The LoLa (Low-Latency) Workshop took place at Tarantini Conservatory in Trieste, Italy in April 2012. The focus was on using video conferencing technology for live, interactive and simultaneous music performance, rehearsal and tuition, and included delegates from 15 countries, both musicians and technologists in the education field as participants.

The accompanying videos illustrate the technology in practice, and highlight the essential challenge of latency in performance - ie the delay between the sound and video being transmitted and received.

The concept and challenge of latency in music is not new. 600 years ago, St Marks Basilica had four choirs stationed in different locations, and music was composed specifically to take account of the 10 millisecond delay between those locations so that the singers would be synchronised.

Without specialist low-latency equipment this latency (delay) makes it almost impossible to play together remotely. Most commercial video conferencing tools have a latency of around 200 milliseconds - but anything over 50ms becomes very difficult.  Using LoLa technology, the baseline delay is minimised to around 20-30ms, and the only real limit thereafter is effectively the physical distance that the data needs to travel along cables between locations. The longer the physical distance is between performers, the greater the delay, resulting in increasing difficulty in maintaining a performance between locations. Based on current technology (and physics) a practical working limit of around 1500 miles exists, though it is possible to perform at greater distances if participants are experienced in working together.

The Polycom Music Mode is considerably better than other commercial systems for music as it prioritises audio and video at the correct frequency for music (rather than speech), and handles echo cancellation better allowing the accoustics of the performance to be heard appropriately. This system still has latency constraints which limit its use for simultaneous interaction, though this is of less importance in the context of tuition, unless the participants are attempting to play together.

For practical purposes, using super-fast broadband between academic institutions it is possible to perform or rehearse between locations across Europe, or from the middle of the USA to the coast - but not between continents (the distance is too great). The technology is reliant on super-fast broadband networks such as that used for transmission of vast quantities of data between institutions analysing results from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The UK component of the network is the JANET LightPath (this can handle considerably more data that the JANET broadband normally used at institutional level).

This requirement creates limitations at a local level - something refered to frequently during the workshop as 'The Final Mile'. Without high-speed broadband the quality and speed degrade, while the latency significantly increases. The technology is therefore of limited use between sites that are not directly connected by a lighpath (or very close to one). While ideal for work between to European institutions, it is likely to have limited value for outreach or remote rehearsal. This also highlights a major decising-based limitation in the high-speed education networks being developed - education does not start and finish within universities.

For more details regarding LoLa, the Internet2 site covers the use of the technology in the USA, where this technology developed in Europe has taken off - http://www.internet2.edu/arts/LOLA.html

For full details about the event see this page - http://inspire.rcs.ac.uk/mahara/view/view.php?id=6452

These are some musings on reflection as a learning activity - formed while having a couple of hours to do the 'tourist' bit en-route to a workshop in Trieste, Italy in April 2012. Mostly they're just nice pictures of architecture and sculptures - the actual workshop content follows later.

One of the things that struck me vividly was that my home city of Glasgow has architecture and sculpture every bit as fabulous and distinctive as that of Trieste (or of York, where I attended the ALT conference last year). But as a local I don't make any real effort to see the buildings around me in Glasgow. As I walked through the central square in Trieste I noticed that you could tell who the tourists were at a glance - not because they had cameras, but because they were the ones looking up. The local residents were simply going about their business, heads down.

It's a natural trait (and not limited to humans) to stop noticing things around you that aren't a threat. It's called habituation. The same thing happens when you move into a new house and the streetlight outside your window makes a buzzing sound that keeps you awake for hours. Within a couple of weeks you don't even notice it - but it's still there. What does that have to do with reflection? Well - everything really...

The most dangerous thing I did while in Italy was cross the road with the green man -  on a zebra crossing. Coming from the UK I had the natural expectation that when the green man was lit the cars and motorbikes would stop - it's a cultural thing. But no. Halfway across the road (and therefore committed to the journey) I could still see a stream of fast moving traffic piling around the corner just in front of me (and also behind me) - between me and the safety of the pavement. There was a brief lull in the flow of motorbikes and I quick stepped to the safety of the pavement with some relief. On asking the conference hosts about the local driving rules I was told "If there's nobody crossing the road cars keep moving - if there's someone in front of them they will stop".

This seemed a bit mad to me - but within two days I started to habituate to it too - and hurled myself onto the road challenging the cars to stop just like the local pedestrians did. Fortunately, they did - otherwise this blog would end a bit prematurely.

But back to reflection.

The point, really, is that anything we become familiar with is something that we stop noticing. Only by stepping out of our comfortable bubble will we experience things with a new perspective, and actually reflect (think) about what we are experiencing in a way that might challenge our conventional view - in other words to learn from the experience. This causes me some discomfort. Not because I'm suggesting that we need to experience new things in order to reflect on whether what we know is actually correct (I think that's a good thing), but rather:- does this mean that we need to continually experience new things - are we in effect in an arms race between our brain (and established preconceptions), and the outside world (of new ideas).

And if this is an arms race - how can we win? At what point do we say "I have learned enough to know something". When are we enlightened? To contrast this, Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink" provides fairly compelling evidence that very often our snap-decisions are more accurate than carefully thought through judgements - too often we overthink things and analyse to death our ideas and interpretations of our environment. I'm doing it now...

Perhaps the solution is to move on to something completely different. One of the observations that I made in Trieste is that there was an extremely visible police presence. There seemed to be a police car or patrolling officers at almost every junction - but their presence was neither intrusive nor intimidating. There was a reassurance of " We are here. There is no trouble, we are simply passing through". New ideas should be like that.

So I'll conclude by suggesting that unless we make a habit of experiencing our lives in different circumstances we may miss important facts that would critically change our attitudes or opinions. Perhaps the snap-decision process works well because the moment we start to ponder an idea we rely on old information rather than the initial raw data of an immediate experience. If that's the case then active reflection is something that should not be done within the same context as the work that is being reflected on. For example, thinking about how a piece of music is played might be better served by some distance - in time and space. Videoing the event and contrasting it with a related (but new) experience at a later date might make the reflection a more powerful process than simply sitting scribbling notes immediatey after the performance, as doing so is likely to fall back on existing patterns rather than creating opportunities for new ideas to emerge.

After an evening spent discussing cultural differences and practices with international delegates in the comfort of the student union (after a meal which to be honest wasn't great), it was an early start again for the anticipated highlight - Martin Dougiamas, the creator of Moodle, video conferencing in from down under, where an antipodean Moodle Moot was running concurrently with our own.

I had seen Martin speak a couple of years earlier when he was touring and stopped off in Scotland to speak at Glasgow University. I was therefore a little disappointed that Ii heard nothing new ... Moodle 2.0 still promised to deliver all of the key functionality i expected an LMS/VLE/CMS to deliver, but was still not ready and was scheduled for some mythical 6 months in the future. This put my own plans to roll out Moodle 2.0 within RSAMD firmly on hold - I wasn't going to be the guinea pig institution that uncovered some fatal bug that the developers hadn't noticed. as a result i came back from the conference 90% accepting that we would not be ungrading this year - and even more disappointed that some of the key functionality that was expected in 2.0 might actually be put back until a release of 2.1 to allow the product to 'get out there'.

Perhaps feeling a bit fatigued after a couple of days away from home, or perhaps just busy working through the implications of the 2.0 revelations I have to say the morning workshop was a blur of speakers and my notes for the session contained nothing I'd want to tweet about. Lunch was a welcome break by that point.