The web-based sound art scene is relatively fragmented. There is no singular platform, forum, or other online community where a majority of such artists congregate. Even considering “web-based sound art” as a label, net.art, internet art, born-digital art, creative coding, live coding, and algorave all are also labels used by communities that create and exchange this work.
This is by no means a negative thing. It is actually quite the opposite. Web-based sound art, in all of its forms, is an emerging media with no single artist, aesthetic, or technical tool leading the charge. Rather than looking at individual artists or works of web-based sound art (as we do in previous articles), this article takes a look at the online communities where these works of art are debuted and exchanged. Beginning first with the most obvious online communities for music (social media), we’ll see how the plethora of music production tutorials uploaded on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have produced a web-based sub genre of tutorial-core music. After that, we will go one layer deeper, looking at nota e.V. and Audius, two very different digital-born communities that use online space (and also web3 technology) as a premise for an alternative form of community building. Finally, we will end with a self-ethnography, looking at WebSoundArt, as well as Browser Sound (my own community for web-based music).
Tutorial-core
dnksaus is an electronic music artist that makes creative Ableton Live tutorials
Since social media’s inception, artists have created music production tutorials as a means of knowledge sharing, creative expression, clout-chasing, and income. This in itself is no profound observation, and music production tutorials are not the same as music. However, there is a subgenre of the music tutorial space in which creators cross over the line from tutorial into music performance. One example for this is for tutorials around Ableton Live, by artists like dnksaus, jabeu, and Ned Rush. Watch any jabeau instagram reel and get a quirky, well-timed, Bill Wurtzian explanation of a music production technique in Ableton Live. Audiences of artists like jabeu are often themselves artists and creators. Yet, they do not watch these videos solely to learn how to use music software. A form of edutainment (entertainment with an educational aspect), these tutorials do not cover rudiments of the Ableton software, but rather demonstrate a creative approach towards one or more features. They display “extended techniques” for creative software. Alongside Ableton, there are similar subgenres for other creative tools like Touch Designer, MaxMSP, and P5.js.
While a book of extended techniques for clarinet would not be seen as poetry or a novel, these music tutorials live in an uncanny valley between music and learning resources. The medium of social media conditions this “tutorial-content” to be increasingly performative, artistically expressive, and bespoke for the platform. And this leads ulimately to these tutorials becoming more and more pieces of (meta-)music, and less and less of rigorous educational resources.
One manifestation of this uncanny valley between tutorial and music is in jabeau’s “How to Make How to Make Water”, in which the artist explains how they created a previous video tutorial “How to Make Water”; an acknowledgment of the latter tutorial’s performative nature.
jabeu’s instagram reel breaking down how he made his popular tutorial “How to Make Water”
Open Source Artistic Exchange
Web-based sound art often relies on new and emerging technology. Because of this, much of the online space surrounding the art is made up of forums and community spaces maintained by the organizations that build these technologies. The Cycling ‘74 Forums (and their related community platforms on Discord, Facebook, and Instagram). The primary focus of these community spaces is on technical aspects of the creative process, with only a small majority of posts showcasing works of art.
nota, a digital rehearsal space and community, is an interesting variant of this form. Nota is a digital workspace / creative tool for online multimedia works. Works created in nota make creative use of basic computer interaction functions (scrolling, clicking and dragging) and montage together video, audio, text, and hyperlinks in a digital 2-D-ish space (it is a 2D workspace, but the scrolling makes it feel three dimensional). While nota does contain a space for technical support, its community, nota e.V., is structured similar to an arts and research collective. Their primary interest is not in maintaining the nota digital rehearsal space, but rather to foster a digital-born space for artistic exchange.
Structured officially as a verein (a german term for a club or association), nota e.V. members do not only use nota for personal works, but also participate in collaborative art-making through the development of the nota software, the governance of the community, and the organization of online and in-person happenings.
nota homepage
Web3 Based Artistic Communities
On the other end of the community-building discourse, Audius presents an interesting use of web3 technology to facilitate relationships between artists and fans, as well as re-imagine the economics of music streaming through their own music-sharing protocol. In a previous WebSoundArt article, I discuss the complex present state of music royalties, laying out the theoretical strengths and weaknesses a web3 based solution provides. Audius seeks to implement one of these solutions; their system for music distribution and streaming empowers any artist (even if they are just one person with no financial or human capital) to monetize, distribute, and stream their music (see Audius’ whitepaper). Additionally, Audius uses IPFS, a web3 system that facilitates data management and storage without a central server.
While Audius is a system for sharing any audio content, and is not specific to web-based art, its music-sharing protocol proposes a vision for online music communities that is highly different from those by current major streaming services. Much of the growth in the web-based sound art community is built off developments in technology that make web technology accessible to artists and non-engineers. By this same token, the web-sharing protocol by Audius is a step towards making music streaming on a global scale more accessible. And while an artist today is able to technically distribute their work globally through services like Spotify or YouTube, the actual distribution of that content to different users on the platform is still subject to the interests and recommendation systems of the streaming platform.
Audius content lifecycle
Conclusion
Where does this leave communities like WebSoundArt and Browser Sound? In the exciting and fragmented space of web-based sound art, I hope that our platforms here can create context and access points for curious artists to enter into these communities. If this article piqued your interest in further exploring online communities for music, consider joining the WebSoundArt Discord, and the Browser Sound mailing list to engage with more artists, art, and ideas around web-based art.
To Top ↑