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Ethnographically Informed Design For Improvised Electro-Acoustic Music
Abstract
The right of John Bowers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted. The contents of this work should not be reproduced without the permission of the author, except for the purpose of limited, attributed quotation. Improvising Machines
... There would simply be no way of measuring how one piece might be more improvised than another. While many scholars and musicians have attempted to define one activity in terms of the other, such references to improvisation as instant, or real-time composition, are perhaps-as Fred Frith argues-just unhelpful clichés (Bowers, 2003). As Bowers points out, we do not talk about composition as "slow improvisation" and, furthermore, comparing the practices of composition and improvisation would simply not make sense in many non-Western art music contexts. ...
... This was one of the main motivations for creating the imposed framework: these cue points would be suggestions to simultaneously move to new material, synchronously. Bowers points out that while much discourse tries to maintain the connection between jazz improvisation and conversational organisation, where phenomena such as call and response or mimicry spill over into electroacoustic free improvisation, Derek Bailey's (1993) non-idiomatic descriptive forms such as symmetry, uniformity, equality and so on, may be more useful when talking about the structures and events of free electroacoustic improvisation (Bowers, 2003). Furthermore, as Janet Bavelas and Nicole Chovil give extensive evidence that certain "nonverbal acts are an intrinsic part of language use in face-to-face dialogue" (Bavelas & Chovil, 2006, 110), I would suggest that within musical improvisation, nonverbal communication is fundamental and worth exploiting beyond merely the gestural domain. ...
... Most importantly, the difference in using a haptic controller such as the Falcon is the potential topology of sensation that it affords. While non-linearity can be employed within software algorithms for audio DSP to give the impression of moving through a terrain (Parker, 2007), or unpredictability within a system (Bowers, 2003), by changing the degrees of feedback within the haptic force profiles, this non-linear resistance could be experienced differently in different parts of the virtual performance space. ...
As a performer of firstly acoustic and latterly electronic and electro-instrumental music, I constantly seek to improve my mode of interaction with the digital realm: that is, to achieve a high level of sensitivity and expression. This thesis illustrates reasons why making use of haptic interfaces—which offer physical feedback and resistance to the performer—may be viewed as an important approach in addressing the shortcomings of some the standard systems used to mediate the performer’s engagement with various sorts of digital musical information. By examining the links between sound and touch, and the performer-instrument relationship, various new compositional and performance strategies start to emerge. I explore these through a portfolio of original musical works, which span the continuum of composition and improvisation, largely based around performance paradigms for piano and live electronics. I implement new haptic technologies, using vibrotactile feedback and resistant interfaces, as well as exploring more metaphorical connections between sound and touch. I demonstrate the impact that the research brings to the creative musical outcomes, along with the implications that these techniques have on the wider field of live electronic musical performance.
... Dans ce chapitre, nous proposons en premier lieu quelques pistes de réflexions sur la nature et la pratique de l'improvisation, afin d'expliquer les différentes motivations musicologiques et les différentes influences qui ont guidé nos choix dans la conception de nos modèles informatiques pour l'improvisation automatique. Ces réflexions se basent principalement sur le livre La partition intérieure de Jacques Siron [Siron, 2015] et sur les travaux ethnographiques de John Bowers autour de l'improvisation [Bowers, 2002], auxquels s'ajoutent d'autres lectures personnelles 3 . Nous ne prétendons pas ici répondre à de quelconques recherches musicologiques mais simplement positionner nos travaux par rapport à différents questionnements musicologiques. ...
... Derek Bailey considère que l'attrait des musiques improvisées réside dans « l'accidentel, le fortuit et le moment ». D'un point de vue plus sociologique, cette vision implique que la pratique de l'improvisation en musique s'épanouirait dans ce que Garfinkel [1967] appelle la « merveilleuse contingence de la vie de tous les jours » [Bowers, 2002]. Pour sa part, Keith Jarrett décrit sa pratique de l'improvisation libre en solo comme un dialogue entre compositeur, improvisateur et interprète. ...
... La musique créée durant une improvisation pourrait paraître originale à l'oreille en apparence, mais pas en essence. « Ne pouvant pas être moderne, cela doit être primitif » résume Bowers sarcastiquement [Bowers, 2002]. ...
Les systèmes actuels d’improvisation musicales sont capables de générer des séquences musicales unidimensionnelles par recombinaison du matériel musical. Cependant, la prise en compte de plusieurs dimensions (mélodie, harmonie...) et la modélisation de plusieurs niveaux temporels sont des problèmes difficiles. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons de combiner des approches probabilistes et des méthodes issues de la théorie des langages formels afin de mieux apprécier la complexité du discours musical à la fois d’un point de vue multidimensionnel et multi-niveaux dans le cadre de l’improvisation où la quantité de données est limitée. Dans un premier temps, nous présentons un système capable de suivre la logique contextuelle d’une improvisation représentée par un oracle des facteurs tout en enrichissant son discours musical à l’aide de connaissances multidimensionnelles représentées par des modèles probabilistes interpolés. Ensuite, ces travaux sont étendus pour modéliser l’interaction entre plusieurs musiciens ou entre plusieurs dimensions par un algorithme de propagation de croyance afin de générer des improvisations multidimensionnelles. Enfin, nous proposons un système capable d’improviser sur un scénario temporel avec des informations multi-niveaux représenté par une grammaire hiérarchique. Nous proposons également une méthode d’apprentissage pour l’analyse automatique de structures temporelles hiérarchiques. Tous les systèmes sont évalués par des musiciens et improvisateurs experts lors de sessions d’écoute
... performance (Bowers, 2002, Butler, 2014. 136 ...
... Electroacoustic composer, improviser and music theorist John Bowers (2002) argues that ethnography is the 251 most appropriate method to understand the dynamic systems comprised of humans and non-human agents 252 through which music emerges, in his case, specifically in improvised music using computers and machines; 253 because to understand the organisation of the music, one needs to understand how participants coordinate 254 their activities within such performance ecologies. 255 ...
Across the UK, a growing number of charity organisations, social enterprises, academic researchers and individuals have developed music technology-based music workshops and projects using Accessible Music Technology (AMT) to address the issue of access to music making for people with disabilities. In this article, I discuss my ethnographic study of The Drake Music Project Northern Ireland (DMNI), a charity which provides music workshop opportunities in inclusive ensembles at the community level. My methodology of participant observation involved undergoing the training necessary to become an access music tutor for DMNI, attending workshops and conducting interviews with people throughout the organisation. Key findings were that consumer music technology devices that were not designed to be accessible to a wide spectrum of users could be made accessible through adapting them with other devices or different sensor interfaces more suitable for people with unique abilities and specific needs. Throughout my study, I found that it was not in the design of music technology devices that made them accessible. Rather, meaningful music making emerged through the interrelations between the access music tutors, workshop participants and the music technology interfaces in the workshop environment. The broader implications of DMNI music making activities and effects on social inclusion are also discussed.
... Our digital present is no different. It is not fundamentally distinguished from other eras by the problems and opportunities presented by its ubiquitous technologies y (Waters 2007: 14) The idea of a performance ecology or ecosystem has been used by Bowers (2003) and Waters (2007) to develop a perspective on the materialities of contemporary digitally mediated musical practices which recognises material resources such as instruments and technologies as inhabiting a world rich in social, material and historical interconnections that inform practice. In this respect, the idea resonates with a number of other recent contributions. ...
... Direct parameter mappings of a granulator, for instance, are not especially musically suggestive, and are probably also quite opaque to someone unfamiliar with granulators. Fortunately, however, more wayfindingorientated approaches to mapping are available (Bowers 2003;Van Nort and Wanderley 2006). ...
Whilst it is common in much discourse around contemporary musical practices to emphasise the differences between digital and acoustic ways of making music, Simon Waters’ discussion of the Performance Ecosystem as an analytic perspective argues instead for a heightened sense of continuity (Waters 2007). This article lends support to this argument by developing an ecosystemically situated account of our relationships with technology and processes of skill formation. It is argued that this sense of continuity is justified, but that where differences of experiences do arise these are not, as sometimes supposed, an essential characteristic of digital technologies. On the basis that much of our skill formation consists of tacit knowledge, it is suggested that further discussion on how particular circumstances and skills arise would be revealing. Two possible headings for such discussion are suggested in the form of ‘Agility’ and ‘Playfulness’.
... [15] 'Performance ecologies' is a term coined by Bowers (2003) to describe the organisation of a playing environment, which makes things more effective for the musician, and gives clues to legibility of the performer's gestures (for both co-performers and audience). ...
... Ambiguous Devices is a distributed musical ecosystem (Bowers 2002;Waters 2007), a network of interconnected music-making machines, people and ideas. The project began in 2011 out of a mutual desire to explore non-linear and resistive forms of networked musical interactions in an attempt to challenge and extend our existing practices as improvisers and instrument makers. ...
This article documents the processes behind our distributed musical instrument, Ambiguous Devices . The project is motivated by our mutual desire to explore disruptive forms of networked musical interactions in an attempt to challenge and extend our practices as improvisers and instrument makers. We begin by describing the early design stage of our performance ecosystem, followed by a technical description of how the system functions with examples from our public performances and installations. We then situate our work within a genealogy of human–machine improvisation, while highlighting specific values that continue to motivate our artistic approach. These practical accounts inform our discussion of tactility, proximity, effort, friction and other attributes that have shaped our strategies for designing musical interactions. The positive role of ambiguity is elaborated in relation to distributed agency. Finally, we employ the concept of ‘feedthrough’ as a way of understanding the co-constitutive behaviour of communication networks, assemblages and performers.
... The proliferation of widely-accessible, increasingly mobile, and low-cost interfaces for musical/sonic practices has posed challenges to established norms and power structure through resetting the aesthetic boundaries for creative practice and de-centralising the means of experimentation for producers and prosumers. (Bowers, 2002;Katz, 2004;Théberge, 2004;Born, 2005;Waters, 2007;Prior, 2008, Butler, 2014Taylor, 2014;Samuels, 2015Samuels, , 2016. While acknowledging the asymmetrical distribution of such effects across different cultures and communities, in this paper we present two case studies from each of our interdisciplinary work with music/sound and ethnography. ...
This paper discusses the potential of digital media and live interfaces in musical composition and performance for subverting exclusionary structures towards inclusion. Coming from backgrounds in electronic music and eth-nography, the authors present two case studies that investigate music making practices with live interfaces. These case studies explore the relation between musical experimentation and the use of digital media in catalysing new forms of practice that move beyond restrictive categorisations and limiting boundaries constructed as a result of historical, social, and political processes. While the cases are differentiated in their approach, they converge in their emphasis on the inclusive potential of the digital media.
... The proliferation of widely-accessible, increasingly mobile and low-cost interfaces for musical composition and performance have been used to pose challenges to established norms and power structures by de-centralising the means of learning skills, creativity, production, performance, consumption, (re)distribution, and funding for music projects (Bowers, 2002;Katz, 2004;Théberge, 2004;Born, 2005;Waters, 2007;Prior, 2008, Butler, 2014Taylor, 2014;Samuels, 2015Samuels, , 2016. While acknowledging the asymmetrical distribution of such effects across different cultures and communities, in this paper we present two case studies from each of our interdisciplinary work with music and ethnography. ...
This paper discusses the potential of digital media and live interfaces in musical composition and performance for subverting exclusionary structures towards inclusion. Coming from backgrounds in electronic music and ethnography, the authors present two case studies that investigate music making practices with live interfaces. These case studies explore the relation between musical experimentation and the use of digital media in catalysing new forms of practice that move beyond restrictive categorisations and limiting boundaries constructed as a result of historical, social, and political processes. While the cases are differentiated in their approach, they converge in their emphasis on the inclusive potential of the digital media.
