Centers for electronic music creation now face strong difficulties to reperform important works considered as belonging to their repertoire. They realize the fragility of works based on electronic modules, subject to technology changes. Sustainability can be achieved in four different ways that are examined in this article: preservation, emulation, migration and virtualization. We discuss these issues, showing the first steps towards solutions at Ircam in the framework of the European project Caspar.
In a concert performance of musique mixte (i.e., music combining electronics with acoustic instruments), the documentation accompanying the score is of great importance. But this information is often missing or, at best, incomplete. Moreover, there has never been a systematic study of this subject. For these reasons, we decided to examine the documentation practices of the electroacoustic repertoire, with the goal of proposing a documentation model allowing for a better transmission and conservation of this repertoire.
We de ne as virtual an opera not intended to be performed on a stage, but "running" on a personal computer [1,2], enabling some interactivity with its spectator. This new genre is not based on the simple transfer of existing operas into the framework of new computing technologies; it takes into account the shifting uses and meanings induced by multimedia computing, assuming these uses and meanings could arouse new writings in many elds, including opera [3]. We have been working on an interactive opera project, Virtualis, the purpose of which is neither the reconstruction of a physical opera hall nor the re-creation of an opera piece from the past. It is an original creation using new technologies, but above all including original models of interaction; thus it is not merely a sophisticated multimedia application [4].Interactive operas fall within the category of a large evolution of different artistic genres owing their existence to multimedia computing. Hypertext literature, interactive comic strips, and interactive musical games (such as the CD-ROMs Eva by Peter Gabriel and Puppet Motel by Laurie Anderson) are good examples of this revival. Moreover, Virtualis is not the rst work in its genre: In 1996, Tod Machover [5], at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, designed a digital opera entitled The Brain Opera, allowing members of the audience either present during the performance or connected through the Internet to interact by contributing to the music. Jean-Pierre Balpe, at the Université de Paris VIII, Paris, France, created a digital opera named Blue-Beard in 1999, enabling the generation of variations on the plot of the famous story inspired by Perrault's tale. OPERA AND INTERACTIONIf we compare the individual interaction that occurs in opera halls between the spectator and the stage with that lived by someone facing his or her computer, we can observe sharp differences between the two situations. During opera performances, the spectator is subjected to a continuous composite ow [6] from the stage and the hall: sounds coming from the orchestra, the choir and the singers but re ected onto the walls before reaching his/her ears, images and lights coming from the stage, overhead subtitles, etc. Facing this ow, the spectator is absent from the stage, but LEONARDO
In this paper we present our research about a new genre of lyric works, called virtual interactive operas. Part of its results are used in the composition of an interactive opera called "Virtualis".To achieve interesting hypermedia interaction in a musical context, we show that it is necessary to use a description language and we give some specifications of the one used. Using this language enables the creation of graphical metaphors of structural elements of music, with the help in the future of the EMMA metaphor builder system. We then describe the ALMA authoring system we have been developing to implement hypermedia musical compositions. Keywords Virtual interactive operas, hypermedia authoring system WHAT ARE VIRTUAL OPERAS? We define as a virtual opera any lyric work implemented on a personal computer [4][5][6], enabling some interactivity with its audience. This new genre is not based on the simple transposition of existing operas in the tiework of new computing technologies; it takes into account the shiftings of uses and meanings induced by multimedia computing, assuming they could arouse new writings, including the lyric field. Interactivity is based on free choices among different paths. Only open forms [IO] that have specially been designed for listeners can enable it. This specification leads us to give up the classical narrative "aristotelician" mode [12][18]. This implies two possibilities of formal and temporal articulation : . either consider the hypertext model and possibilities of automatic text generation [2] to design an opera where hypermedia components strongly depend on text; this is the case in Jean-Pierre Balpe's BarbeBleue project, .or take into account the specificities of computeraided writing to design a new kind of "musical action" as Luciano Berio [3] defined it : "Between a musical action and an opera, there are substantial differences.
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