World Tune wants to trace the changes of atmospheres and events of our planet acoustically and give the listener feedback about the current conditions of our world. World Tune as a global, interactive soundsystem is located in a contradictory field of tension which is characterized on one hand, by the fascination of complex "World-Explaining-Models" like, for example, Keplers "Harmonice Mundi", Luhmanns "Social Systems" or Hawkings "Big Theory," but also on the other hand, that such global models are only models and not final knowledge about our World. This inconsistency becomes noticible in the World Tune project by the unsettled role of the listener. Is the listener part of the machine? Is the machine part of a man-manipulated sound and thought system? Is the current sound a random event? Is it dependent on man, on machine, on nature? On an interweaving of all these components? Is the result of such interweavings chance? Providence? Composition? World Tune produces a choreography of chance which lures the passive listener by proceeding the single sound as an endless loop. Simultaneously, it converts the active listener into a producer who perceives his environment by listening, and who makes his sound experience available for other inhabitants of the earth by recording.

The realization of such a global soundsystem requires a medium which can send and receive sounds from all conceivable regions of the earth. For this purpose, the Internet is not the most optimum medium (because of bandwidth limitations), but it is however, permanently available and cheap. A virtual interface on the World Wide Web makes sure that every man gets access to the system.

It is extremely useful to integrate the networked computer as a transport medium into this system also from a philosophical aspect because the computer is the matter's proof-of-the-fact that the system of mathematics in principle cannot be consistent. The intellectual construction of a "universal machine" by Alan Turing (1936) manifests the definite death of the "consistent" mathematics and simultaneously the birth of the computer (special case of the Turing machine). The existence of the Turing machine makes provable that there are numbers which in principle are not calculable in the mathematics. So the invention of the computer makes clear that enclosed systems cannot really be enclosed and it shows that such enclosed systems cannot describe the world more exactly than for example the "Sacre du Printemps" from Igor Strawinsky. "Over which one cannot talk, about this one must be silent," summarizes Wittgenstein‘s knowledge about the boundaries of logic. In this way of thinking the sound of World Tune can be seen as the audible form of staying silent. So, World Tune is an acoustic barometer which transforms local events to transnational sound. But, World Tune is also a musical instrument which gets composed and at the same time, composes. World Tune makes noticeable the world as a finite system which produces tonal infinity.

1. Components
The loudspeaker sculpture standing outside in the landscape consists of a 30 cm one-way loudspeaker and a horn system-unit cover (high degree of effectiveness, good weather resistance). A loudspeaker cable leads to the amplifier which is housed in a building close to the loudspeaker. The amplifier is connected to the audio output of the computer soundcard via audio cables (PC/Windows 95/98). The computer has a cable connection to a modem, which is connected to the telephone outlet. The computer is configured in a way which makes entry to the World Wide Web possible at any time (local provider).

An automation software (InstantON) starts (in a rhythm to be fixed locally) the internet connection and the web browser Netscape(version 3, java enabled). The browser picks up the current sound of the World Tune System and plays it as an endless loop until the automation software initiates the next sound request via Internet. Up to now there are installed systems in Saarijärvi (Finland), Lisbon (Portugal), St.Gallen (Switzerland) and Tellow (Germany), which are identical to the one we described here.

The virtual interface of the World Tune sound system is a homepage provided with interactive components. You can connect to it with following URL:

http://www.worldtune.com

This interface takes on the job of doing different tasks within the system. On one hand it keeps the current sound ready, which is retrieved by the local loudspeaker sculpture, and on the other hand it puts the recorded sounds at the listeners‘ disposal and offers the possibility of transmitting them to the loudspeaker sculptures. And finally, it offers the opportunity to upload sounds to the World Tune Sound Library which were recorded by the listeners. This sound can be transmitted afterwards by anybody who visits the World Tune homesite.

3. Broadcast

To send a sound the listener and computer user retreives the engine page of the World Tune homesite, clicks the "broadcast now" button and follows the instructions : choose a soundlibrary, choose a soundfile of this library, type in your name, type in the country from which you are transmitting the sound and finally, click "broadcast". Having finished this procedure the chosen sound is broadcast from the local loudspeaker sculptures and audible for every visitor of the World Tune homesite. If you intend to broadcast a sound which was recorded by yourself you first have to upload this sound via the upload function of the World Tune engine.

To upload a sound the listener/producer/user writes his 6 seconds (maximum) sound as an au-file onto the hardisk of his computer. Then he logs onto the World Wide Web via Netscape, retreives the engine page of World Tune homesite and clicks the "upload" button. Here he follows the instructions as stated (password: c.B3wWr). The sound will be written to the World Tune library with short explaining remarks.

To listen to a sound the listener goes within immediate proximity of one of the loudspeaker sculptures (up to now: Saarijärvi, Lisbon, Tellow, St.Gallen) or they visit the World Tune homesite. On the homesite of the World Tune project the listener also gets detailed information about the current locations of the loudspeaker sculptures. The World Tune machine dynamic soundsculpture is still in early stages of development . At present (August of 1998) there are about 150 sounds from the following regions: Saarijärvi (Finland), Lisbon (Portugal), Teterow (Germany), Brockton, Massachusetts (USA), Berlin (Germany), Moers (Germany), Springfield, Missouri (USA), Remsheid (Germany), San Francisco, California (USA),Severn Valley (Great Britain),and Hong Kong (China).

Henry Brugsch (Great Britain)

Jens Gippner (Germany)

Harto Hållman (Finland)

Sari Kempainen (Finland)

Debbie Lincoln (USA)

Luis Loureiro (Portugal)

Wolfgang Neuhaus (Germany)

Kaija van Oik (Finland)

Jeffrey Price (USA)

Uwe Seth (Germany)

Ana Simões (Portugal)

Thomas Tack (Germany)

Charles Wesseler (Germany)

Kathy Kennedy (USA)

Online-coordination: Jeffrey Price

Transnational sounddesign: Harto Hållman

CGI, java and HTML-programming: Jens Gippner

Loudspeaker-technics: Thomas Tack

Idea, concept, realisation: Wolfgang Neuhaus

financed by: European Social Fond, Youthstart/Eurotrain,

Gesellschaft für Informationstechnologie und Pädagogik, IMBSE