness” of the world is typified by the Greek word pragmata:
that is to say, that which one has to do with in one’s concernful dealings praxis… we shall call those entities… “equipment”.
Heidegger here decides to take seriously the instrumental aspect of our relationship with the world, the idea that we are always in it acting as agents, using stuff to get things done... we constitute a world by entering into relationships with existing networks — “the equipment”. We find things come to hand and we use them, and in doing so we determine what they are. And “what they are” is, at that point, nothing more complicated than their location in the network.

“The equipment” is a single thing; a compound thing, definitely, but not something we can easily analyse into its constituent parts, since each part has been defined, afterwards, by reference to its place in the network. ...Instead Heidegger gets excited when things break down, such as when a doorknob comes off in your hand, because that has the potential to give us an insight into what “really exists” beyond the world of equipment. (the big ideas blog, Heideggarian "Equipment")

Our equipment started as an instrument called a computer as a large room of parts which have in the past 30 years been reduced to the palm of your hand. The physical object is disappearing as process takes precedence over form. This means that the way we make and experience the arts is transforming the paradigm of who we are and how we interact.

(the big ideas blog, Heideggarian "Equipment")

Where Are the Webmusicing Servers?

2008-04-06T16:35:00.006-04:00

At the turn of the Century visionaries began to speculate on the power of distributed computing and the location of software applications residing on servers rather than on one's personal computer. Google, Apple and Microsoft led the way along with a number of other gurus and geniuses. Soon we began to see the extension of podcasting with YouTube and Google, and Social Networking interfaces that represented an accumulation of applications to work seamless (more or less) in the context of an Internet web interface such as MySpace and later FaceBook. The emphasis moved away from the programs and applications on your personal computer, to software residing on a server that is just as effective as your personal copy.

Why are app servers so important? The answer is simple: They represent the next great paradigm for building enterprise applications. The first phase, dominant from the 1960s until the mid-1980s, was mainframe-based applications, accessed via dumb terminals and built on top of supporting services, such as CICS. Phase two, dominant from the 1980s until quite recently, was client/server applications. David Chappell, 1999.

Now we can crop and edit images on the Internet with about as much detail as Photoshop, and we can process text with software on the Web that is about as powerful as Microsoft's Word. We can upload a document and make it into a PDF file. And in this time of tax deadlines, we can do our taxes directly on-line without any such application on our computers.

Music lags far behind, perhaps because the companies producing music software have been the most conservative and least imaginative. I am still campaigning for an arts collaborative interface where musicians and artists create original works together on an interactive platform of creative software. We do this collaboration using Internet2. Now we need a platform with applications. Companies such as Finale and Sibelius had best look to this brave new future by creating their own interactive servers. "Oh, the world, it is a-changing..."

Being There

2008-03-18T14:10:00.004-04:00

Why would Peter Sellers' film masterpiece be viewed as a comment on values emerging in music technology and the issues of musicing on the web? Perhaps this film anticipates and personifies the new value. Woody Allen's Zelig creates the illusion of a character who is always in the midst of events, chameleon-like, as an anonymous and perpetual presence at world events, a Chaplin-like figure who hops through Time and space to be a witness to greatness. Sellers' Chauncey Gardiner (Chance) is not just a witness, he becomes "greatness" solely by being there.

The new interactive technology requires us to be there. It cannot work without our presence and interaction. Yet, being there has become an act of anonymity on the Internet. We can re-invent ourselves over and over again. But in this new persona, we are asked to sign in (to be somebody) and to comment, as though somehow our comments are proof of our having been there, an echoing reply to the question we all must ask at some point: "Is anybody there?"

This new value is connected to the Web 2.0 technology where we participate as collaborators in creating new works and rubrics that make meaning for us. Technology can be its most powerful when it is serving to extend the range of human expression. We have just begun to explore this new frontier. It is the frontier of ourselves and the human spirit. However, our pursuit is in the context of "We" instead of "I", a "social learning" model, such as the one suggested by the on-line course through Alec Couros at the University of Regina, or just the simple process of staying connected through Twitter.

