Physical Interfaces for Music

by Michael Gurevich

Dichotomies

• Toy vs. Instrument
  • Perry Cook -- Fillup Glass
  • Gary Scavone -- Phoney Controller
  • Joe Paradiso -- Musical Trinkets
  • Michael Gurevich & Stephan von Muehlen -- Accordiatron

• Sonification vs. Deliberate Control
  • Rego Sen, Wai Kit Leung, Ariege Misherghi -- Foosball Live (133M)
  • Toriton Plus
  • Peter Solderitsch, Becky Currano, Unnur Grettarsdottir -- Musical TM (25M)

• Pre-programmed vs. Performed
  • Brian Rulifson et al. -- GPS Sonification (18M)
  • David Lowenfels -- Grid Drum (22M)

• Cartoon Sounds vs. Musical Sounds
  • Rego Sen -- Jack in the Box (58M)
  • Yamaha / Toshio Iwai -- Tenori-on (video)

• Individual vs. Group
  • Sid Fels -- Tooka
  • Jorda -- Reactable
  • David Merrill, Tim Hankins, Jocelyn Robert -- COOL (120M)
  • Rodrigo Segnini, Hiroko Terasawa, Vivian Woo -- Sound Kitchen (42M)

• No haptic feedback vs. haptic feedback
  • Gypsy Motion capture MIDI controller -- DJ and Drums
  • Collin Oldham - Cellomobo
  • Edgar Berdahl - Haptic drum

Commercial cotrollers: Haken Audio's Continuum Fingerboard

Lightning Thunder

Trueman and Cook Bowed-Sensor-Speaker-Array

Lemur robot playing music Jazzmutant Lemur

Yamaha Miburi

Blaine & Fels' Contexts of Collaborative Musical Experiences

• Balancing complexity and expressivity
  • But can't something be complex and expressive, if the performer is skilled??
• Focus
  • Player to Player
  • Players to Audience
• Location
  • Local vs. Remote
• Media
  • Audio/Visual/Mixed
  • A/V causality
• Scalability
• Player Interaction
  • Specific roles
  • N copies
  • Jamming
  • Interdependency
• Musical Range
  • Constraint
• Physical Interface
• Directed Interaction
  • Leader-follower
  • Turn-taking
  • Call-and-response
  • Expert leader
• Pathway to Expert Performance
  • Compromised when ease of learning is achieved by constraining musical material
• Level of Physicality

Reference Papers

1. M. Gurevich and J. Treviño (2007). Expression and Its Discontents: Toward an Ecology of Musical Creation. Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-07), New York, USA.

2. M. Gurevich, B. Verplank and S. Wilson (2003). Physical Interaction Design for Music. Proceedings of the 2003 International Computer Music Conference, Singapore.

3. T. Blaine and S. Fels (2003). Contexts of Collaborative Musical Experiences. Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-03), Montreal, Canada.

4. J. Malloch, D. Birnbaum, E. Sinyor and M. Wanderley (2006). Examining Design Goals of Digital Musical Instruments. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-06), Montreal, Canada.

5. D. Birnbaum, R. Fiebrink, J. Malloch and M. M. Wanderley (2005). Towards a Dimension Space for Musical Devices. Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-05), Vancouver, BC, Canada.

6. P. Cook (2001). Principles for Designing Computer Music Controllers. CHI '01 Workshop on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-01). Seattle, USA.

7. C. Poepel (2005). On Interface Expressivity. Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-05), Vancouver, BC, Canada.

8. D. Wessel and M. Wright (2001). Problems and Prospects for Intimate Musical Control of Computers. CHI '01 Workshop on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-01). Seattle, USA.

9. S. Jorda (2001). New Musical Interfaces and New Music-making Paradigms.CHI '01 Workshop on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-01). Seattle, USA.

10. M. Resnick and B. Silverman (2005). Some Reflections on Designing Construction Kits for Kids. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children conference, Boulder, CO.

PID 2009