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Abstract. Orchestras of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) enable new musical collaboration possibilities, extending those of acoustic and electric orchestras. However the creation and development of these orchestras remain constrained. In fact, each new musical collaboration system or orchestra piece relies on a fixed number of musicians, a fixed set of instruments (often only one), and a fixed subset of possible modes of collaboration. In this paper, we describe a unified framework that enables the design of Digital Orchestras with potentially different DMIs and an expandable set of collaboration modes. It relies on research done on analysis and classification of traditional and digital orchestras, on research in Collaborative Virtual Environments, and on interviews of musicians and composers. The BOEUF framework consists of a classification of modes of collaboration and a set of components for modelling digital orchestras. Integrating this framework into DMIs will enable advanced musical collaboration modes to be used in any digital orchestra, including spontaneous jam sessions.

Since people often communicate internal states and intentions through movement, robots can better interact with humans if they too can modify their movements to communicate changing state. These movements, which may be seen as supplementary to those required for workspace tasks, may be termed “expressive.” However, robot hardware, which cannot recreate the same range of dynamics as human limbs, often limit expressive capacity. One solution is to augment expressive robotic movement with expressive sound. To that end, this paper presents an application for synthesizing sounds that match various movement qualities. Its design is based on an empirical study analyzing sound and movement qualities, where movement qualities are parametrized according to Laban’s Effort System. Our results suggests a number of correspondences between movement qualities and sound qualities. These correspondences are presented here and discussed within the context of designing movement-quality-to-sound-quality mappings in our sound synthesis application. This application will be used in future work testing user perceptions of expressive movements with synchronous sounds.

Practice-based research in NIME is rooted in the practices of design and musical performance. Perspectives from HCI on the relationship between design and research, examining the role of questions or design problems in research, and considering the wickedness of the task help us frame and understand our work.

Music therapists provide critical, evidence-based care to a diverse range of clients. However, despite their active role in empowering individuals affected by disability, stigma, grief, and trauma, music therapists remain understudied by the HCI community. We present the results of a mixed methods study of 10 interviewees and 20 survey respondents in the U.S., all of whom are practicing music therapists. Our results show that music therapists engage in technology-aided practices such as making personalized connections with clients, assisting in identity formation, encouraging musicking (music-making), and preserving legacies. Results also show that music therapists face key challenges such as environmental, societal, and financial constraints, including high workload, lack of awareness of the value of music therapy among the general community, and limited access to secure technologies for remote client care. In light of these challenges, we present a set of design implications for creating future technologies for music therapists. This work diverges from previous studies on music therapy technologies, which focus largely on interventions with music therapy clients, by highlighting the often-neglected perspectives from music therapists.