In a sense, this new TimeSpace is a reflection and extension of human consciousness, our extended knowing that enables us to explore ourselves in a new context and to create ideas that forge emerging dimensions. Through the Internet we can be simultaneously here and there. Consciousness itself is our awareness of being. Maybe now it's becoming our awareness of our being there.

Stumbling Upon StumbleUpon.Com

2007-01-23T13:41:00.000-05:00

Web 2.0 offers new opportunities for discoverability. One of the more delightful and exciting features of the new spirit of the web is to exploit our intuitive curiosity. Video games have long used a concept of discovery through probing, so that as the player moves through the game they click on various objects which may or may not open to reveal new clues and content.

This concept has passed into web design so that webpages take on a level of ambiguity where the visitor can discover the website by probing provocative objects that may lead to central features of the website or curious side trips and diversions.

Building upon this idea, a new website has emerged known as StumbleUpon which keeps track of your likes and dislikes as you discover the byways and highways of the Internet. Serendipity can be a powerful non-strategy for exploring the new, ever emerging universe of Internet 2.0.

Creating, Connectivity, and Collaboration

2006-07-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

The spirit of the new technology is to increase the interaction of people on many different levels. In the performing arts, using digital technology for creating, connecting, and collaborating is become a new way of experiencing and making artistic works.

Digital Technology provides many applications for creative expression. In some ways, artistic, creative expression has led to the explosion of popularity of these new technologies. There are very serious ways of processing visual arts, of exploring, capturing, and choreographing movement, of developing plays and providing ways of broadcasting plays and dramatic events, of creating music, notating music, of distributing, sharing, and making music. The new technologies are empowering individual creative development and expression.

Perhaps the most dramatic development has been the extension of connectivity so that broad band connections to the Internet have become more or less the standard, and interactive web sites are designed for that level of connectivity. The mobile phone is redefining our ideas about connectivity, and many new ways of interacting are emerging.

These technologies have contributed to the spirit of collaboration. Collaborating to create new ideas in the arts, education, science, business, history, and on and on, has become the norm and digital applications are emerging (such as WIKIs, multiuser word processing, etc.) that enhance and support the collaborative process as a dynamic, unfolding human activity.

Somewhat paradoxically, Creating, Connectivity, and Collaboration emerge as a means to extend individual development and expression.

Webmusicing

2006-07-10T14:34:00.000-04:00

Musicing as a term has been popularized by the scholar David Elliott, and basically is a dynamic word to indicate actively making music or the activity of music making. Webmusicing brings this activity to the digital domain with the understanding that learning is the result of creating personal meaning through active engagement of making music. Webmusicing is the digital platform for creating and making music. In such intense and meaningful activity, we learn. Learning is created as the interaction of the musicer with expressive materials of music. Learning is a lifelong process, as we deepen our perception through our musicing.

This newsblog looks for new instances of webmusicing to serve as a catalyst for our musicing. We will discover this process as we engage others who are pursuing music making as a human activity that discloses who we are becoming in this process of creating new music in the moment.

Learning and creating are irrevocably entwined. Technology adds a new link between these processes, and the writings on the Internet of those who are seeking to reveal more about process also inspire those who are looking for such revelations to propel them to new levels of awareness and understanding.

Distributed Computing as a Next Step for Music

2006-07-01T21:57:00.000-04:00

As we enter a dynamic, interactive age in which Internet connection speed will be blazingly fast and bandwidth will be more or less infinite, some new ways of thinking about the conventions of music making and music notation should emerge. One might regard the current level of thinking as embedded in print-oriented media or traditional recording studio configurations. The conventions also ignore the tremendous potential of collaboration or the power of teaching and learning music as an interactive, creative act.

Distributed computing essentially means that several servers are coordinated to achieve a common goal and the personal computer is a device for connecting to such servers. The music applications and the files produced exist on these remote servers. This means that I can connect and work on material from any location in the world that is linked to the Internet.

Such applications should empower the novice to be effective in making music, cutting through the traditional theoretical barriers so that beginners are faced with aesthetic decisions about the sound of the music early in the creative process. This may seem threatening to those who have invested many years in acquiring theoretical and music literacy skills, but it is a necessary stage that parallels other such developments where technology increases the accessibility of interested bystanders to become directly involved in the process of creating new artworks.