... Artists' creative processes and outcomes can help us to see and imagine opportunities and dimensions of technology and design that may elude more behavioral or engineering models [5,17,41]. In recent years, a range of artistic practices -from performance-based, to collective making, to adversarial engagement -have been highlighted as types of research methods that may draw on, widen, and extend interdisciplinary and experimental approaches [6,9,31,40,61]. ...
This paper integrates theory, ethnography, and collaborative artwork to explore improvisational activity as both topic and tool of multidisciplinary HCI inquiry. Building on theories of improvisation drawn from art, music, HCI and social science, and two ethnographic studies based on interviews, participant observation and collaborative art practice, we seek to elucidate the improvisational nature of practice in both art and ordinary action, including human-computer interaction. We identify five key features of improvisational action -- reflexivity, transgression, tension, listening, and interdependence -- and show how these can deepen and extend both linear and open-ended methodologies in HCI and design. We conclude by highlighting collaborative engagement based on 'intermodulation' as a tool of multidisciplinary inquiry for HCI research and design.
... Conditions that have been noted by Sawyer et al. as key structural contributors to this quality of emergence include not having an a priori predictable outcome, or having equal contributional potential amongst members of the group. Meanwhile, in the context of solo approaches to EAI, Bowers (2002) articulates the presence of a shared and performative exploration of our collective human relationship to machines in the context of live EAI performance, placing emphasis on the sociological dimension of technological contingency. The author examines the role of technology in music performance both for its potential to augment performer action and its ability to represent futility and enhance disconnection from human intentionality. ...
This paper examines an approach to ensemble performance, guided by a form of improvised conducting that functions both as communication with musicians and an embodied interface for transforming the ensemble sound. The framework for analysis draws upon the concepts of distributed creativity, its intersection with a listening-centric approach to meaning creation and an embodied cognitive stance on the development of semantic identifiers in music/movement practice. In the described project, tensions are negotiated between acoustic and electronic sources, and between bottom-up structured improvisation and top-down guidance via Soundpainting conducting. These continuums are amplified and explored through another layer of shared articulation, as machine learning has been applied to recognition of the composer/conductors gestures as well as to continuous mapping of conductor movement to sound transformations. These techniques allow for an intersubjective engagement between all members of the ensemble, wherein sound and movement gestures are co-constructed.
... The experimental musician and researcher John Bowers has used the term performance ecology to describe the arena for activity created by a musician in his immidiate surroundings. In his work regarding the ethnographically-informed design of improvising machines [8], he discusses the importance of the spacial arrangment of control devices and instruments -not only in allowing the musician to be more effective in his performance, but also in communicating his intentions to co-performers and audience. ...
... As feedback systems, and more generally electroacoustic and computational devices, can operate without external control or actions by the performer, the latter, while improvising, is in front of an entity that can be autonomous. In this case, the human-machine relation is not necessarily based on subordination, but rather on a nonhierarchical exchange between two entities with their own aesthetics (Rowe 1999;Garnett 2001;Bowers 2002;Sanfilippo and Valle 2012a). These features had already emerged in some of the very first computational interactive systems from the beginning of the 1970s-Joel Chadabe's CEMS and Salvatore Martirano's SalMar Construction. ...
The use of feedback-based systems in the music domain dates back to the 1960s. Their applications span from music composition and sound organization to audio synthesis and processing, as the interest in feedback resulted both from theoretical reflection on cybernetics and system theory, and from practical experimentation on analog circuits. The advent of computers has made possible the implementation of complex theoretical systems in audio-domain oriented applications, in some sense bridging the gap between theory and practice in the analog domain, and further increasing the range of audio and musical applications of feedback systems. In this article we first sketch a minimal history of feedback in music; second, we briefly introduce feedback systems from a theoretical point of view; then we propose a set of features that characterize them from the perspective of music applications; finally, we propose a typology targeted at feedback systems used in the audio/musical domain and discuss some relevant examples.
... The performance element can be attributed both to the users that have prepared the content existing in the session and equally to the observer, who may essentially remix the sound generated through simple movement across the map, allowing the built in distance attenuation to mix the sounds. This is reminiscent of the concept of a performance ecosystem, described by Tom Davis [10], paraphrasing Bowers [11], as an assemblage of 'artifacts and practices that enable him to participate in collective music making'. In this THIS IS AN UNEDITED PREVIEW VERSION. ...
netMUSE is a piece of software designed to enable networked computer music composition and performance involving many users, without sending live audio signals over the network, inspired by recent developments in the sandbox genre of massively multiplayer computer games. It was developed as a Master of Arts final project at the University of York, in the MA Music Technology programme. netMUSE was developed in Java, with the use of the Processing [1] libraries, Beads [2] and Open Sound Control [3]. It is based around a custom developed sever-client system designed to host a persistent session for long periods of time. This allows users to build sound generating structures from basic interactive building blocks in one very large 2D space, and interact with them together in real time. This paper focuses on the aesthetic and compositional principles driving the project, as well as touching on the technical implementation and describing the current state of the software. Finally, the possibilities created by this type of networked music application are explored.
... Before I discuss the relationship between collective subjectivity, relational aesthetics and the performance ecosystem, a closer examination of the performance ecosystem itself is in order. John Bowers was perhaps the first to use the notion of the performance ecosystem as a conceptual tool, describing, in Improvised Machines (Bowers 2003), an assemblage of 'artefacts and practices' that enable him to participate in 'collective music making' (Bowers 2003: 74). Bowers likens his construction to 'Ungvary and Kieslinger's (1996)' conceptualisation of a 'musician's cockpit': a space that facilitates access to the instruments of control. ...
