Environments at all levels are being flooded with information, images and music. The proliferation of smart phones and communication networks has altered the manner in which people understand and experience space. One pressing question for architecture, art, music and theater is how to conceptualize this mixed environment, how to integrate the flow of information with the spatial settings in which it is received. User Agreement is a music composition that explores the manner in which interactivity and computation can transform music performance space.

The College of Arts + Architecture at UNC Charlotte is  proud to annonuce User Agreement, an original composition by Ian Dicke for performances in a prepared music field as part of an on-going collaboration between Scott Christian and the Digital Arts Center at UNC Charlotte.  The world premiere will be at the Bechtler Museum in Charlotte.

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For the performance of User Agreement, we have created “CagedSpace”, a set of technologies including a custom smart phone app, Bluetooth beacons that provide location data to the app and streaming prerecorded music. The musicians will be located throughout the museum connected by a mobile “click track.” The audience is free to move through the museum, engaging both with live performers and digitally delivered, augmented pieces of the composition. Each member of the audience will have a unique listening experience depending upon their position and movement during the performance

User Agreement, scored for soprano, chamber ensemble, dynamically spatialized audio, and video projections explores how the propagation of search engines and social media has drastically altered our collective perception of anonymity and privacy in the digital age. As we willingly share information about ourselves online, we leave an enormous trail of opinions and feelings that are readily searchable by anyone with an internet connection. While many positive qualities emerge from this unfettered form of communication, we tend to dismiss the potential risks that arise when multinational corporations continually track our online activities, one search query and comment at a time.

Divided into five continuous movements, User Agreement sets fragments of Twitter’s 2017 Terms of Service, which is a document that all potential users must acknowledge and accept before creating a profile. The text is at once mundane and ominous, with ambiguous descriptions of how personal data is shared with third parties contrasted with playful, yet unnerving warnings about the limitless scope of a post’s digital reach and the inferred values that are extracted.

To compliment this programmatic narrative, audience members are invited to download a free mobile application that augments the live performance with additional musical content. To encourage audience members to physically explore the concert space, the musicians are positioned in a widely spread arrangement throughout the venue. As listeners move around, their physical position is unknowingly tracked by a series of mounted beacons, which in turn delivers a unique combination of audio streams through the mobile application. As a result, no two listeners experience the work in the same fashion and the traditionally assumed anonymity of the performer/audience relationship is subverted. In addition, tweets from within a half-mile radius of the performance space are video-projected onto the walls, allowing audience members to knowingly (or inadvertently) post about their experiences in real time for all to view.Our collaboration focuses on responsive architecture, an emerging concept that embraces the interweaving of space and digital media as a critical element in contemporary architectural practice and expanded musical performance venues that provide an engaging, inclusive and unique atmosphere for both performers and audience.

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We have created a prepared music field that will allow the audience to move through the space using their smart phones to engage both with live performers and digitally delivered augmented pieces of the composition. Each member of the audience will have a unique listening experience depending upon their position and movement during the performance

The spatial setting informs the prepared music field both through the diffuse spacing of the musicians and by the configuration of performances in multiple settings using topological instruction. The movement through the space affords a new method of spatial engagement for the audience.

The historical constellation of music engages the prepared music field by developing the range of instrumental, found, and manufactured sounds as media for the piece. This project fits within a tradition of innovation and inclusion that stretches back at least a century.

The technological matrix provides a new medium of engagement with the prepared music field through the use of smart phone technology to provide precise location information and to supplement or alter the live acoustics. This project uses technology to actively prepare and interact with the space.