The project Adaptive Music on the Web was initiated by DIEM in 2004 and realized in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Aarhus with the support of a generous grant from The Heritage Agency of Denmark under auspices of the Danish Ministry of Culture. The goal of the project was to develop new musical paradigms that allow the listener to influence and alter a piece of music while listening within the context of a common web browser.
A set of artistic and technical definitions and guidelines for creating adaptive music for web publication were developed. The technical possibilities and limitations of presenting adaptive music on the web were studied. A programming environment was selected for the implementation of adaptive musical works. A group of electronic music composers was established and each composer was commissioned to create an adaptive musical work for web publication in accordance with the established guidelines. A prototype was created for each work. Specialized programming tools were developed for implementing these prototypes in the form of adaptive musical works capable of running within a standard web browser. A web site was set up for presenting these works.