This article seeks to form a deeper understanding of the performance ecosystem by drawing parallels with Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics and Guattari's conception of subjectivity as outlined in Chaosmosis. Through an examination of participation within performance, and a recognition of the mutability of the roles of performer, listener, instrument and environment in the creation of the music event, this article examines the place of subjectivity, the capacity for self-creation, in the formation of a group aesthetic. Such a concept places the creation of meaning not within the individual participant but rather within the relationship between participants in a situation, a relationship that recognises the interaction between individuals, societies and institutions in its production. Such a discussion helps further our understanding of the performance ecosystem as a conceptual tool.
The focus of the compositional approach presented in this folio is the sounding environment. The term sounding environment is used in this context to refer to the whole of our living experience in the world which we might register as relating to sound. It might include everything that is sounding, seemingly sounding, imagined sounding, remembered sounding, sensed as sounding, composed to sound. It includes thus the actual sound environment, all that is sensed or interpreted as sound and imaginary sounds. This dissertation accompanies the seven acousmatic and the two sound installation works included in the folio. It is divided into two parts. In the first part, relevant ideas and theories both from the literature of electroacoustic music composition and soundscape composition are discussed while in the second the compositional approach to the sounding environment is presented as applied to the works. 3
This article builds on Richards’s work to formulate an understanding of the emerging practice of performance-installation, which embraces sound art, DIY electronic music and maker culture. A number of key points are addressed in this formulation: making/unmaking and ‘public making’; the assembling/disassembling of sonic devices and artefacts in the performance space; sound ‘through’ materials and materials at hand; and site and architectural features as material. In addition, readymade actions, illustrated by George Brecht’s The Cabinet , and the relationship between audience and performer are also presented. The article continues by outlining practice undertaken by the authors comprising two UK tours: ‘Sacrificial Floors’, 2018 with Tetsuya Umeda; and ‘Points of Failure’, 2020. Derek Bailey’s idea of ‘instrumental impulse’ is extended to include the concepts of expanded and reduced instruments that encompass ‘instrument as object’ and ‘raw material as instrument’. ‘Instrument’ is also viewed as a distributed mesh-like structure in which collective improvisation may occur. Borrowing from Ingold, ‘wayfaring’ is used to describe improvising with materials found ‘along the way’. Silent actions, uncontrollable instruments, unstable systems, performative failures, reimagined affordance of objects, ‘playing with resource’ and ‘improvising inside electronics’ are all addressed in relation to performance-installation. Finally, the authors explore the idea of ‘virtuosity in listening’, and question sonic autonomy and self-expression in improvisation and how ‘attending to sound’ can be an active part of improvised performance.
This article delineates a metaphysical concept, musical community , and considers its implications for material practices in the art world. It describes ways in which two theoretically distant categories of art music, namely, electroacoustic music and the concert-hall tradition, may converge given the emergent societal and technological shifts in the information age. The concepts of ‘networks’ and ‘reciprocity’, as developed by sociologists Manuel Castells and Marcel Mauss, respectively, constitute the theoretical lens for this analysis, which sees a number of musicological notions, including ‘musical society’ and ‘acousmatics’ reconsidered philosophically. Emphasis is placed, in lieu of the insular methodologies associated with the akousmatikoi , on broader Pythagorean society, its mythical links with present-day musical society, which are explored in relation to practical as well as structural proclivities permeating contemporary art music. These philosophical considerations are then used, so as to provide a general theory of récit music , a musical form designed by the author enabling creative employment of the impasses introduced in the information age. Finally, different reciprocities of the form with contemporary and traditional compositional philosophies are discussed, serving as an overview of the various theoretical and formal facets of récit music as methodology, approached in terms of three propositions.
This project investigates the process of creating new works for two jazz trio ensembles, with a particular emphasis on improvisation with acoustic instruments and technology. Utilising a practice-based research model the project documents and outlines the conceptual basis for the work, reflects on a series of public performances and examines studio recording sessions. By analysing the musical content, use of technology, and the musician’s reflections on their decision making, the overall goal is to articulate the musical potential of improvising with technology in a jazz context.
Exploring technology and developing extended techniques towards a hybrid acoustic- electronic “group sound” that is distinct but still recognisable as jazz, is a core focus of this research. Specific software, hardware controllers, and audio effects are identified, and an analysis of the ways in which technologies are engaged by each musician is presented. Artistic reference points identify current and historical practice within this area and a range of case studies give context for how the music created here is relevant to contemporary jazz in Australia. The resulting musical output is documented in audio and video formats and includes multiple performer analyses, enabling detailed examination by the reader of how each musician merges improvisation using acoustic instruments and improvisation with technology.
Ultimately this research has allowed two professional jazz ensembles to forge new musical pathways, creating expanded practical skills for the author and the musicians involved. This research will be of interest to jazz musicians seeking to broaden their practice through improvisation with technology. Additionally, the project is relevant to any reader/musician engaged with improvisation in contemporary music more broadly.
A thing becomes a musical instrument by virtue of its use in a social context, a use of which its initial intended design (if it had one) forms only a part: sometimes a very small part.
Drawing on the notion of the ‘performance ecosystem’ this papersuggests that instrument designers/makers working with digital technologies might fruitfully attend further to the social contexts/constructs that characterise every level of musicking. It looks at the emergent, situated co-development of player, instrument and environment, suggesting that humans habitually use instruments to sense out, test and probe the possibilities of self-other relations in dynamic, mutually-engaging, and often playful and improvised behaviours.
The practice of “free-improvised” music would seem to present a privileged site for the study of contingent relations: a world in which individuals dynamically adapt within a network of conduct which constitutes its own meaningfulness; in which sound and touch seem co-extensive. This would seem to be an ideal context for the discovery of empathic and ethical behavior. It is argued here, however, that “doing” empathy is in itself improvisatory, and that improvising can thus be placed centre-stage as an essential adapting and organizing skill, rather than a peripheral or abstruse “aesthetic” conduct.
