Hi, hypernarrative is a blog by Wilbert Baan about Art, Media and Technology with a focus on interactive storytelling. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed with Google or Netvibes. I'll post a few messages a week. Thanks for visiting!

Eclectro Directo: RGBoy live concert from Jan Dybala JD Video on Vimeo.

Once a month we organize a webcast at Eclectro. We use the website Ustream to broadcast a DJ-set or concert live from the DJ his living-room. All the DJ needs is a computer, webcam and internet connection.

Last friday the RGBoy-chiptune-heroes performed in front of the webcam. They performed a live gameboy concert including visuals. The entire performance was broadcasted live from Myslowice, Poland.

A chiptune, or chip music, is music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in realtime by a computer or video game console sound chip, instead of using sample-based synthesis. (Wikipedia)

The video above is a compilation from fridays performance. The tracks RGBoy plays are; my new PT82, super muter, secret level, 1980.

During these performances we invite viewers to use the Ustream chat-box. This increases the ‘live experience’ and enables contact between viewers and performers. The talks are often about technical problems, quality, track titles, personal matters or just to tell how great the artist is.

Utrecht meets Chicago
The next Eclectro Directo live performance will be friday the 30th of May. This time we will use the Mogulus website. Since this will be a live performance broadcasted simultaneous from two locations. Maurice Dohmen [moos] based in Utrecht, Netherlands takes care of the sound and visual artist Jorrit Poelen based in Chicago, USA takes care of the visuals.

Eclectro Directo Live: May 30th, 20:00 (Amsterdam time) / 1 PM Chicago Time

Eclectro Directo promo from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

Are you an electronic artist / producer / DJ and would like to perform live for the Eclectro webcam, let us know.

Last week the BUMA - a company that collects money and pays musicians for their airplay - started sending Dutch non-profit blogs a notion (in Dutch) that they were violating BUMA-rules because they embedded YouTube videos. Blogs are re-broadcasting the material (even through an embed) and thus they have to pay a license fee for embedding material. The same way a radio station or a venue does.

It doesn’t matter if the artist himself put his material online for embedding and sharing, since he doesn’t control the rights. Obviously BUMA doesn’t care about the fan. They don’t even specify what information is placed ‘illegal’, which artists are connected and which aren’t. They just want to sell licenses to small groups of fans and non-profit blogs.

After some buzz was generated around it in Dutch online media BUMA responded by saying it was a ‘premature response’. Case closed, for now.

Are we all broadcasters in a distributed environment?
It’s an interesting way of thinking, since the near future of the web will mostly be about sending/broadcasting, aggregating and social networks. Our presence online often exists by re-distrubuting content. Today’s website is more often a collection of data from other places. A manually aggregated hub of information.

Are you a broadcaster when you write something on your Facebook, collect links in a public del.icio.us and share your Netvibes as a public universe? Are you as a blogger a broadcaster? Everyone sharing something (photos, text, thoughts) online is broadcasting in the traditional meaning of the word. Semantics and laws never worked out very well.

Should we regard this as traditional broadcasting? I don’t think so. It’s freedom of expression. It’s sharing the things we like. We’re not uploading or adding illegal material we’re just creating our online identity by embedding and linking. Media represents us.

When are you a broadcaster on the web? Once you make money? Or when your audience reaches a substantial level. Is this blog a broadcasting? Or is it a personal outlet.

I think there is no such thing as an online broadcaster, since everyone is broadcasting and publishing. You can’t ask people to pay for this, like you don’t ask people to pay when they whistle your song in the street. Be happy with the publicity.

If you are an artist and connected to these kind of companies. I’m sure you need or like the money they collect and you deserve it all. At the same time they are taking away bits of your freedom. Think about what the effect is when you give up certain rights and alert those companies about the effect. Technology and culture often change much faster than the people looking backwards to decide what the future should look like.

Here’s a release by NEST, you can download this album for free because it is released into the public domain. It’s also beautiful and needs as much attention as it can get, because I really would like to see them performing live someday.

Nest is the collaborative project of Otto Totland (Deaf Center / Type Records) and Huw Roberts (Serein). The two started working together after forging a strong friendship as former members of the Miasmah label. This self-titled EP is their first work publicly released, so it is a great honour that we are able to offer it to you here.

Both pianists, there is little wonder that after exploring a plethora of musical styles, the two find themselves most at home writing traditionally structured pieces, with the ivories a major element throughout. The EP demonstrates clearly the innate ability the two have for song writing, borrowing from the world of film soundtracks and contemporary classical composers to craft delicate instrumental compositions.

Alongside their favoured instrument can be variously heard the plucked strings of the Welsh harp, violins, woodwind instruments, field recordings, percussion and a heady dose of mind wobbling effects. From the time Nest began writing together, one purpose was clear; to produce beautiful music free of pretense, and they do it exceptionally well.

Photo: spring is early on Flickr All my photos on Flickr are under a Creative Commons license, this means that some rights are reserved instead of all. You are free to use my photos for anything you like, although if you would like to use it for a commercial project you just have to ask me.

Since the record music can be played everywhere without actually having to transfer the musician. This changed how we consumed music. A complete industry was build around transferable music, the ‘record industry’.

The web is not just a network connecting computers anymore. The web is a virtual layer of information accessible almost everywhere, anytime via broadband, UMTS, wifi and cable. The availability of this network and its role as real-time meta information network will only grow.

The web is already changing how we consume music. The availability is like radio, but the tunes you can listen to are personal. Technically you could listen to any song you like at any time you like from any place you like.

