Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!media-lab!rowe From: rowe@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Robert Rowe) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Re: ICMC reaction Message-ID: <3456@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Date: 25 Sep 90 00:03:34 GMT References: <40170@becker.UUCP> Reply-To: rowe@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Robert Rowe) Distribution: comp Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA Lines: 35 eiverson@nmsu.edu (Eric Iverson) writes: >If I had come across more than a few ideas, I wouldn't be so critical. >As it stood, I felt that this was one of the most idea poor >conferences I have ever attended. Not to mention the emphasis on >expensive toys over how to use them in a composition. I'm pretty >certain that "my ideas as to what music is" were shared by several >disgruntled participants, just not enough to make a difference. In >fact, I have received several email messages that have more or less >supported my view of the conference. As someone who also attended the recent ICMC, I would first like to say that I found it to be spectacularly well organized, engaging, informative, and a pleasure to attend. The concerts were uneven, certainly, but I can't agree with your characterization of the event as 'idea poor'. I can't agree first of all because I don't know what you mean. There were five parallel sessions every afternoon - all of those people certainly believed themselves to be presenting ideas. We can go through the list: Roger Dannenberg's beam search beat tracker, the IRCAM workstation, Steim time, etc. etc. The people from the Composer's Desktop Project would not agree that so many presentations were concerned only with expensive toys. I would be interested to know why you find all this work so dull and boring, and why previous conferences were more "idea rich" in your estimation. Calling the conference "idea poor" seems to me, as a critique, to be virtually "content free". >It is this usage >and expansion of musical language that I feel should be improved upon >if computer music is to have a viable future. I don't know what you mean by that either. Could you expand on the idea? Robert Rowe MIT Media Laboratory