Arrangementet er et seminar, der både kommer ind på baggrunden for "World Opera Project", hvor nye teknologier er blevet brugt til at distribuere operasang, samt på de foreløbige resultater og planerne for en international scene for distribueret opera.

Program:

16.00-16.15 - Lektor Jan Larsen, Technical University of Denmark

16.15-18.00 - Professor Niels Winfeld Lund, Tromsø University and Associate Professor Jeremy Cooperstock, McGill University

Description in English:

The World Opera project

The concept of “distributed opera” arose from an experimental
documentation research project and workshop performance at UC-Berkeley
(2005-06), and drew inspiration from the Bay Area tradition of
exploring the “almost impossible”.

This grew into the World Opera, an
international platform for exploring new formats for making exciting
opera and experimenting with the role of new technologies in this
context. Several prominent opera houses, opera academies and
technology labs from around the world, including pioneers in
distributed music performance, are actively participating in the
project.

A recent series of experiments included a simulation test at
McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Voice students from the
Schulich School of Music sang duets by Mozart, Verdi and Gershwin, as
if they were distributed between locations in North America and
Scandinavia.

As this was the first formal study of distributed opera singing, we
attempted to touch on a number of questions deemed relevant to the
World Opera.

The analysis of the simulated "long-distance
performance" was thus concerned with evaluation metrics, including
temporal characteristics of the overall piece, musical
synchronization, and qualitative assessment through questionnaires
after each trial.

In addition, we were interested in the affective
responses of the performers, in particular, whether the conductor and
singers are able to “reach” each other, not only to agree on a common
tempo, but equally important, to form an emotional connection. We
were particularly curious to learn whether mediation of the
communication through cameras, monitors, microphones and speakers,
interfered more with this "connection" than the delays introduced by
the network.

Our initial analysis, based on recordings with
physiological sensors, indicates minimal effect of technological
mediation but a significantly greater level of stress on the part of
performers when subjected to conditions of network latency.

Although this remains to be confirmed empirically, we speculate that the added
stress impedes the emotional connection between performers.
Interestingly, the preliminary physiological data show that stress
levels decrease after a small number of trials, but remain
consistently higher than the zero-latency condition.

This spring, in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen, researchers from
Tromsø University and McGill University are further investigating
several technical aspects of the World Opera project, with a
particular focus on video display technologies and latency
management.

Several options are being evaluated to provide effective
displays of remote singers that appear on stage as real performers,
supporting eye contact between physical and "virtual" performers and
allowing for mobility of each across the shared stage.

Notwithstanding past success in demonstrating the possibility of
distributed musical performance, including opera, to take place across
the Internet despite the challenges of delay, we are concerned with
the objective of achieving a result that is artistically and
aesthetically successful, and ideally, one that does not require
accommodation by the artists to the technology. To that end, one of
the interesting challenges we face is overcoming the obstacles posed
by network latency. This challenge serves as the next research
objective of our team, one that we will be tackling over the coming
months.

This seminar will describe in further detail the background of the
World Opera, our preliminary results and impressions of these
experiments, and our ongoing plans to realize the vision of an
internationally distributed opera stage.