Processual and Experiential Design in Wearable Music Workshopping

Thorn, Seth Dominicus; Willcox, Halley; Wei, Sha Xin

doi:10.1145/3401956.3404235

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…We address this approach in the following section before proceeding to descriptions of our experiences in the workshops and distance learning course. This paper extends a previous conference paper (Thorn et al, 2020) on the wearable music workshops by introducing many new reflections and details. It also extends a conference paper published by the first author (Thorn, 2021b) on the telematic wearable music class by adding new details, distilling specific design principles, and drawing connections between the development of that course and the knowledge and techniques it inherited from the dance workshops.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Collectively playable wearable music: Practice-situated approaches to participatory relational inquiry

Thorn

Willcox

2022

Wearable Technol.

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We present two practice-situated participatory investigations using networked wearable sensors to develop movement-responsive collectively playable musical instruments: a series of four collocated workshops for expert dancers and a distance learning course in which students use wearable technology to enhance embodied learning and feelings of connectedness telematically. We reflect on our exploration of techniques for structuring ensemble improvisations augmented with bespoke digital musical instruments using aggregate statistical measures, such as variance of participants’ physical orientation as an index of group intention. Participatory design exchanges top-down design methodologies with bottom-up approaches consulting actors’ interests. We follow this approach by evolving our instruments through abductive experiments and trial-and-error tinkering, without strong theories, methods, or models, using elementary signal processing techniques that are meaningfully understood and modified by participants. Our experiences suggest useful scaffolding techniques for educational transdisciplinary research-creation communities seeking to explore relational ensemble dynamics in telematic and/or physically collocated settings using accessible wearable technologies. Through creative inquiry and participation, technical objects can become bearers of sense and meaning rather than instating mystifying or alienating relations for the participants.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Collectively playable wearable music: Practice-situated approaches to participatory relational inquiry

Thorn

Willcox

2022

Wearable Technol.

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“…Thinking of this ‘virtual violin’ as decoupled violinistic gesture more broadly, I created an additional mapping device decoupled from the more idiosyncratic features of my alto.glove (such as the flex sensors and FSRs) that preserves some of the signal shaping techniques I used in Windowless while anticipating further ways to work with and refine IMU data, such as aggregations of angular velocity, modulation of a signal by intercalation with angle data (‘many-to-one’ mapping), and other transformations. Following the implications of conceptualising my system as an extended ‘aural architecture’, I built a framework allowing input from multiple IMUs across one or more bodies – violinistic movement from arms, legs, shoulders or an orchestral assemblage of such virtually violinistic movers – along with statistical measurements traversing multiple sensors modulating global audio processes (Thorn, Willcox and Sha 2020). This follows from thinking of this digital aural architecture, or software acoustics, as not only reflecting sound but also reflecting and responding to gesture.…”

Section: Improvising An Augmented Violinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flows of Inhomogeneous Matter: Improvising an augmented violin

Thorn

2021

Org. Sound

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This article reflects on how personal digital musical instruments evolve and presents an augmented violin developed and performed by the author in improvised performance as an example. Informed by the materialism of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, an image of ‘flows of inhomogeneous matter’ provokes reflection on a mode of production common to artisanal craftmanship and digital lutherie alike, namely the pre-reflective skilfulness negotiating the singularities of inhomogeneous matter with the demands of the production – a process which itself may be thought of as im-pro-visation (‘un-fore-seen’). According to Gilbert Simondon, all technical objects develop in this way: functional interdependency emerges when abstractly ideated elements begin to enter into unanticipated synergistic relationships, suggesting a material logic dependent on unforeseen potentialities. The historical development of the acoustic violin exemplifies such an evolution, with, like all technical objects, additional latent potential. Digital artists can work like artisanal craftsmen in tinkering with technical elements, teasing out their synergies through abductive, trial-and-error experimentation. In the context of developing digital musical instruments, model-free design of real-time digital signal processing symmetrising action and perception yields highly refined results. Like musical improvisation – constrained by time – improvised development of these instruments turns the material obstacles into their very means of realisation.

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