EnglishOn the 22nd of November, the electronic music pioneers of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop (of “Doctor Who” theme music fame, amongst others) performed a unique piece of music called ‘Latency’, in which they make clever use of network latency to create a musical loop. Each of the musicians involved sequentially played his part in a loop. The result then was sent via the Internet to the next musician at another location, who in turn built upon what had been played until then.
Network latency usually is a huge problem when performing live music in a distributed setting because it precludes the synchronicity usually required when playing music with multiple participants. Rather than seeing this as an insurmountable obstacle the members of The Radiophonic Workshop saw this is a constraint and an opportunity for creating something entirely different, which is the perfect embodiment of design and creativity.
Anyway, here’s the recording of that intriguing performance: