the following is an excerpt from this book about ccloudlab1, the first laboratory of CompositionCloud:

ccloudlab1 was the first laboratory of CompositionCloud. It served as a framework for the development of a 45-minute performance for the 2017 edition of Happy New Ears, the new music marathon of the Hochschule für Musik Basel, experimenting with self-made musical instruments and exploring nontraditional forms of notation.

I collaborated on it with four performers: Amit Dubester, Daniel More, Francesca Naibo, and Oded Geizhals. Each was provided with a playing setup consisting of self-made musical instruments and with five different scores to be interpreted on it. (Most of the playing setups and scores were already part of CompositionCloud before ccloudlab1. The playing setups were selected — and to a certain extent also developed further — together with the performers, and the scores were selected by me with the playing setups in mind.)

The development process consisted of three stages:

1. Individual rehearsals. I worked with each performer individually on interpreting the scores on the playing setup they were provided with.
2. Duo rehearsals. I created dynamic and interactive, computer-based versions of the scores, and we explored different combinations of them.
3. Quartet (tutti) rehearsals. I combined the scores, linking their different parts to one another and creating a network in which choices made by one performer influence the options given to another. (This combined version of the scores was eventually performed at Happy New Ears.)

This development process, as well as those of three additional performances developed within the frameworks of ccloudlab1’s two extracts, ccloudlab1x1 and ccloudlab1x2, is documented in this book, which comprises six chapters.

The first chapter, ccloudlab1-1 (the first stage of the development process), introduces the playing setups and the scores and documents the interpretations (of the scores on the playing setups) that we recorded during the individual rehearsals. The second chapter, ccloudlab1x1 (the first extract of ccloudlab1), describes the first dynamic and interactive, computer-based version of a score and discusses Oded’s solo performance of it. The third chapter, ccloudlab1-2 (the second stage of the development process), describes the dynamic and interactive, computer-based versions of the other scores and documents the combinations that we recorded during six duo and two tutti rehearsals. The fourth chapter, ccloudlab1-3 (the third stage of the development process), describes a combined version of the scores and discusses its performance at Happy New Ears. The fifth chapter, ccloudlab1x2 (the second extract of ccloudlab1), describes a multiplayer music game titled stuckJunk-v1 and the process of developing two performances of it. And lastly, the six chapter, ccloudlab1’s future, discusses the future of ccloudlab1, speculating on how it may be developed further and what it might become in the long term.

Note that while I did plan the outline of the development process in advance, that is, I knew that it would begin with individual rehearsals and end with tutti rehearsals, and that networked computer-based versions of page-based scores would be created, most of the details were left to be filled in in collaboration with the performers. In that regard, my aim with this documentation is not only to provide a description of ccloudlab1, but also to show how the different decisions we made throughout its development process influenced what it turned out to be, as well as, hopefully, to suggest the possibility that given a different context, it could have also turned out to be something rather different.

click here or on “this book” above to open the book as PDF.

scores and recordings

ccloudlab1-1
ccloudlab1x1 (polygon1-ann-psAs-di)
ccloudlab1-2
ccloudlab1-3-single-performer
ccloudlab1-3
ccloudlab1x2 (stuckJunk-v1)

(for the computer-based scores, use Google Chrome. note that they do not work at present on mobile phones or tablets.)

see also ccloudlab1v1: