The Giga-Hertz main award winners »The Hub« – John Bischoff, Tim Perkis, Chris Brown, Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Phil Stone – will present aspects of their work in a lecture. 

They are among the pioneers in the fields of network art, live coding and laptop ensembles and create primarily collaborative works. They also developed their own hardware and software for their musical performances, thus enabling their characteristic and unique sound.

The individual systems were connected to each other via a central microcomputer »The Hub« in order to avoid a fault-prone network installed on site. The universal connection made the interactive game more flexible and made it easier to include new players. Via the »Hub«, the participants were able to receive news about the current status of the performance. Activities were stored and made accessible to other members.

Musically, the project is characterized above all by an interest in unpredictable reactions of the network systems without, however, giving priority to the technical structure. Characteristics of interaction, algorithmic complexity and ways in which computer musical instruments influence each other were decisive for The Hub. The compositions of The Hub thus consist of specifications of the interaction modes of the players.

Organization / Institution

ZKM | Karlsruhe