Just as pianists accompanied silent films in the theatres of the 1920s, University of Delaware music department chairperson David Herman will highlight ghost stories from the console of the Jefferson Pipe Organ in Bayard Sharp Hall this Halloween.

This being the 21st century, there will be a twist, however. Herman will be providing accompaniment from 800 miles away through new technologies made possible by the Internet2 project.

The virtual Halloween event, which is being held in conjunction with a national Internet2 conference, will originate from the Rialto Theater on the campus of Georgia State University in Atlanta from 8 to 10 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 31.

In addition to providing accompaniment, Herman will perform two solo works selected to fit the Halloween theme: Bach's famous Toccata in D minor and "a bit of ragtime" called "Graceful Ghost Rag" by the contemporary American composer William E. Bolcom. His presentation will be netcast from Atlanta at several levels of video and audio quality to accommodate a range of listeners' connection speeds.

"The Jefferson Pipe Organ was a magnificent gift, and I am very pleased that it is quickly becoming a prominent ingredient in the campus life," Herman said. "This Internet2 broadcast is a fascinating example of the wedding of two contrasts– mechanical-action pipe organ, similar to one which Bach might have played in the 17th century, and the excitement of an emerging technology such as Internet2.

"It calls to mind the great days of the theatre organ, when organists improvised accompaniments to match the action of silent movies. I've never done anything quite like this before–it should be interesting, and fun."

Other performers include Henry Panion III, chair of the music department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, professional musician Wayne Linsey and the University of Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra. Remote performances will be netcast from UD, the University of Oklahoma, New York University, the University of Miami and the University of Southern California.

UD's involvement in the program stems from its participation as a charter member in the Internet2 consortium, according to Richard S. Sacher, a manager in Information Technologies/User Services. The consortium includes more than 180 U.S. universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies to accelerate the creation of tomorrow's Internet.

Sacher said performing arts events such as that planned for Halloween serve both to test and to highlight emerging Internet2 technologies. Responding to a call for a national Halloween-themed event, UD submitted several proposals, all of which involved use of the new Jefferson Pipe Organ.

"We pitched the idea to David Herman, who thought it sounded like a good opportunity to experiment with remote performance collaboration and that it would be a lot of fun to do it in this virtual setting," Sacher said.

IT staff members created the needed network connections to Bayard Sharp Hall and "started the ball rolling–or the bits flowing, depending on how you look at these things," Sacher said.

Since, those staff members have been working out the various details for the UD portion of the performance, from camera angles and props to music clearance and network coordination. There also have been teleconference trials to test netcasting capabilities.

IT/University Media Services will transmit UD video and audio to Atlanta by compressing the output from stereo microphones, video cameras and already filmed digital video, Sacher said. This composite signal will be compressed to provide near-broadcast-quality video and near-CD-quality audio at the Rialto, where the Internet2 technical staff on stage will decompress the signal and project it onto a large projection screen.

Because absolute silence is required, Sacher said no visitors will be allowed to watch the presentation from Bayard Sharp Hall. However, the UD community and the public will be able to view the netcast on campus at a site to be announced. Check UDaily for details. To watch the netcast elsewhere, click on the Internet2 Halloween concert button that will be featured before the big day at the lower-left corner of the UD home page at [www.udel.edu]. Higher-speed connections will result in better performance.

Although the Halloween event is lighthearted, it has serious implications, as Internet2 consortium members consider expanded use of digital video, digital cinema, international collaborations, health science applications and a new initiative to promote application development in the arts and humanities.

Sacher said interesting examples of uses for the emerging technologies include remote control of electron microscopes, real-time remote collaboration with scientists and resources at the National Library of Medicine, use of high frame-rates to capture the subtle and fast-hand motions of "speakers" in American Sign Language poetry exhibitions and access to video databases, such as the Visual History Foundation's more than 50,000 interviews with Holocaust victims.

The Internet2 applications effort has a primary objective of informing faculty and researchers about the opportunities presented by advanced network environments, Sacher said.

During the past year, UD has accelerated the growth of its campus networking infrastructure to meet the increasing needs of faculty and researchers across all disciplines, Sacher said. As a charter member of Internet2, and with National Science Foundation financial support, UD was able to connect to the Abilene network, a nationwide Internet2 backbone network developed by the University Corp. for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), in partnership with Qwest Communications, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and Indiana University.

In addition to providing a high-performance testbed for advanced applications, Abilene tests and deploys such advanced network capabilities as multicasting and quality of service, Sacher said. These specific technologies are particularly relevant for remote collaborations in scientific and engineering disciplines, as well as in the arts and humanities.

Internet2 Awareness Day, held on campus Jan. 19, was designed to showcase the relevance of the new networking capabilities to UD faculty and researchers, to stimulate thinking about new ways high-performance connectivity could enable faculty to do things that were previously impractical and unrealizable. Examples are distributed computing and analysis of massive observational or experimental datasets being acquired in real time, and remote collaborations in the performing arts having high-quality audio and video requirements.

"Our first foray into the remote musical collaboration was done at the Internet2 Day event by Lloyd Shorter [UD faculty oboist] and David Herman in a real-time, network-enabled rehearsal with a faculty violinist working at the University of Oklahoma," Sacher said. "That event has stimulated Lloyd to pursue other regional, national and international opportunities for remote collaborations."

And, it paved the way for the Halloween performance by Herman.

–Neil Thomas

Photo by Jack Buxbaum