KOLMON PUBLISHING PROJECTS

The International Computer Music Conference Proceedings

Craig Harris became involved with the International Computer Music Association in 1984 as publications coordinator, and became President of the organization in 1986. In addition to the organization's critical involvement in the annual International Computer Music Conference, the Association coordinated publication of each year's conference proceedings. When Harris began working with ICMA there were gaps in some of the years' proceedings, and frequently the proceedings were only available for purchase after the conferences. The key initiatives that Harris launched to improve communication and exchange of knowlege and research include:

Ensuring that proceedings were available at each year's conference, and that the proceedings were included in the registration fees so everyone in attendance would benefit from the information;
Working with hosts from previous years' conferences to assemble and make available all of the missing proceedings;
Improve the quality of printing so that text and graphics would be easier to read, a feature that improved the quality and detail of content; and
Facilitate dissemination of proceedings to both organizations and individuals to shorten learning curves and development cycles, and to provide improved opportunities for networking and collaboration.

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The Computer Music Association Source Book

Craig Harris was working with the International Computer Music Association during a time of extensive growth in the computer music field. Tremendous work was taking place around the world in the development of new technological resources to support music creation, and ICMA indentified a need to improve communication, networking and collaboration on an international scale in order to facilitate the development of these new tools and instruments. Harris worked with Stephen Pope to create the Computer Music Assocation Source Book in 1987 to address this need, and the book became an important resource in the community. The book included the following information:

Institutional Profiles - Detailed information about research, development and educational resources were provided for twelve institutions where important work was taking place around the world;
Institutional Member Data - Complete contact information and details about programs were provided for all ICMA Institutional members;
Membership Data - Complete contact information was provided for all ICMA members;
Technical Resources Data - CMA members provided details about what kind of hardware and software was being used in their work, what might be made available to others working in similar areas, and what media could be used for the exchange of data;
Composition Data - CMA members provided details about music composed using computers, including resources needed for reproduction;
Publications Data - Information about work published in ICMA Proceedings was provided, categorized by author name, identified using a variety of critical keywords, with information about how to find the source to read the articles;
Tables of Contents of Recent International Computer Music Conference Proceedings - The contents of research published in ICMC Proceedings were provided to facilitate review of prior work and to locate the source of the information;
Concert Programs of Recent International Computer Music Conferences - This section illustrated the music that was presented at ICMC Conferences;
Appendices - The Source Book included a detailed, cross-referenced index to facilitate finding information throughout the book.

Array

The International Computer Music Assocation Newsletter ARRAY

The computer music field was evolving very quickly during the 1980s, a situation that warranted more frequent communication among those working in the community than was realistic utilizing a single annual proceedings and conference. The International Computer Music Association created a newsletter - ARRAY - to serve this purpose, and Craig Harris assisted in developing this resource to highlight current work, and to improve communication and collaboration. The newsletter included:

institutional profiles;
artist profiles;
job and educational opportunities;
upcoming festivals and conferences notices; and
announcements about performance, grant, award and commission opportunities.

LeonardoISAST

The Journal Leonardo

The journal Leonardo was founded in 1968 in Paris by kinetic artist and astronautical pioneer Frank Malina. Malina saw the need for a journal that would serve as an international channel of communication between artists, with emphasis on the writings of artists who use science and developing technologies in their work. Today, Leonardo is the leading journal for readers interested in the application of contemporary science and technology to the arts and music.

excerpt from the Leonardo Journal web site

Craig Harris joined Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) in 1991, at a time when the organization's major publisher and benefactor was no longer able to continue its collaboration. Harris negotiated a comprehensive publishing agreement with MIT Press to include publishing the journal Leonardo, as well to launch an electronic journal on the world wide web, and a new book series. This publishing arrangement continues to serve both parties, and the publication still thrives today as a crucial scholarly journal documenting work taking place at the intersection of art, science and technology.

LEA

Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA)

While serving as the Executive Director of The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) (1991-1993), Craig Harris launched Leonardo Electronic Almanac, an electronic, web-based journal documenting activities at the intersection of art, science and technology. ISAST had already been publishing the hard copy journal Leonardo for several years, but the publication cycle at times took up to two years for important work to appear in print. In a field that was evolving as quickly as was taking place in the media arts, there needed to be a mechanism for faster communication and exchange of knowledge. Published by ISAST and MIT Press, LEA was one of the first electronic journals to appear on the web, and continues to serve an important role for the community, providing current information on a monthly publication cycle. LEA includes artist profiles; institutional profiles; writings about new works and research projects; and notices about job opportunities, competitions, education programs, and upcoming conferences and festivals.

