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Introduction
============
Faust Music On line is an open invitation to participate through the
Internet in the musical composition of a part of the sound track of the
forthcoming show of the Spaniard drama group, La Fura dels Baus, entitled:
Faust v3.0, based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's work.
This new show by the Fura dels Baus will have its first performance in
Barcelona on 28 April 1998 and it is planned to do a tour through Spain,
other European countries and NYC, giving some 200 performances, during 1998
and 1999.
All the music will be composed by means of a W95 software you can freely
download (2 Mb) at http://www.sgae.es/fmol. During the months prior to the
first performance a web server will store and update the database with the
compositions received and will permit the audition and ongoing development
of these compositions, as described below. All communication with the
server takes place through this software. At  the beginning of April, La
Fura will select some (around 60) of the compositions for the play.

Copyrights
==========
The question of intellectual property rights in the new communication
media, such as the Internet, is arousing a great deal of confused
discussion. It is necessary for initiatives to appear that will provide
fresh examples that may be observed and which will create precedents that
may shed a ray of light on this new situation. Being aware of the need for
these shake-ups, the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (S.G.A.E.)
(Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers) backs and produces this project
and will simplify formalities for all the writers of the compositions
selected by the Fura dels Baus to be registered at the society (if not
already members) in order that they may receive their lawful rights.

THE SOFTWARE
============
The musical composition of all the pieces for this project will be done by
means of this program, responsible for audio synthesis and control of the
graphic interface and all the communications with the server. This program
is not a mere web page with a few multimedia options. It is an independent
application, which, when executed, is automatically linked to the page set
aside for this purpose in the S.G.A.E. server and interacts with it to
exchange information. The page in question controls access to a database
resident in the server.

Real-time sound synthesis
=========================
The program does not use the MIDI properties of your sound card. To assure
an innovative and interesting sound, irrespective of the sound card
installed in your computer, the program works with synthetic sound in real
time. It is A SYNTHESIZER capable of generating sounds and modulations
never heard before on your computer. For this you only need a 16-bit sound
card and a compatible PC (based on a Pentium 100) with Windows 95 or
Windows NT 4.0, and Direct X.
This means that the main task of the composers taking part will not consist
merely of "going on adding notes", but of "sculpting sound on line" in a
way much more in keeping with current trends in electronic music in general
and in the music of the Fura dels Baus in particular. Also, using Real-Time
synthesis, the user can listen and compose with peak quality (stereo 16
bits, 22 KHz), but the files he handles, loads and unloads may occupy very
few Kb.

Interactive composition
=======================
Composition is done in real time by way of attractive graphic interfaces.
The program does not handle traditional musical concepts and it is,
therefore, open to people whom does not possess this knowledge. The whole
control is executed in real time with the aid of the mouse on animated
graphic objects that evolve on the computer screen.
However, we have also thought of more advanced and professional musicians
and we have tried to ensure that these interfaces should not just be a
simple banal interactive game, but potent sound experimentation tools. We
may confidently claim that composition and interpretation with Faust Music
on Line is not like that with any other current software or hardware tool.
Nor the sound results either.
We could consider the instruments forming part of it as intelligent. Their
potential is not confined to enabling or disabling a note with a particular
timbre. They are macroinstruments that behave as interactive composing
tools and which permit a wide range of experimentation, both at the sound
quality and formal level.

Collective composition
======================
Each of the compositions done with the program and stored in the server is
the product of co-operation between various authors (normally 4) and not
the work of a single composer. We consider that group creation is one of
the most important aspects of this project and one of the most interesting
capabilities - still unexploited - offered by the net.
Whenever a participant accesses the web with the intention of composing a
theme, he will in fact be modifying/enriching themes in which other
composers will have participated already. In this way a musical game is
established in the form of an exquisite corpus, where several composers can
create one or more musical themes together. Every intervention by a fresh
composer is recorded in the web, so that we may know at any time who the
authors of a given theme are and in what percentage the authorship of a
particular theme would be divided if the theme in question were selected.

Evolving composition
====================
When an author retakes the piece produced by another to
enrich/modify/distort/deconstruct it, he will not be modifying the original
but working on a copy. Thanks to this mechanism, an idea or musical germ
generated by one author may evolve in countless directions at the same
time, although all of them (including the initial one) are equally
accessible in the form of a tree (like the Windows Explorer) in the
database.
Owing to hardware limitations, the maximum number of users (or layers) per
piece is reduced to four, but there is no limit to the number of variations
that each layer may generate. This means that we have a maximum of four
generations but with an unlimited number of offspring in each one of them.
Similarly, the number of initial themes (highest level) is not limited
either, and any participant will be able to initiate one when he likes.

Performance
===========
By means of the Direct Sound and Direct Draw technologies, the program is
capable of synthesising in real time eight 16-bit, 22-Khz stereo voices
with different fully parametrizable effects (reverb, panning, delay, pitch
shift, resonant filters, ring modulation, etc.) for each of these voices,
as well as to control and generate all the graphic interface animations at
the same time. For this the minimum requirements are a Pentium 100 with
16-Mb RAM storage capacity and
a 16-bit sound card. It is also necessary to have Microsoft DirectX
libraries installed (versions 3.0 or higher).

Credits
=======
Faust Music on Line has been conceived by Sergi Jorda and la Fura dels
Baus, and developed by Sergi Jorda, with the sponsorship of FUNDACION
AUTOR.

Download : 	http://www.sgae.es/fmol

Questions, bugs and suggestions:

Sergi Jorda
sergi@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.iua.upf.es/~sergi




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