This article explores how computation opens up possibilities for new musical practices to emerge through technology design. Using the notion of the cultural probe as a lens, we consider the digital musical instrument as an experimental device that yields findings across the fields of music, sociology and acoustics. As part of an artistic-research methodology, the instrumental object as a probe is offered as a means for artists to answer questions that are often formulated outside semantic language. This article considers how computation plays an important role in the authors’ personal performance practices in different ways, which reflect the changed mode-of-being of new musical instruments and our individual and collective relations with them.
We examine how auditory displays, sonification and haptic interaction design can support visually impaired sound engineers, musicians and audio production specialists access to digital audio workstation. We describe a user-centred approach that incorporates various participatory design techniques to help make the design process accessible to this population of users. We also outline the audio-haptic designs that results from this process and reflect on the benefits and challenges that we encountered when applying these techniques in the context of designing support for audio editing.
We present the Haptic Wave, a device that allows cross-modal mapping of digital audio to the haptic domain, intended for use by audio producers/engineers with visual impairments. We describe a series of participatory design activities adapted to non-sighted users where the act of prototyping facilitates dialog. A series of workshops scoping user needs, and testing a technology mock up and lo-fidelity prototype fed into the design of a final high-spec prototype. The Haptic Wave was tested in the laboratory, then deployed in real world settings in recording studios and audio production facilities. The cross-modal mapping is kinesthetic and allows the direct manipulation of sound without the translation of an existing visual interface. The research gleans insight into working with users with visual impairments, and transforms perspective to think of them as experts in non-visual interfaces for all users.
This paper presents a process-based approach to considering workshops as a route to participation in collective creative musical practice. We evoke the notion of the Music One Participates In, which focuses on a shift from the listeneras-consumer to participant-actor actively engaged in sound perception and production. We look at the range of different methods that make up the term 'workshop', as well as emergent relationships between facilitator and participant in creative do-it-yourself activities to frame our discussion of participatory music practice. We then examine the nature of participation across a range of disciplines from social and cognitive science through human computer interaction to radical and contemporary art, and identify possible contradictions in horizontal utopian organisational models. With this conceptual frame as a backdrop, we present four types of workshop that we have conducted across time at different sites with diverse groups of participants. We apply concepts from the participation literature to analyse our music workshops, and attempt to reconcile the potentially diverging agendas of facilitator and participant to arrive at a process-based view of 'workshopping'.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.