Purloined Letters And Distributed Persons
Julian Rohrhuber, Alberto de Campo

Toward the end of the 18th century in Europe, when literacy got to be common amongst a broader population, the mailcoach became the medium of the time. Since then, the art of the letter never ceased to be one of the most refined literary activities. And, if we consider the innumerable lines of intricate text that programmers have been dedicating to their computers, it becomes obvious that the art of conversation has even reached the very kernel of contemporary daily lives. But, code is not only read by virtual machines - we humans read each other's minds by looking at each other's programmes, and the computer is but the mailcoach of our time. In a collaborative session, we will set a network music piece in motion, in which code is sent around between participants who change, rewrite and intervene, mix their literary styles and express their innermost, or outermost thoughts. This manifold cadavre exquis will also be an implicit introduction to the class library NetLib which expands SuperCollider with some really useful collaborative network features.

download code: http://swiki.hfbk-hamburg.de:8888/MusicTechnology/863