Re: Memories and Lags

David Rodger (auricle@alphalink.com.au)
Wed, 6 May 1998 09:07:45 +1000

>4)
>Slowing down: Lag Aesthetics (Susan Kozel). There have been several 'Dance
>and Technology' projects involving the use of 'telematics' like CUSEEME and
>ISDN Picturetel. Amanda Stegell, Lisa Naugle, Susan Kozel -- and something I
>cam across the other day, http://www.media-gn.nl/mfa/isabelle/Smirror/. Most
>telematic projects to date involve this 'lag' (a few seconds with ISND --
>much more with CuSeeme, especially when using regular telephone lines and a
>reflector site). This waiting for the image to appear -- this moment in real
>time which 'rushing forward' technology (more bandwidth for all) has still
>not caught up with. The technology claims that it will eventually catch up
>and wipe out this lag so that our telematic images come through at the same
>rate as CNN satellite uplinks. Perfection will be achieved. The 'lag' that
>still reminds us of the distance, the geographical space across which our
>images travel... will be gone.

The lag is not just due to a lack of bandwidth. The Internet is a
packet-switching network; it's not designed to send fixed-rate datastreams.
The packets can reach their destination by any route, and not always in
the right order. So inorder to re-construct the transmitted signal, there
might not only be a lag, but one has to reduce the playback sample rate as
well. If more bandwidth is available, the lag might reduce, but the
non-synchronous and variable-rate conditions of tranmission will surely
still obtain.

Regards, David

David Rodger ------------ Audio Engineer, Pool Lifeguard, RLSS Trainer
E-mail: auricle@alphalink.com.au
Personal: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~auricle/ (not yet exciting)
Research: http://farben.latrobe.edu.au/motion/ (a bit more exciting)
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