Musicing and the New Technologies

2006-04-26T11:31:00.000-04:00

What should be included in the emerging curriculum for music education technology? Currently beginning courses include

web authoring (usually html based),
sound recording and signal processing,
podcasts,
music notation,
music sequencing,
image processing,
video recording editing.

This covers a lot of territory. Other courses might explore specific applications in some depth with projects in production of compositons and arranagements, podcasts series, and distance collaboration applications. In such a course, the emphasis would be on integrating music technology into the music curriculum from the perspective of music education.

There is also a need for courses that investigate new developments and provide opportunities to assimilate new practices in using technology to establish an atmosphere of creating and making materials. These courses should constantly sample developments in related fields and seek to include leading-edge thinking and practice. Computer-Assisted-Instruction morphed into Web-based Training, but CAI appears to be losing its position as a dominant practice in most music education technology courses. One such course that is going through a reincarnation to a new paradigm can be seen at this music education website for CAI.

New Media and Internet2

2006-04-12T08:42:00.000-04:00

Internet2 has been around for a long time. It has been a network for broadband activities, ranging from conferencing, distance education, distance collaboration, research, cultural archiving, and artistic production, to name a few.

I2 is now becoming part of Web 2.0 as it is becoming generally more available. Possibilities include simultaneous streaming among locations of multiple video and audio channels. But it is I2's inherent collaborative qualities that qualifies it for consideration as a creative tool for Ed Tech 2.0.

These applications add to the new media such as podcasts, vodcasts, and wikis, changing the dynamics of the video conference into a more organic exchange of movement, text, sound, images, movies, and live performance. Some have suggested that I2 is a new multimedia medium, and that we have yet to fully discover its idiosyncratic characteristics. The overlapping and eradication of boundaries through I2 collaborations offer unique opportunities to explore and develop expressive modes in a new context.

Collaborating as a Platform

2006-04-04T21:35:00.000-04:00

Collaborating together as a community of artists is a corollary to the educational technology practice of creating community and making meaning through doing. We are entering into a praxis of collaborating. In educational circles, many regard creative process as research, and a healthy respect has developed among enlightened institutions for the rigor and detail that goes into the creation of new artistic expression.

Technology has always served as a driving force in the creative process... technology itself comes into being as a creative response to the need to extend the reach of humanity. Lewis Mumford wrote a seminal classic Art and Techniques (1952) that argues for a balance between human expression and technique. He suggests that technique alone may indeed seduce us with the power of its symmetry and efficiency, but artistic works that are more technique than substance are empty.

On the other hand, Marshall McLuhan in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) points to media as shaping our expression --- it is the medium itself that is the message. This seems to be playing out in the current rush of a new generation of technologists who chart the future of the species by the power of emerging technologies and the ongoing fusion of media.

New media seem to be finding ways to bring fresh vision to the art and act of collaboration. The world emerges as a platform for collaborating among cultures and people on an unprecendented level. New media such as Wikis are emerging from media, creating platforms for communication and collaboration.

Moodle, Community-Based Content Creation

2006-03-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

Moodle represents a shift in thinking for shared experiences in learning. Moodle is an open source platform that can be shaped by the participants, a wiki for people sharing a new experience as teachers/learners. In this community model, we may perceive that teachers are really faciltators, and that students are better described as developers, since content emerges as facilitators and developers work together.

Whereas Blackboard exists as an extension of a teacher-centered pedagogical model, Moodle provides an opportunity to shift the paradigm to a learner-centered model for creating new knowledge. If we can conceptualize that making music is creating knowledge, then we are moving closer to webmusicing as community-based human activity and interaction.

Music Teching Needs Web 2.0 and Ed Tech 2.0

2006-03-24T12:14:00.000-05:00

In visiting the "giants" of music education technology such as ATMI (Association for Technology in Music Instruction) or TI:ME (Technology Institute for Music Educators), I am struck by an apparent lack of awareness of a new level of technology that includes building and sharing through interaction of individuals as opposed to the expert keeper of knowledge who is willing to help you if (and only if) you are willing to buy.

