Tech Discussion

Internet2 Distributed Interactive Multimedia Performances at NYU are structured as Performance or Creative Collectives dedicated to multi-site multimedia interactive performances.  Participants pool their resources and personnel to create performances that explore the ranges of artistic expression, digital technology, and distance collaboration and exchange.  The purpose of the NYU is to provide an interdisciplinary platform for creative work in collaboration with other sites (collectives) researching and archiving aesthetic and technological experiments and achievements.

Developing the content of the work and the technologies to be utilized is a collaborative process among the artists, technicians, and production staff of each participating collective.  For the most part our productions have involved other university centers, but this is rapidly changing as artist collectives gain access to communication sources that support such creative activity.

Currently we are exploring codecs, and are sympathetic to "off the shelf" codecs such as iChat and Skype.  These have formed the basis of distant collaborations for our students with students and artists at other universities. As we move away from v-brick technology which served as our fundamental basis for audio and video streaming among sites, we have found that the video codecs are still in an early stage of development, especially for multiple site connections.  This has led to many, including NYU, to use iChat with some degree of success.  Audio codecs seem to be more fully developed. Currently we have used jacktrip, which has been successful in greatly reducing latency.

At the current time, many of our collaborators are in the developmental stage of their collective collaborative process and various configurations for iChat have proven serviceable. By various configurations, we may have more than one iChat connection with our distant collaborator which gives us more technical and aesthetic options.