Body technologies, such as prostheses and biosensors, are active means of lived experimentation: they enable forms of hybrid embodiment such as the cyborg, whose diverse representations by artists and performers have infiltrated our societal normative regime. To talk about body politics is therefore to talk about the technologies the body incorporates, how they probe its alleged integrity. Performance theories and practices offer a fertile ground of experimentation with this issue. Yet, there is a tendency to frame body technologies as either material extensions of one’s body or external objects one perceives with. Such approaches support technocratic systems of beliefs by eliding immaterial and pre-conscious aspects of technological incorporation, I argue. Key to this argument is the notion of automaticity; a subjective form of psychic attunement with particular technical instruments. The performativity of certain bodily thresholds enables forms of human–machine codependence, where body and technology affect each other through discipline, training and relational economies of desire. As a case study, I offer an autoethnographic analysis of my own performance with an artificially intelligent body technology. This reveals an inherently hybrid and relational corporeality, which confounds the boundaries between human and technical, material and immaterial, perceptual and psychological, conscious and pre-conscious.
This article concerns context-based live electronic music, specifically performances which occur in response to a particular location or space. I outline a set of practices which can be more accurately described as site- responsive , rather than site- specific . I develop a methodological framework for site-responsive live electronic music in three stages. First, I discuss the ambiguity of the term site-specific by drawing on its origins within the visual arts and providing examples of how it has been used within sound art. I then suggest that site-responsive performance might be a more helpful way of describing this type of activity. I argue that it affords an opportunity for music to mediate the social, drawing on Small’s idea of music as sets of third-order relationships, and Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics. Third, I suggest that with the current renewed trend for performances occurring outside of cultural institutions, it is important to be mindful of the identity of a particular site, and those who have a cultural connection to it. I make reference to a series of works within my own creative practice which have explored these ideas.
The 'liberation of sound' by means of electronics, as anticipated by Edgard Varèse (1966), amongst many others, released musical instruments and musical instrument making from the physical constraints of sound production. While this may sound naïve in light of two decades of musical games and NIME, we consider it a valid and important starting point for design and research in the NIME field. This new freedom of choice required instrument makers to explicitly reflect on questions such as: what general expectations do we have of a contemporary instrument? What do we want it to sound like? And, detached from its sonic gestalt, how should the instrument look, feel and be played? What is it supposed to do, or not to do? Based on these questions, this paper is an interdisciplinary approach to describing requirements for and expectations and promises of expressive contemporary musical instruments. The basis for the presented considerations is an instrument designed and played by the authors. Over the course of the design process, the research team touched on topics such as interaction and mapping strategies in relation to what we call artificially-induced complexity. This complexity, the authors believe, may serve as an alternative common ground, substituting originally prevalent physical constraints in instrument building.
Gestural interfaces broaden musicians’ scope for physical expression and offer possibilities for creating more engaging and dynamic performances with digital technology. Increasing affordability and accessibility of motion-based sensing hardware has prompted a recent rise in the use of gestural interfaces and multimodal interfaces for musical performance. Despite this, few performers adopt these systems as their main instrument. The lack of widespread adoption outside academic and research contexts raises questions about the relevance and viability of existing systems. This research identifies and addresses key challenges that musicians face when navigating technological developments in the field of gestural performance. Through a series of performances utilising a customised gestural system and an expert user case study, I have combined autoethnographic insights as a performer/designer with feedback from professional musicians to gain a deeper understanding of how musicians engage with gestural interfaces. Interviews and video recordings have been analysed within a phenomenological framework, resulting in a set of design criteria and strategies informed by creative practitioner perspectives. This thesis argues that developing the sensorimotor skills of musicians is integral to enhancing the potential of current gestural systems. Refined proprioceptive skills and kinaesthetic awareness are particularly important when controlling non-tactile gestural interfaces, which lack the haptic feedback afforded by traditional acoustic instruments. However, approaches in the field of gestural system design for music tend to favour technical and functional imperatives over the development of the kinaesthetic sense. Building on a growing body of gestural interface design and human–computer interaction (HCI) literature, this research offers practice-based insights that acknowledge the changing face of musicianship in response to interaction with gestural sensing technologies. To encourage enhanced physical aptitude and more nuanced movement control amongst musicians, I have applied embodied interaction design and dance-based perspectives to musical contexts, developing a multimodal environment that provides a range of design strategies for musicians to explore relationships between sound and movement while developing an awareness of their own movement potential.
The author has been performing with GenJam, the Genetic Jammer, for nearly 20 years and has accumulated a wealth of experiences in performing live jazz with technology. This paper presents a discussion of the use of technology in jazz, both from the performer's and from the audience's perspective, and it proposes a classification scheme for live performance that is geared to mainstream performing situations. Copyright © 2013, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.
This workshop explores the forms of improvisation that exist across various disciplines, how they can be observed empirically, how improvisation relates to technology and design, and how communities of improvisation exist and evolve. Through the use of these topics to stimulate discussion, along with group activities founded in theatre and music improvisation, we investigate how the study of improvisation can be used to inform contemporary HCI.
My work focuses on technologically mediated music-making, in this article I present and interpret audio-visual documents of my performance practice, and reflect on the conceptual and aesthetic motivations that underpin the creative process. Exploring the role of resistance and inertia in the field of performing technologies is the main agenda; questions around the location of human agency and its decipherability are foregrounded throughout. Although various theoretical perspectives inform the discussion, these perspectives are (mostly) embedded at the heart of the practical activity, and should not be considered as after-the-fact justification, but as essential elements in unfolding a practice that configures making as thinking and thinking as doing. I hope that the black-and-whiteness of text does not form an obscuring smokescreen of grey around my work, and that the reader finds the discursive and metaphorical approach to be illuminating. The text is supported by video clips which appear as supplementary material accessible online via the article's Supplementary tab on the Taylor & Francis website (http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr).
