Jason Freeman

In Sketching, a chamber group of musicians improvises as guided by a graphic score. Audience members using mobile devices draw the score collaboratively, in real time, during the performance. This creates a feedback loop in which the musicians constantly respond to the audience’s input (and each other) and the audience responds to the music the musicians play (and each other), resulting in a unique musical experience that changes dramatically in each performance.

Sketching uses massMobile, a smartphone participation system developed at the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. Its development was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation as part of a larger research project on musical improvisation in performance and education (NSF CreativeIT #0855758). It was written for the Georgia Tech Jazz Ensemble.