This document discusses telematic resonance in digital choral performance. It examines Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir projects, which crowdsource choral singing by having individuals from around the world record themselves singing parts of compositions, which are then edited together. The Virtual Choir projects have grown significantly over time, involving thousands of singers from dozens of countries. The document considers questions around the roles, process, visualization, participation, embodiment, disembodiment, and sense of togetherness involved in virtual choral crowdsourcing and digital performance. It argues that telematic connectivity can enable new experiences of the digital world and experiencing the world as digital.

1. Telematic Resonance in Digital Performance:
Choral Crowdsourcing Considered
DH Benelux 2014 @ The Hague
Dr. Cissie Fu, Leiden University

2. Telematics
= “Computer-mediated communications networking
between geographically dispersed individuals and
institutions . . . and between the human mind and
artificial systems of intelligence and perception”
(Ascott 1990; after Nora & Minc 1980)
Telematic art and performance:
challenges paradigm of active viewing subjects and
passive art objects
creates interactive, behavioural contexts for remote
aesthetic encounters

3. Choral music-making
 composer
 conductor
 choristers
 repetiteur
 rehearsals
 performance(s)
 live
 collective
 voice-shaping, sound-moulding
 pitching, tuning, timbre-matching, breathing

4. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
2010: Lux Aurumque
 185 singers / 12 countries / 243 videos

5. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 2
2011: Sleep
 1,752 singers / 58 countries / 2,052 videos

6. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 3
2012: Water Night
 2,945 singers / 73 countries / 3,746 videos

7. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 4
2013: Fly to Paradise
 5,905 singers / 101 countries / 8,409 videos

8. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Youth Choir
2014 (for UNICEF): What If
 6,500 singers ≤ age 18 / 80 countries / 2,292 videos

9. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir Live
TED2013: Cloudburst

10. Virtual choral crowdsourcing
 Roles
 Process
 Visualisation
 Participation
 Embodied digital?
 Disembodied resonance?
 Sound, space, and time?
 Togetherness and attunement?
 Media, music-making, and community?

11. A new mode, a different key
Telematic connectivity, transformation, transcendence:
 for expression and performance
 for interaction and appreciation
 for community-building
 for mobilisation
 for individual and collective agency
Thus enabling:
 digital experience of the world
 experience of the digital world
 experience of the world as digital

12. THANK YOU
Comments welcome at c.fu@luc.leidenuniv.nl