The article describes the design, production and usage of the ‘Rumentarium’, a computer-based sound generating system involving physical objects as sound sources. The Rumentarium is a set of handmade resonators, acoustically excited by DC motors, interfaced to the computer by means of various microcontrollers. Following an ecological/anthropological approach, in the Rumentarium discarded materials are used as sound sources. Every instrument is ‘produced while designed’ in an improvisation-like manner, starting from available materials. In this way, hardware is ‘softened’: that is, it can be continuously modified as in software development. Analogously, the onsite setup is very light, so that components can be added or removed on the fly, even while the Rumentarium is at work. Differently from typical computer music, the Rumentarium, while entirely computationally controlled, is an acoustic sound generator. On one hand, the Rumentarium can be played like an instrument in conjunction with a MIDI controller, for use in live musical performance. On the other side, it can be driven by algorithmic strategies. In this way, the Rumentarium can be configured also as a sound installation, in a standalone mode. Some artistic works are discussed while introducing the various control modalities that have been specifically developed for the Rumentarium.
Barbara Ballard's ‘carry principle’ defines the core elements of the mobile experience: small, personal, communicative, multifunctional, battery operated and always connected (Ballard 2007: 71). These qualities have ensured that for many of us some form of mobile device has become indispensable. Developments in mobile computing have meant that consumer devices are capable of increasingly sophisticated sound processing, leading to the emergence of new forms of mobile music. If this music is looked on as a new sub-genre of folk music, we might be able to put it in the context of live electronic music-making. With this in mind, this article will ask whether the mobile device has the potential to be considered a new folk instrument.
This article develops a theoretical analysis of music and mediation, building on the work of Theodor Adorno, Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion. It begins by suggesting that Lydia Goehrs anthropology of art, the article outlines an approach to mediation that incorporates understandings of musics mediations have taken a number of historical forms, which cohere into assemblages, and that we should be alert to shifts in the dominant forms of musical assemblage. In the latter part of the article, these tools are used to conceptualize changing forms of musical creativity that emerged over the twentieth century. A comparison is made between the work concept and jazz and improvised electronic musics. Three contemporary digital music experiments are discussed in detail, demonstrating the concepts of the provisional work and of social, distributed and relayed creativity. Throughout, key motifs are mediation, creativity, and the negotiation of difference.
An ethnographic study of Irish music sessions in pubs elaborates the collaborative work involved in making traditional music. Central to this distinctive achievement is the sequencing of tunes so that they hang together and combine to form discrete "sets", which rely on a shared knowledge of musical repertoires. Our study shows how musicians develop this musical knowledge through the use of digital resources and social networks. It also reveals how musicians construct and make use of various paper props to help bring their knowledge to bear in the actual in vivo course of a session so as to maintain the moral order of making music together in a demonstrably traditional way. The social demands of musical "etiquette" sensitise CSCW to the need to design technologies to support the "situated discretion" that is essential to traditional practices. We elaborate this notion through a discussion of requirements for technologies that bridge between online resources and the collaborative sequencing of tunes during performance.
In his ground-breaking book On sonic art, Trevor Wishart takes a wide-ranging look at the new developments in music-making and musical aesthetics made possible by the advent of the computer and digital information processing. His emphasis is on musical rather than technical matters. Beginning with a critical analysis of the assumptions underlying the Western musical tradition and the traditional acoustic theories of Pythagoras and Helmholtz, he goes on to look in detail at such topics as the musical organization of complex sound-objects, using and manipulating representational sounds in the new music, organizing the spatial motion of sounds and the various dimensions of human and non-human utterance. In so doing, he seeks to learn lessons from areas (poetry and sound-poetry, film sound effects and animal communication) not traditionally associated with the field of music.--Back cover.
There is a growing interest amongst both artists and curators in designing artworks which create new forms of visual communication and enhance interaction in museums and galleries. Despite extraordinary advances in the analysis of talk and discourse, there is relatively little research concerned with conduct and collaboration with and around aesthetic objects and artefacts, and to some extent the social and cognitive sciences have paid less attention to the ways in which conduct both visual and vocal is inextricably embedded within the immediate ecology, the material realities at hand. In this paper, we examine how people in and through interaction with others, explore, examine and experience a mixed-media installation. Whilst primarily concerned with interaction with and around an art work, the paper is concerned with the ways in which people, in interaction with each other (both those they are with and others who happen to be in the same space), reflexively constitute the sense and significance of objects and artefacts, and the ways in which those material features reflexively inform the production and intelligibility of conduct and interaction.
The development of human computer interaction has been dominated by the interface both as a design concept and as an artefact of computer systems. However, recently researchers have been re-examining the role of the interface in the user's interaction with the computer. This paper further examines the notion of the interface in light of the experiences of the authors in establishing a network to support cooperative work. The authors argue that the concept of the single interface which provides a focus for interaction with a computer system is no longer tenable and that richer conceptions of the inter-relationships between users and computer systems are needed.
As a way of mapping a design space for a project on information appliances, we produced a workbook describing about twenty conceptual design proposals. On the one hand, they serve as suggestions that digital devices might embody values apart from those traditionally associated with functionality and usefulness. On the other, they are examples of research through design, balancing concreteness with openness to spur the imagination, and using multiplicity to allow the emergence of a new design space. Here we describe them both in terms of content and process, discussing first the values they address and then how they were crafted to encourage a broad discussion with our partners that could inform future stages of design.
This paper presents the interface developments and music of the duo "interface," formed by Curtis Bahn and Dan Trueman. We describe gestural instrument design, interactive performance interfaces for improvisational music, spherical speakers (multi-channel, outward-radiating geodesic speaker arrays) and Sensor-Speaker-Arrays (SenSAs: combinations of various sensor devices with spherical speaker arrays). We discuss the concept, design and construction of these systems, and, give examples from several new published CDs of work by Bahn and Trueman.
