As Telemidi emerges in the rapidly evolving landscape of Telematic Music Performance (TMP), it is essential to understand the human factors that shape musical connection, timing, and interaction across distance within this vast and complex network of human and non-human actors.
Music and Technology: An Overview
Technological developments have continually influenced how music is created, shared, and experienced. As Pauline Oliveros observed, humans have always sought to communicate sound over distance, and the piano stands as a defining example of how acoustic and mechanical design shaped performance traditions across centuries (Oliveros et al., 2009, p. 96; Strachan, 2017). The concept of claviocentrism, coined by Diduck (2015), recognises how the black and white keyboard interface permeates MIDI-based systems; transforming the keyboard into the digital domain.
From Edison’s phonograph, originally designed for business dictation (Bell, 2015), to 20th-century breakthroughs in ISDN, digital signal processing, and ubiquitous computing, the networked distribution of sound has become increasingly dynamic and decentralised (Maes et al., 2011; Timoney et al., 2020). These advances paved the way for TMP to emerge as a distributed, real-time musical practice. Within this context, Telemidi evolves as a deliberate reorientation of digital music systems, not simply adopting technology for convenience, but optimising it for pulse-based collaboration.
Human Factors in Telematic Music Performance
While technical design often seeks to minimise latency, TMP demands a more nuanced approach. Human musicality does not operate on binary precision but on felt time, rubato, swing, anticipation, and push/pull phrasing (Bartlette et al., 2006; Weaver, 2011). The presence of latency in WAN environments disrupts this subtlety, turning synchrony into asynchrony and groove into confusion (Smith, 2011). Accordingly, successful TMP systems must support anticipation, adaptation, and shared intentionality.
Telematic environments introduce unique aesthetic and social dynamics. Performers must often negotiate glitch artefacts, degraded audio, and non-linear time flows. As Wilson (2018) notes, these interferences do not diminish the liveness of the event, they redefine it. Ascott’s theory of the ‘Grand Reciprocity’ (1984) further frames TMP as an entanglement of human and machine agency, where participants share not just data, but imagination and responsibility. Telemidi acknowledges these factors, framing latency not as error, but as a creative condition to be sculpted through rhythmic and systemic awareness.
Synchronising Events in TMP Environments
Traditional ensemble performance relies on microsecond precision across vertical and horizontal time axes (Pressing, 1993). Yet TMP introduces a formidable challenge: latency thresholds and jitter distort rhythmic relationships. Human perception identifies asynchrony at around 20 ms (Smith, 2011), and genre-specific conventions (e.g., be-bop vs. Gregorian chant) determine how much deviation is tolerable (Tanaka, 2006; Bartlette et al., 2006).
To navigate this, Telemidi embraces the principle of Pulse-Based Music (PBM), where stable shared pulse acts as the minimal common denominator across nodes. Cyclic rhythmic devices, inspired by African Timeline patterns and Indian tãla structures, offer a resilient rhythmic substrate (Anku, 2000; Humble, 2002). Synchronisation, syntonisation, and perceptual simultaneity are managed through calibrated use of MIDI, with attack times, timbre, and signal delay all taken into account (Anderson & Kuivila, 1990; Rofe & Reuben, 2017). This precision allows Telemidi to maintain groove and flow even within volatile networks.
Designing the Optimal Human–Computer Interface for TMP
Telemidi’s architecture is not simply a conduit, it is a curated interface designed to support human musical actions across distance. Rather than replicating the constraints of traditional performance spaces, the system redefines the interaction through MIDI-native environments, grid-centric control surfaces, and loop-based compositional structures. Bau et al.’s (2008) notion of seamful design is central here: by embracing rather than concealing network artefacts, Telemidi invites playful engagement that can lead to flowstate immersion (Muller et al., 2019).
TMP systems must accommodate multiple modes of communication: performance data, control signals, visual cues, and timing references. As Bray (2017, p. 14) states, “the structure of the performance environment is directly responsible for the manner of music performance and therefore fundamentally influential on the eventual musical product.” In this respect, Telemidi optimises both telepresence and co-creative flow, where the digital system becomes a responsive extension of human intention. The outcome is not a workaround, but a new paradigm for mediated musical presence.
Conclusion
Telemidi reframes remote musical collaboration as a human-centred act, not merely a technical achievement. By anchoring synchrony, intentionality, and telepresence within a robust system design, it supports creative flow even across volatile networks. In doing so, it offers a new paradigm for how musicians engage with each other, and with the digital systems that extend their presence across space.