Leonardobooks

Leonardo Book Series

The Leonardo Book Series was launched while Craig Harris was Executive Director of Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, as part of a comprehensive publishing agreement with MIT Press to provide a broad spectrum of publications to serve those working at the intersection of art, science and technology. The journal Leonardo provided opportunities for the publication of individual articles about a variety of topics; the electronic journal Leonardo Electronic Almanac provided a forum for immediate communication (monthly publication); and the Leonardo Book Series provided a mechanism to probe deeply into topics that warranted more detailed exploration. Since the launching of the Leonardo Book Series over 24 books have been published, covering a wide variety of topics, and the series has become an important component of the existing literature.

Almanac

The Leonardo Almanac - International Resources in Art, Science, and Technology

Edited by Craig Harris

The Leonardo Book Series was launched while Craig Harris was Executive Director of Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and The Leonardo Almanac - International Resources in Art, Science and Technology was one of the first two books published in the series. The impetus for the creation of this book was similar to Harris' work on the Computer Music Association Source Book - addressing the need to improve communication, networking and collaboration on an international scale to facilitate the sharing of work, and the development of new technological resources in a field that requires extensive collaboration across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Published by MIT Press and the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology in 1993, the book included:

Organization Profiles - Detailed information about research, development and educational resources at fifty institutions around the world;
Words on Works - Detailed profiles on new media art works by sixty-two artists from around the world ;
Leonardo Award Winners - Profiles of winners of the Leonardo awards - the Leonardo Award for Excellence and the Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation;
The Leonardo Speakers' Network - a tabulation of a networks of artists, researchers and scientists, providing contact information and details about topics and presentations that could be made available for speaking engagements and networking opportunities;

Disciplines, Activities and Resources - detailed tables and directories for institutions and individuals working at the intersection of art, science and technology, identifying primary and additional disciplines, activities and computer platforms;

Bibliographies - a series of nine bibliographies in a variety of disciplines;
Appendix - address listings for organizations and individuals organized by country; and
Index - address listings for organizations and individuals organized by name.

Sample Table Illustration:

Artandinnovation

Art and Innovation - The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program

Edited by Craig Harris

Art and Innovation - The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Programs was created to highlight an important collaborative program that integrated artists into a research environment. The idea behind Xerox's interdisciplinary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is simple: if you put creative people in a hothouse setting, innovation will naturally emerge. PARC's Artist-in-Residence Program (PAIR) brings artists who use new media to PARC and pairs them with researchers who often use the same media, though in different contexts. This is radically different from most corporate support of the arts, where there is little intersection between the disciplines. The result is both interesting art and new scientific innovations. The underlying principle of the residency program was to foster relationships that brought artists in direct contact with researchers for a long term project, focusing on the exchange of knowledge and process as much if not more than any artwork or resultant product.

Published by MIT Press and the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology in 1999, Art and Innovation explores the unique process that grew from this pairing of new media artists and scientists working at the frontier of developing technologies. In addition to discussing specific works created during several long-term residencies, the artists and researchers reveal the similarities and differences in their approaches and perspectives as they engage each other in a search for new methods for communication and creativity.

Contributors: Marshall Bern, David Biegelsen, Michael Black, Jeanette Blomberg, John Seely Brown, Margaret Crane, Paul De Marinis, Jeanne C. Finley, Rich Gold, Craig Harris, Steve Harrison, David Levy, Constance Lewallen, Dale MacDonald, Judy Malloy, Cathy Marshall, Scott Minneman, John Muse, Susan Newman, Joel Slayton, Lucy Suchman, Randy Trigg, Stephen Wilson, Jon Winet, Pamela Z.