The MATRIX (Multipurpose Array of Tactile Rods for Interactive eXpression) is a new musical interface for amateurs and professionals alike. It gives users a 3-dimensional tangible interface to control music using their hands, and can be used in conjunction with a traditional musical instrument and a microphone, or as a stand-alone gestural input device. The surface of the MATRIX acts as a real-time interface that can manipulate the parameters of a synthesis engine or effect algorithm in response to a performer's expressive gestures. One example is to have the rods of the MATRIX control the individual grains of a granular synthesizer, thereby "sonically sculpting" the microstructure of a sound. In this way, the MATRIX provides an intuitive method of manipulating sound with a very high level of real-time control.
An ethnographic analysis of an ambulance control centre is presented, specifically investigating the design of information displays and their practical use in this setting. The spatial distribution of the displays around the control room is described and its consequences for cooperative work drawn out. From these analyses, we make several suggestions for information visualisations in virtual environments, including a design concept of multiple displays coexisting within a D environment as an alternative to the notion of 'immersive' information visualisation more commonly encountered. The paper closes with a reflection on the relationship between ethnographic analysis and system development that ou r work here exemplifies.
This chapter discusses cognitive processes in improvisation. Improvisation is thus central to the formation of new ideas in all areas of human endeavor. Its importance experientially rests with its magical and self-liberating qualities. Its importance scientifically is that it presents one with the clearest, least edited version of how one think, encoded in behavior. It is among the time-based arts, namely music, dance, theatre and mime that one find the greatest literature. From a survey of this material, certain facts emerge quite consistently, and allow the formulation of plausible cognitive models for improvisation. Much of the variety of improvisation comes from the many different types of referent which may be used, and the many kinds of relationships the improviser may choose to set up between the referent and the sounds, movement, words, etc., that constitute the improvised behavior.
In a number of Black speech acts and genres, such as the making of general accusations and the issuance of denials, and in sounding and woofing and several kinds of signifying (hinting, insinuating, agitating), speakers use strategic (or purposeful) ambiguity to place the receiver (as opposed to the speaker) in the socially accountable position. This organizational scheme is directly at odds with that of mainstream-American culture, which has led a few mainstream-American researchers, who have observed and analyzed the above Black-American speech acts and events, to misrepresent the actual Black cultural dynamic operating therein.
Adorno is one of the leading cultural thinkers of the twentieth century. This is the first detailed account of Adorno's texts on music from a sociological perspective. In clear, non-technical language, Robert Witkin guides the reader through the complexities of Adorno's argument about the link between music and morality and between musical works and social structure. It was largely through these works Adorno established the right of the arts to be acknowledged as a moral and critical force in the development of a modern society. By recovering them for non-musicologists, Witkin adds immeasurably to our appreciation of this giant of twentieth-century thought.
The training of musicians begins by teaching basic musical concepts, a
collection of knowledge commonly known as musicianship. Computer
programs designed to implement musical skills (e.g., to make sense of
what they hear, perform music expressively, or compose convincing
pieces) can similarly benefit from access to a fundamental level of
musicianship. Recent research in music cognition, artificial
intelligence, and music theory has produced a repertoire of techniques
that can make the behavior of computer programs more musical. Many of
these were presented in a recently published book/CD-ROM entitled
Machine Musicianship. For use in interactive music systems, we are
interested in those which are fast enough to run in real time and that
need only make reference to the material as it appears in sequence. This
talk will review several applications that are able to identify the
tonal center of musical material during performance. Beyond this
specific task, the design of real-time algorithmic listening through the
concurrent operation of several connected analyzers is examined. The
presentation includes discussion of a library of C++ objects that can be
combined to perform interactive listening and a demonstration of their
capability.
The extensive range of sound sources admitted into music via the electroacoustic medium has initiated a revolution in the sounding content of musical works, appealing to a variety of listening responses not fully encompassed in previously existing musics. It is my purpose in this paper to uncover the listening strategies involved in responding to electroacoustic music, implying that the electroacoustic medium, far from being a mere extension of vocal and instrumental resources, needs rather to be celebrated, emphasized, and developed for its originality and imaginative revelations of human experience.
Volume I contains the lectures of Fall 1964 through Fall 1967, in which Sacks explores a great variety of topics, from suicide to children's games to Medieval Hell as a nemonic device to pronouns and paradoxes. But two key issues emerge: rules of conversational sequencing - central to the articulation of interaction, and membership categorization devices - central to the social organization of knowledge. This volume culminates in the extensive and formal explication of turn-taking which Sacks delivered in Fall, 1967. Volume II contains the lectures of Spring 1968 through Spring 1972. Again he touches on a wide range of subjects, such as the poetics of ordinary talk, the integrative function of public tragedy, and pauses in spelling out a word. He develops a major new theme: storytelling in converstion, with an attendant focus on topic. His investigation of conversational sequencing continues, and this volume culminates in the elegant dissertation on adjacency pairs which Sacks delivered in Spring, 1972. © 1992, 1995 by The Estate of Harvey Sacks. All rights reserved.
The spectral density of fluctuations in the audio power of many musical selections and of English speech varies approximately as 1/f (f is the frequency) down to a frequency of 5 multiplied by 10** minus **4 Hz. This result implies that the audio-power fluctuations are correlated over all times in the same manner as ″1/f noise″ in electronic components. The frequency fluctuations of music also have a 1/f spectral density at frequencies down to the inverse of the length of the piece of music. The frequency fluctuations of English speech have a quite different behavior, with a single characteristic time of about 0. 1 s, the average length of a syllable. The observations on music suggest that 1/f noise is a good choice for stochastic composition. Compositions in which the frequency and duration of each note were determined by 1/f noise sources sounded pleasing. Those generated by white-noise sources sounded too random, while those generated by 1/f**2 noise sounded too correlated.
