ABSTRACT
In this article, we present Ear Talk – a co-composition and live performance project that enables remote music collaboration through technologically mediated systems. The Ear Talk project currently exists in two distinct implementations, one that repurposes YouTube's live-streaming technology, and one that utilises a stand-alone website. Although Ear Talk was conceived prior to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the necessity for remote collaboration became more apparent during the lockdown, when a vast majority of live events and music concerts were cancelled. The Ear Talk project enables a socially distanced form of online musical collaboration and offers a platform through which to respond to such a crisis, and has grown to be adopted and presented by many different performing groups across the world. In addition to describing the technical implementations of these two systems, we discuss issues that arise from our participatory practice: from musical quality concerns in regard to social aesthetics and artistic ingenuity, to accessibility concerns when designing technologically mediated collaborative systems. Ear Talk embraces continuous musical loops as well as highly asynchronous (i.e., perpetual) collaborative paradigms among remote participants, which raises a conceptual inquiry as to which part of its sonic and social experience constitutes music in the end. Finally, we evaluate performer–audience relationships (i.e., hierarchical versus horizontal interactions) and the efficacy of the Ear Talk systems at enabling socially engaged co-composition.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique challenge for sports medicine staffs as they attempt to safely transition elite athletes into sport participation after COVID-19 infections. Athletes must isolate for a period after testing positive for COVID-19 to prevent the spread of the virus in a community. After an isolation period, a battery of cardiac tests must be given to assess whether an athlete is ready to begin a reconditioning protocol. A return-to-play plan should be established to safely reintegrate high-level athletes into strength and conditioning, sport-specific drill work, and contact drill work. Elite athletes should also be gradually eased back into full training loads to avoid increases in orthopaedic injuries after a prolonged absence from training.