The following interview was conducted via an email questionnaire in mid-2013 by Ryan Ross Smith.

RRS: When did you first start using animated notation in your work?

KB: While a Ph.D. student at the University of Buffalo, around 2003 or so, I wrote a piece called No Cathedral, in which performers on traditional instruments are presented notation along with an animated conductor video showing the appropriate beat patterns and tempo.

RRS: Where there particular compositions/notational approaches/technologies/video games/etc. that exerted any influence over your [early and/or present] work?

KB: The major influences on No Cathedral that I recall include Steve Reich's various phase pieces and Earle Brown's work with graphic notation and Open Form, such as December 1952 and Available Forms I & II. The main idea for No Cathedral was to allow phase-type temporal relationships along with the individual conducting attention of the Brown works.

Following No Cathedral, my dissertation piece No Clergy (http://noclergy.rubyforge.org/, https://github.com/kbaird/No-Clergy) extends the metaphor of decentralization. In a traditional notated piece, the composer has control. In one of Brown's open form pieces, that control is passed down to the conductor (at least partially). In an improvisational context, such control is granted to the individual performer. In No Clergy, the control is given to the audience.

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