The evaluation of the project made note of the programming profile, and it was clear that most of the music did not sit well with the younger members of the audience, although the workshop composition was particularly well received.

Breaking the Sound Barrier 1997

Another model was adopted in 1997. The focus was limited strictly to the making of a concert by and for children, with professional elements used solely to provide framework and reference. Four separate projects were initiated, the first a workshop for acoustical instruments, where children developed a story combining music and movement, with a teacher. The other project was a largely self-developed contribution from a youth center – a video with techno-inspired soundtrack that was developed by three teenagers. The third project was a combination of three separate initiatives at the same school (fifth graders), one group working with images, another focusing on instrumental composition and the third making music with the CD-ROM. The output from the acoustic workshop and the electronic workshop were fused into a single piece of music, which was performed together with the visuals. This was the main piece of the concert. The fourth element consisted of small works commissioned from the three “apprentices” from the previous year, each of whom wrote a short piece that was performed at the concert.

The concert venue was organized as a multimedia space in two sections, and the format of the program was fast-paced and distinguished by interrupting and digressing multimedia elements. In a sense, it was tailored to mimic the current media reality, with diverse material drawn from a number of sources. It was interesting to note that this time the children liked the concert much more than the adults, and that the children from the workshops were more involved in the diffusion and performance aspects of their works. The attempt to make a concert on the children’s premises seems to have worked, and it seemed to have a natural place in what is a major contemporary music festival.

Summary

While the CD-ROM project described above may be considered completed, this kind of work never really ends. There is a need to stay on top of technological and musical developments in order to ensure that the educational system is kept updated – in terms of both the technology and aesthetics. Work remains to be done to educate teachers and to provide good support for them. International publication of the CD-ROM is pending, and one may expect publication in German, Italian and English within 1999/2000. For more information about the present and future plans for the distribution of DSP, please refer to the Web page http://www.notam.uio.no/DSP.