Cybernetic Issues in Interactive Performance Systems

Pressing, Jeff

1990

Computer Music Journal 14(1): 12-25.

Language: English

The term ‘interactive performance systems' refers to the arrangement of people, musical instruments, computers, synthesisers and other hardware designed to produce music whose details are modified in real-time by the interaction of distinctive parts of the system. In this article, the author explores the different points of view concerning activities using these systems, the relationship between the cybernetics of such systems and the music that they can produce, i.e., how different parts of the system control and send information to each other and what the musical strengths and limitations of various design choices might be.