CMR

Contemporary Music Review

Issue Editor: Craig Harris

Contemporary Music Review is a contemporary musician's journal. It provides a forum where new tendencies in composition can be discussed in both breadth and depth. Each issue will focus on a specific topic. The main concern of the journal will be composition today in al its aspects - its techniques, aesthetics and technology and its relationship with other disciplines and currents of thought.

excerpt from the CMR Aims and Scope statement

Published in 1996 by Harwood Academic Publishers, this issue of Contemporary Music Review was created to present a snapshot of the current "state of the art," and to explore goals for the future of the field. The following is an excerpt from the Introduction to the issue, and provides the framework used to assemble the unique collection of the issue's contributors and perspectives (click on the excerpt to see the entire Introduction):

The following contents reflect the diversity and scope of the work presented in the issue:

CMR Contents

An Integrated Software System for Set-Theoretic and Serial Analysis of Contemporary Music

In the 1980s the tools for analysis of contemporary music were limited and cumbersome. Important work by such prominant theorists as John Rahn, Allen Forte and Robert Morris provided a significant foundation for exploring a great deal of 20th Century music literature. The analytical process for working with these systems, however, were computation intensive, frequently requiring performing extensive tasks by hand. It was also cumbersome to use these systems in service of music composition as a generative resource.

Beginning as part of his doctoral dissertation, and evolving into a more extensive research and software development project, Craig Harris collaborated with Dr. Alexander Brinkman, a theorist on the faculty at Eastman School of Music, to develop a set of computer-based tools for employing set theoretic and serial analysis techniques to analyze contemporary music, and to explore prospective material for new compositions. The programs were written in the C programming language, initially functioning in a Unix operating environment. The underlying principle behind the design of the system was to emulate the flexibility inherent in the Unix operating system, where a variety of shell programs could be used in sequence, using the output resulting from one module as input to another, in service of a variety of needs. With this scheme one can work with a broad spectrum of musical material, and one can be extremely flexibile and configurable in working through the analysis or generation of material.

By 1989 when this article was published in the Journal of Computer-Based Instruction the Contemporary Music Analysis Package (CMAP) was in use by over 60 institutions and individuals, and was being ported to operate in a Mac Operating System in a graphic user interface environment. The CMAP system greatly expedited working with set theory and serial music material in both music analysis and composition.

CMJ11-3

A Composer's Computer Music System: Practical Considerations

Computer Music Journal, Volume 11, No. 3

The mid-1980s was a vibrant time in the realm of developing new technological resources to create music, with major centers of research exploring many aspects of the various disciplines contributing to the field during thirty years of development. The emergence of personal computers carried the potential for the development of remarkable new instruments and composition systems. There was, however, a developing challenge that seemed to be forcing a split between the significant resources that were available at major institutional centers, and those resources that were becoming available to individual artists utilizing personal computer systems. MIDI-based systems were becoming prevalent on personal computing systems, and more impressive resources were appearing at institutions. While MIDI-based systems were easily integrated into institutional studios, the requirements for integrating direct synthesis software systems and digital audio recording and playback hardware were harder to realize.

Craig Harris identified the need to develop comprehensive tools on personal computers that could integrate the possibilities for direct software synthesis, sound processing and digital mixing on personal computers, making it possible for individual artists to have access to the same basic tools in their own creative environments that were up to that time only available at institutions and media art centers. Consulting with MicroTechnology Unlimited, a technology development company, Harris helped to develop the necessary hardware and interface to provide analog to digital and digital to analog conversion systems that functioned on basic PC systems. He also worked on converting the sound synthesis, processing and mixing software that functioned on the mini-computer systems used at such facilities as the MIT Media Lab, Princeton University, Eastman School of Music and CCRMA in Stanford, CA to function in the PC computing environment. The article published in CMJ Volume 11, No. 3 in 1987 presented the results from developing one of the first personal computer music workstations, and articulated the technological and creative considerations forming the foundation of the project.

The following graphic from the article illustrates some of the analysis tools that were developed on the system:

CMJ Analysis Table

The following graphic from the article illustrates some of the time benchmarks to demonstrate the practicality of working with these tools on PC computers:

CMJ Time Tables

While the performance of that first workstation pales in comparison to the speed of computers today, the capacity indicated in the research presented in the article rivaled many of the larger systems available at institutions, and was clear proof that the concept of utilizing personal computers to perform the same function in a personal studio environment was both practical and realistic. Combined with the flexibility in terms of being able to use a dedicated system in one's own creative environment, moving in the direction of developing individual artist workstations was clearly desirable. Today the resources that are available using personal computers are extensive, integrating software synthesis, digital audio processing and mixing, real time performance and equipment synchronization, and MIDI systems with ease, and easily combined with visual components. These personal computer workstations have even replaced the former systems at many institutions and media art centers.

