No abstract

In the majority of discussions surrounding the design of digital instruments and real-time performance systems, notions such as control and mapping are seen from a classical systems point of view: the former is often seen as a variable from an input device or perhaps some driving signal, while the latter is considered as the liaison between input and output parameters. At the same time there is a large body of research regarding gesture in performance that is concerned with the expressive and communicative nature of musical performance. While these views are certainly central to a conceptual understanding of ‘instrument’, it can be limiting to consider them a priori as the only proper model, and to mediate one’s conception of digital instrument design by fixed notions of control, mapping and gesture. As an example of an alternative way to view instrumental response, control structuring and mapping design, this paper discusses the concept of gesture from the point of view of the perception of human intentionality in sound and how one might consider this in interaction design.

The word 'noise' has taken on various meanings throughout the course of twentieth-century music. Technology has had direct influence on the presence of noise, as phenomenon and as concept, both through its newfound ubiquity in modernity and through its use directly in music production -in electroacoustics. The creative use of technologies has lead to new representation systems for music, and noise -considered as that outside of a given representation -was brought into meaning. This paper examines several moments in which a change in representation brought noise into musical consideration -leading to a 'noise music' for its time before simply becoming understood as music.

No abstract

This article contributes a holistic conceptual framework for the notion of “mapping” that extends the classical view of mapping as parameter association. In presenting this holistic approach to mapping techniques, we apply the framework to existing works from the literature as well as to new implementations that consider this approach in their construction. As any mapping control structure for a given digital instrument is determined by the musical context in which it is used, we present musical examples that relate the relatively abstract realm of mapping design to the physically and perceptually grounded notions of control and sonic gesture. Making this connection allows mapping to be more clearly seen as a linkage between a physical action and a sonic result. In this sense, the purpose of this work is to translate the discussion on mapping so that it links an abstract and formalized approach—intended for representation and conceptualization—with a viewpoint that considers mapping in its role as a perceived correspondence between physical materials (i.e., those that act on controllers and transducers) and sonic events. This correspondence is, at its heart, driven by our cognitive and embodied understanding of the acoustic world.