Research Context

The growing need for innovative network-collaboration environments for live music performance has been a challenging field for a number of academic and research institutes throughout the world. A research program of its kind has already commenced in Greece, co-funded by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Greek Ministry of Development, under the Regional Operating Program of Crete (2000-2006). The consortium consists of four academic institutes as well as two enterprises. The coordinator of the program is the Music Informatics Lab. of the newly established department of Music Technology & Acoustics - MTA, of the T.E.I. of Crete, in Rethymno. The T.E.I. of Crete participates with two more academic participants: the department of Applied Informatics & Multimedia - AIM (Smart Systems Lab.) in Heraklion, as well as the department of Electronics (Telecommunication Systems, Network & Applications Lab.), based in Chania. The fourth academic partner is the department of Computer Engineers & Informatics - CEI (Graphics, Multimedia and Geographical Systems Lab.) at the University of Patras. FORTHnet Telecommunications & Telematic Applications co., as well as AKMI Institute of Education, are the two enterprises that participate the consortium.

Objectives of DIAMOUSES

The DIAMOUSES project aims at the development of an integrated collaboration environment which will meet the needs of communication throughout a distant live performance. Musicians-members of an orchestra, whilst geographically spread, they will be able to simultaneously perform the same piece of music. At the same time, this ‘network-performance’ will be witnessed by an audience located elsewhere, breaking the barriers set by geographical distance, thus resulting in a new network collaborative community. Additionally, beyond the traditional ways of music performance, the system will support innovative forms of musical expression, such as those met in electronic and electroacoustic music performance, with an extensive use of gesture recognition technologies.

Based on the research already carried out on the area of network audiovisual communication, the latencies introduced, are comparative to those met in outdoor or indoor orchestra performance, due to the physical distance between the orchestra members (performers) or the audience.

The architecture of DIAMOUSES

The system under development will support signal transition in heterogeneous computer networks, including an IP network, as well as a DVB-T network. The combination of these two types of networking, allows simultaneous support for broadcasting, multicasting and unicasting.

The system architecture is based on a client-server model. The server handles the communication among the participants (musicians and the audience), the recognition and processing of the incoming information, as well as the routing of the requests set by the clients. The client-software handles the reproduction of the information received, the interfacing with all peripheral control devices, as well as the user interface. The development areas of the project are organized as follows: a. audiovisual and control data handling and processing will be developed by the MTA, b. synchronization and broadcasting of the digital terrestrial network will be developed by the AIM c. network infrastructure will be supported by FORTHnet, d. the user interfacing and service provision will be developed by AIM and CEI. The product will be specified and finally evaluated according to the end-users requirements, in common by AKMI and FORTHnet.