ArtisticNecessity

Artistic Necessity - Context Orientation - Configurable Space

Craig R. Harris
Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought
Edited by John Paynter, Tim Howell, Richard Orton and Peter Seymour
Published by Routledge in 1992

The chapter Artistic Necessity - Context Orientation - Configurable Space, published in the Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, documented a long term research and design project exploring the creative process and the use of new technological resources to support artistic functions. The fundamental premise hypothesizes that it is possible to develop integrated, technological resources that encompass the breadth of our beings in all of its complexity. These comprehensive resources would allow us to deepen our understanding of ourselves, and to communicate on these deeper levels in a conscious and purposeful manner.

Configurable Space is directed towards the development of a balanced understanding about how we use the visual, aural, tactile, and configurable capabilities of digital technologies, and how the tools developed affect ways that we think, feel, formulate, and develop on intellectual, spiritual, and emotional planes. It is built upon the simulation of future creative environments using any available technology that could be used to support the illusion that the implied resources already exist. The simulations incorporate representations of interactive computer display tables, walls, and holographic images, within a multi-dimensional sound environment. This creates the context for exploring relevant issues and for imagining how the space might be used in actual circumstances. The simulations represent ongoing research and artistic explorations, probing the creative process, and the relationship between artists and new technologies. In Configurable Space the artist dynamically constructs the total environment and the creative tools to suit specific requirements.

The design methodology is based on the creation of models that simulate the functioning and potential usage of hypothetical systems. This method allows for modeling without the limitations imposed by considerations for specific implementation details, and carries the significance of being able to address ideal states. The goal is to provide paradigms to guide long term development, a goal that is particularly essential in considering virtual reality or immersive simulation technologies, given the fact that the computer resources available today are so constrained relative to the hypothetical systems they are designed to emulate. Liberation from implementation considerations paves the way towards a clarity in conceptual design. Issues relating to the use or non-use of head or hand gear, or even physical versus virtual input/output devices, becomes a question of personal preference and contextual requisites, rather than a technological necessity.

Please survey some of the documentation photographs of the environment, taken by San Francisco-based Marion Gray.

ConfiguringHospitableSpace

Configuring Hospitable Space - Fantasy and Fantastic Media

Craig R. Harris
Contemporary Music Review, Volume 13 Part 2
Issue Editor: Craig Harris
Published by Harwood Academic Publishers in 1996

The chapter Configuring Hospitable Space - Fantasy and Fantastic Media, published in an issue of Contemporary Music Review edited by the author, continues the process of documenting the Configurable Space research and design project launched in the mid 1980s. This version of the project provides a retrospective describing this research project based on simulations of future artist's work environments. The orientation for the project is the exploration of the creative process, and the examination of the tools and the processes that form the foundation for the creation of new technological resources designed to support creative activities. The project examines the potential of immersive simulation technologies as applied to the creation of powerful and effective art and music studio environments. The history of the project is traced back to its origins in early childhood dreams and fantasies, providing an opportunity to explore the relationship between creativity, technology and human expression.

San Francisco-based photographer Marion Gray took over five hundred photographs during multiple sessions working in the constructed environment, using sketches on transparencies, colored gels, slide projections, and live drawing. These images capture various perspectives of room views and close images, documenting the sketching and representation process, the evolving environmental characteristics and the resource requirements during the evolution of a music composition. The composition was based on the creation and expression of the sonic world described above. The original installation was constructed primarily for the purpose of creating the initial collection of slides and photographs, and not as a public art installation. The creative context emulates a non-real time studio shooting process, resembling a procedure which one would go through to create a series of animated sequences of visual material.

The envisioned technology supports the following resources and ideals:
· Large integrated and interactive display tables and walls; dynamically sizable interactive projected images.
· Multidimensional and multi-channel sound capability, with simultaneous record and playback facilities, and real-time digital mixing and processing.
· Comprehensive and integrated resources supporting transparent, translucent and opaque overlay and mixture of visual elements on any surface.
· Touch- and sound-sensitive surfaces, space and control devices, incorporating any images and sounds, or any combinations of images and sounds imaginable. Size, shape, sound, spatial characteristics, and styles of interaction are all elements that coincide directly with creative intent and personal style.
· Dynamic configuration of all resources with any kind of visual and audio templates for creating and performing in the environment.
· Direct control of the total environment, following the natural flow of an individual's creative energy. This is in contrast to resources that force one to work with resources that contain preconceived notions about what art is, or how the human process is supposed to work.
· Elaborate history tracking, analysis and presentation resources.

Please survey some of the documentation photographs of the environment taken by Marion Gray.

email: Craig@kolmon.com