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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers
[The User]
The Symphony project transforms banal office technology into a system for musical performance. Dot matrix printers are turned into musical “instruments”, while a computer network system, typical of a contemporary office, becomes the “orchestra” used to play them. The orchestra is “conducted” by a network server which reads from a composed “score.” Each of the printers plays from a different “part” comprised of notes and rhythms made up of letters of the alphabet, punctuation marks and other characters. The resulting sounds are amplified and broadcast over a sound system, creating densely textured, rhythmically-driven music.
The system employed for the performance consists of one dozen dot matrix printers of various makes and models, each driven by its own 8086 personal computer. The PCs are connected to a Unix platform NeXT server via two networks: one ethernet and one serial. Two pieces of custom software have been written to allow the control of the entire system from the server. The individual PCs request their text file “part” from the server via ethernet at the start of each performance. The server then executes a command file “score” which uses the serial network to call individual textfiles for each PC to print at precise times. The inscription of the “score” and the “parts” in a modifiable fixed medium (ASCII text files) enables us to create performances which can be orchestrated, synchronized, and edited with a large measure of flexibility and control.Without the custom hardware and software to operate the printers, the behaviour of these machines would be too random to allow a rigorous compositional practice.
The system employed for the performance consists of one dozen dot matrix printers of various makes and models, each driven by its own 8086 personal computer. The PCs are connected to a Unix platform NeXT server via two networks: one ethernet and one serial. Two pieces of custom software have been written to allow the control of the entire system from the server. The individual PCs request their text file “part” from the server via ethernet at the start of each performance. The server then executes a command file “score” which uses the serial network to call individual textfiles for each PC to print at precise times. The inscription of the “score” and the “parts” in a modifiable fixed medium (ASCII text files) enables us to create performances which can be orchestrated, synchronized, and edited with a large measure of flexibility and control.Without the custom hardware and software to operate the printers, the behaviour of these machines would be too random to allow a rigorous compositional practice.
The term "user" objectifies and reduces individuality to an abstract and generic ideal. This reduction is employed wherever abstract rational methodology is applied to situations involving real people. In our society we employ the impersonal tem "user" to justify the infliction of neon lighting, plastic cutlery and Muzak on a huge majority of our population. [The User] is an artists' collective formed of two members: architect Thomas McIntosh and composer Emmanuel Madan.