About WAC 24

The 8th iteration of Web Audio Conference (WAC) will be hosted by Purdue University's newly formed Department of Music in collaboration with the Purdue Theater Department, Fusion Studio, Division of Dance, School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, and LAMP from March 15-18, 2024 (Fri-Mon) in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. WAC focuses on technical and artistic research, development, design, evaluation, and standards concerning emerging audio-related web technologies such as Web Audio API, Web RTC, WebSockets, and JavaScript. The conference welcomes music technologists, computer musicians, web developers, game developers, application designers, industry engineers, R&D scientists, academic researchers, artists, students, professionals, and anyone interested in the research, development, and application of audio for the web.

Previous WACs were held at IRCAM & Mozilla (2015, Paris), Georgia Tech (2016, Atlanta), Queen Mary University of London (2017, London), TU Berlin (2018, Berlin), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2019, Trondheim), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2021, Barcelona), and University Côte d'Azur (2022, Cannes).

The Internet has evolved beyond a simple storage and delivery network for audio files, with modern web browsers bringing new user experiences and interaction opportunities on smartphones, tablets, single-board computers, laptops, desktops, and essentially any device hosting web browsers. New and emerging web technologies and standards now allow applications to create and manipulate sound in real-time or at near-native speeds, enabling the development of a new generation of web-based applications that mimic the capabilities of desktop software while leveraging unique opportunities afforded by the web in areas such as social collaboration, user experience, cloud computing, and portability.

WAC explores the current state of works by artists, researchers, students, and engineers in both industry and academia, highlighting new standards, tools, APIs, and practices, as well as innovative web audio applications for musical performance, education, research, collaboration, and production, with an emphasis on bringing more diversity into audio.

Theme: Spaces | Places | Traces
The theme for WAC 2024 is "Spaces | Places | Traces," where spaces are transformed into places that leave traces of human and non-human activities, whether fleetingly or permanently. With the blurring between physical spaces/places and virtual spaces/places, the possibilities of real-time, non-real-time, and faster-than-real-time engagement have become realities accessible regardless of geographical location or time. In particular, the role of sound, audio, and music is especially interesting when considered through the lens of operating system agnosticism, allowing audio software to run on devices that can host modern web browsers. Additionally, web audio and its potential for environmental sensing—capturing, processing, and streaming music performances, events, soundscapes, and urban noise pollution—is a topic that we hope to explore further at the 2024 WAC conference.

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