Thus TI:ME may be largely a website to hawk books and peripherally promote clinics, certification, conferences and links of interest. There is no syndication of news or articles, despite the fact that they do have some interesting contributors. The only interactive feature is Yahoo's discussion group format (timepeople) that TI:ME set up. ATMI seems to be a site to promote the association. This is perfectly legitimate, since it is not attempting to deliver content of music education technology. The article section (Squeak and Blat) is an archive for past technology since the last entry is circa 1999.

But there is another sensibility on the horizon, one in which participants are makers of meaning and knowledge through interactive creation of materials. This may be frightening to the keepers of official knowledge, since the content of learning is in the hands of students rather than programmers, publishers, and music industry sales reps. Music education technology still seems captured by the dogma of older technological stances of Educational Technology 1.0 & Web 1.0.

Tech Musicing Skirting New Tech Ed Frontiers

2006-03-01T22:59:00.000-05:00

This newsblog represents the explorations, work, and thinking of a small group of musicians who have an interest in how technology has been transforming their field. In the past decade, technology has changed how music is recorded, listened to, and distributed. It also has had a profound affect on the making of music in terms of new sounds, new instruments, and new ways of notating, processing, and performing.

There is a strong sense that the Internet is providing an avenue for creating musical meaning and understanding that must affect the teaching and learning of music. Doing and Creating seem to emerging as a process of creating personal knowledge in the domain of Education, and our newsblog attempts to keep an eye and ear on the dialectic process in progress among educators, while scouring the Internet for information and strategies that replace traditional models of music teaching/learning.

Most music education technology continues to be obssessed with the delivery of information, in which the keepers of the music canon serve as the oracle of knowledge and truth for the domain of music, especially music education technology, which continues to linger and languish among the ruins of CAI and Web-Based Training.

Navigating Personal & Global Frontiers of Technology

2006-02-22T06:53:00.000-05:00

This newsblog combines sources from some notable explorers in the new world of technology. More than 500 years since Columbus discovered a new world, these new navigators explore new terrain through discovering and creating new ideas.

Explorers have been mapping new territories to connect the world. For centuries humanity has used runners, pigeons, smoke signals, drumming, and other devices to connect and communicate. In 1835, a professor at NYU named Samuel Morse established that signals could be transmitted by wire. The telegraph knifed its way across the wilderness, connecting the dots of cities across the world. Marconi began experimenting with wireless technology in 1894, building on the experiments of Hertz. He opened the first radio factory in 1898, and in 1901 signals were broadcast across the Atlantic. In 1922 radio broadcasting began in earnest.

The Internet succeeded in wiring the world in the last decade of the twentieth century, and now in the first decade of the new century, this connectivity has been extended through wireless technology at global and personal levels. Each explorer forms a unique center, a special frame of reference that provides a context for the navigation of global and personal cultures.

RIP: CAI

2006-02-14T21:29:00.000-05:00

We are scouring the Internet for ideas.

We are a class in Computer Aided Instruction in Music Education and have buried that paradigm without much ceremony. This news Blog is drawing upon the thinking of the class along with some of the best explorers of the new digital terrain in education. We see our work evolving during this Spring Semester, begun in utter darkness and now inching ever more closely to longer days of earlier sunrises and later sunsets. This is the metaphor for our journey, a quest that takes us toward enlightenment.

We are learning to syndicate our ideas so that they can be used again in different and varying contexts! This blog changes everytime you visit, it is constantly replacing items with new content as websites and ideas are continually updated and extended.

Webmusicing News and Views

2006-02-05T17:07:00.000-05:00

We are in the midst of radical expansion and dematerialiization. Text, images, and sounds are flooding cyberspace and time with new creations, making new materials, creating new responses in the moment. This website is dedicated to publishing the explorations of aa small, intrepid group of musicians and educators who are acquiring skills in the midst of making materials, meaning, and artifacts.

Syndication provides a means for casting our nets far and wide as we fish for relevant experiences, insights, and discoveries.

Welcome to our adventure. We started out as Computer Assisted Instruction, but we are fast leaving that relic behind. Somehow the secret is in this new connectivity that opens new avenues.