The only thing we need is a library of music and a business model. This is where Google comes in. When a website grows as exponential as Google did you need a serious hardware model to support the demand. You need servers and broadband connections around the globe. The hardware structure and back-end Google has (in combination with YouTube) is probably one of the most advanced in the world. The amount of data they send up and down the lines of our network connections makes them a very import player in data exchange.

Amazon build a new model on top of their original business. With S3 and Ec2 Amazon started to sell hosting and computing, a smart move since they already developed an enormous infrastructure for amazon.com. This infrastructure equals a value that makes it a serious hosting competitor in price and service.

Why Google for music? Google has experience with indexing large amounts of information and they know how to retrieve meaning from information. Google has experience with web-players, mobile platforms, plug-ins, widgets, trust and a payment model. They sit on all the required knowledge. All they have to do is mixing the components together.

The future of music won’t be about files or discs, it will be about listening your favorites, your friends favorites or songs recommended by websites and smart collectives. Music still has value, it doesn’t have to be free. I think a subscription model could work. You pay $20,- to $50,- a month to a company (Google in this example) and you are allowed to listen any music you like. With this money Google pays artists based on listened percentages. It’s all about micro payments and since everyone is an artist nowadays, everyone should be able to upload its files to the Google Music directory.

On top of this Google could include its adwords system related to what you are listening. A system that has a proven effect in giving advertising power to the niche.

There is already a Google Music player. Just find someone to connect the dots.

Eclectro is a website about music. Having a calendar is a great service for such a website. It is often a popular service, but unfortunately also a very labour intensive one. When searching the web to find an easy way to solve this problem I noticed the solution could be found connecting different webservices.

from Last.fm
For promoters and venues Last.fm is the place to reach the right audience. It’s a music marketing sweetspot. Most websavvy promoters know they have to add their schedule to Last.fm, because here is where the fans are.

Unfortunately it would take a lot of time to collect all the data and copy it into an Eclectro agenda. Last.fm uses Audio Scrobbler to control all feeds in and out Last.fm. A lot of Last.fm data is public available.

to Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo Pipes is an online data-aggragator that enables drag and drop programming. You can add feeds from other services, group and remodel the data from the feeds into a new feed. It is a web-based visual programming interface.

Everything you make on Yahoo Pipes is open source. This means everyone can clone your code en learn from it or build upon it. I found some Last.fm examples and adapted it for 15 Dutch venues. The Yahoo Pipe I build scans those venues on Last.fm for events and combines the data into one large iCal (calendar format) feed.

Now we have a feed with a lot of information, interesting but it has a lot of events in it that are irrelevant to the Eclectro audience. They want to know about electronic music.

to Google
Next stop; Google. Google has a calendar function that let’s you share calendars in public or assign multiple owners to the same calendar. The Yahoo Pipes feed with Last.fm information is loaded into Google Calendar. There I’ve created a second calendar called Eclectro.

And here is where the ‘human’ selection and thus the added value comes in. An Eclectro editor filters Eclectro related events and we end up with a simple calendar with very good information. We will add other events to the calendar as well, but the information from Last.fm is a perfect base.

You can even subscribe to this ‘human’ filtered calendar with Google, Apple’s iCal or XML/RSS. Or use this information as a buildingblock for a better calendar.

Wwwww, dddddjjjjjjj duh?
I hope you’re still with me, it is a kind of geeky description for a simple solution. What it actually does is transferring information from one system to another. Making use of several open web applications. It shows what can happen when we use open standards and systems that can easily export and import data. You don’t need to have access to a web server or be a programmer to build something like this. This is the future of information. Free to move and easy to alter.

The record Two of Us by the Kompakt duo Supermayer is voted as the best dance record for 2007. The last month of 2007 almost 20.000 people made a total of 113.000 votes.

[audio:http://eclectro.freshheads.com/audio/twoofus.mp3]

The voting machine we used is a widget like object. Websites can embed it. And with this the websites that embeds the voting widget decides the audience that does the voting. This has some effect on the results, because the election is a choice out of two random records the effect is limited.

For example when the popular music website Resident Advisor wrote about and embedded the election you could immediately see its influence on the results. Artist Nathan Fake ended third and this has a lot to do with taste of the Resident Advisor readers.

Overall I think we did another great election with great records and a really interesting and representative list of the top hundred dance records of 2007. I hope you have enjoyed the election and thanks for voting.

This is what we did in 2006 and this is what we did in 2005.

The voting widget. You can still listen, but your votes won’t count anymore.

If you have ideas how we could enhance the election mechanism or find another subject for the machine your ideas are very welcome.

I was thinking I could fill the election machine with points of view from US election candidates. You could find out what people think is most important and see which candidate supports it.

While I was on holiday Eclectro launched the competition for best dance record of 2007. Last month we asked readers to submit records, made a final shortlist of a hundred songs and ask you to use the voting widget to vote on your favorite song.

We are using our magic voting mechanism.

I think we have a good representation of the best dance records in 2007. And with over 100.000 votes already I’m really, really happy.

Share the votingwidget
<br /> <object width="450" height="450"><param name="movie" value="http://www.eclectro.nl/bestof2007/bestof2007.swf"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.eclectro.nl/bestof2007/bestof2007.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="450" height="450"></embed></object>

If you like dance music and want to help us share the word, you can embed the election on your website as well, just copy the code above and change the width and height if you want to resize it.

Support
Special thanks to the guys at Freshheads who did some technical support and are taking care of bandwith :)