interface. In the process, possible links between individual fragments were derived from musical similarities and from legends circulating around the album and entered into a database. Time is normally understood to be that one-dimensional ‹space› in which the structure of music is fixed. Here, technical means and the semiotic system chosen transform them into a multidimensional space of possibilities.

Dehierarchization

Audio art frequently endeavors to dissolve hierarchies. The network presents itself as an environment and structural model for this purpose, which is why examples with this focus have occurred more and more frequently since the genesis of the Internet. But the approach is older.

With reference to John Cage, as early as the 1950s David Tudor began building indeterministic electronic systems whose components were interwoven in such a way that he could not predict their behavior. At the end of the 1970s the «League of Automatic Music Composers»[60] transferred the concept to three locally networked ‹KIM 1› computers, the first

affordable precursors to the PC. Each composition consisted of a system of rules, according to which each individual computer (and its performer) responded to the different information coming from the other two, in turn influencing them in different ways. «One can conceive of a computer system as a framework for embodying systems offering complexity and surprise …. Under this paradigm, composition is the design of a complex, even wild, system whose behavior leaves a trace: this trace is the music.»[61] There are no clear relationships of power between the performers and the computers or even between these amongst themselves. The pieces are different models of music that are created discursively between participants—including the machines—of equal status.

Since the mid-1990s, similar concepts have developed in association with ORF Kunstradio in Vienna, however in this case they are motivated by experiments in the field of telecommunication art.[62] In 1994, «State of Transition» by Andrea Sodomka, Martin Breindl, Norbert Math and x-space depicted data movement processes. Different electronic data paths were used between Graz and Rotterdam: the