There and Back Again Composing for Networked Reverberation Chamber and Live Orchestra

This paper documents the deployment of a mobile, web- based, real-time distributed reverberation chamber named the Auxtrument designed for a live concert setting. Rather than presenting a technical case study, the project is framed as an artistic and collaborative investigation into how net- worked audio systems can inform and transform musical composition and performance. In close collaboration with a contemporary orchestra, we composed two (2) site-specific works that utilise the inherent latency and uncertainty of WebRTC media streams over a mobile network–not as ob- stacles to overcome, but as musical parameters. Through this process, we explored new aesthetic possibilities afforded by the system, foregrounding temporal instability and envi- ronment as integral compositional tools.