Streaaam: A fully automated experimental audio streaming server

Abstract

Streaaam is a fully automated experimental audio streaming server, built from Free/Libre Open Source Software in a higher education context. Some of its features include an automatic synthesized-speech moderator; real-time data integration via web APIs; and automatic loading and playing of generative music patches in Pd, SuperCollider, and Csound. These features are creatively combined in our stream’s program, such as in the form of a robot comedy show. Streaaam was conceived of and continues to be developed as a pedagogical vehicle in the context of an undergraduate education in audio arts, music technology, and sound design. Its goals are to inspire students to work creatively in the sonic arts, to introduce them to the development of audio applications for the web, and to showcase student art works at our department and college. This paper discusses the project’s technical implementation, our software development and program curation cycles, pedagogical experiences with the project thus far, and plans for future work.