Technology revolutionised the ways that music was produced in the twentieth century. As that century drew to a close and a new century begins a new revolution in roles is underway. The separate categories of composer, performer, distributor and listener are being challenged, while the sounds of the world itself become available for musical use. All kinds of sounds are now brought into the remit of composition, enabling the music of others to be sampled (or plundered), including that of unwitting musicians from non-western cultures. This sound world may appear contradictory - stimulating and invigorating as well as exploitative and destructive. This book addresses some of the issues now posed by the brave new world of music produced with technology. © Simon Emmerson and the contributors, 2000. All rights reserved.
We describe some interaction design principles and two interactive algorithms for the transformation of user-input from simple low degree of freedom (DOF) devices to support the synthesis of sound in music improvisation. We offer 'algorithmically mediated interaction' as an alternative to direct manipulation (DM) to describe auditory interfaces of this sort. A short performance complements this paper.
Explanations are given and received in all areas of social life: in the home, at school, at work, in the courtroom. They are exchanged between friends and argued over by enemies
The analysis of these ordinary explanations is regarded as a notoriously difficult area of study by social scientists. This book, for the first time, offers a clear and comprehensive guide to the most fruitful and interesting techniques for collecting, analysing and interpreting explanation.
The authors have been chosen to represent the most important work being done in a variety of disciplines: social psychology, linguistics, pragmatics, artificial intelligence, ethogenics, narratology, conversation analysis and discourse analysis.
Each chapter follows a uniform format. The author introduces the general theoretical outlines of the technique and describes his or her own theoretical position. The heart of the chapter is then devoted to an extended description of the analysis of a particular piece of 'data', which might be a conversation, a collection of documentary accounts or a corpus of explanatory phrases. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of each particular analytical method are assessed.
Usefully organized into four parts, the book deals with the nature of explanation in general; methods for analysing the structure and content of accounts; the social context in which accounts are exchanged; and the use of rhetorical and ideological approaches to explanation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
On First view there seem to be many possible instances of knowers who lack knowledge of their knowledge. A self-deceiver seems capable of knowing his own faults without knowing that he knows them. A philosopher seems capable of knowing that there are physical objects around him without knowing that he has such knowledge. Deep-rooted insecurity seems capable of preventing a mathematician from knowing that he has just made a genuine discovery. A child seems capable of acquiring knowledge before acquiring the concept ‘knowledge’ and hence before being able to know that he knows.
The development of Western music in the twentieth century is dominated by an historic bifurcation in musical language: tonality with its metrically organized harmonic and melodic relationships has continued to be the vernacular language, absorbed unconsciously from birth, while the other fork, in its most recent guise, is represented by spectro-morphology2. Spectromorphology is an approach to sound materials and musical structures which concentrates on the spectrum of available pitches and their shaping in time. In embracing the total framework of pitch and time it implies that the vernacular language is confined to a small area of the musical universe. Developments such as atonality, total serialism, the expansion of percussion instruments, and the advent of electroacoustic media, all contribute to the recognition of the inherent musicality in all sounds. But it is sound recording, electronic technology, and most recently the computer, which have opened up a musical exploration not previously possible. Spectro-morphology is a way of perceiving and conceiving these new values resulting from a chain of influences which has accelerated since the turn of the century. As such it is an heir to Western musical tradition which at the same time changes musical criteria and demands new perceptions.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to delve yet again into the meaning of the term ‘expression’ used with respect to music. We will be concerned with one aspect of music perception brought to the fore once more by the development of electroacoustic music on tape: namely the possible relation of the sounds to associated or evoked images in the mind of the listener. The term ‘image’ may be interpreted as lying somewhere between true synaesthesia with visual image1 and a more ambiguous complex of auditory, visual and emotional stimuli. We are concerned here not with how specific sources may evoke particular images but with how the imagery evoked interacts with more abstact aspects of musical composition.
This paper reports an ethnographic study of design work in the fashion industry. Contrary tomany images of fashion design, in this setting, it is essentially tied to organizational and inter-organizational coordination, and the demands of manufacture and supply chain management. Relatively little design work involves artistic drawing, much requires retrieval from databases, data analysis, information gathering and matters which members themselves call ‘technological’. Experiences collaborating with developers and the relevance of advanced 3D design tools and Virtual Reality for CSC W are considered on the basis of these findings and in the light of debates over ethnography in system development.
This paper reports on an ethnographic field study of 'Out Of This World' (OOTW, Benford et al. 1999) an experiment in 'inhabited television' combining broadcast technologies with a collaborative virtual environment in a live show. The study focuses on the work of producing OOTW and how personnel managed the manifold contingencies of working with complex technology. The use of a specially developed virtual camera control application is discussed together with the methods the director used for live editing views from cameras into a 'broadcast from virtual reality'. The challenges faced by the multiple professions involved (TV personnel, research scientists, actors) are documented and the viability of inhabited TV as a 'new medium' is assessed. Future technological refinements are briefly discussed along with some general implications for CSCW and 'media studies' of the work reported.
The great variety of functions possible for sound in virtual environments is surveyed in relation to the traditions that primarily inform them. These traditions are examined, classifying sound into the three categories of artistic expression, information transfer, and environmental sound. The potentials of and relations between sonification, algorithmic composition, musicogenic and sonigenic displays, virtual musical instruments and virtual sound sources are examined, as well as the practical technical limitations that govern performance control of MIDI and real-time DSP sound synthesis in coordination with visual display. The importance of music-theoretic and psychological research is emphasized. The issues and developed categorizations are then applied to a case study: the examination of a specific virtual environment performance by a team of workers in Australia in which the author worked as composer/performer/ programmer.