DMI Apprenticeship: Sharing and Replicating Musical Artefacts

Abstract

The nature of digital musical instruments (DMIs), often bespoke artefacts devised by single or small groups of technologists, requires thought about how they are shared and archived so that others can replicate or adapt designs. The ability for replication contributes to an instrument's longevity and creates opportunities for both DMI designers and researchers. Research papers often omit necessary knowledge for replicating research artefacts, but we argue that mitigating this situation is not just about including design materials and documentation. Our way of approaching this issue is by drawing on an age-old method as a way of disseminating knowledge, the apprenticeship. We propose the DMI apprenticeship as a way of exploring the procedural obstacles of replicating DMIs, while highlighting for both apprentice and designer the elements of knowledge that are a challenge to communicate in conventional documentation. Our own engagement with the DMI apprenticeship led to successfully replicating an instrument, Strummi. Framing this process as an apprenticeship highlighted the non-obvious areas of the documentation and manufacturing process that are crucial in the successful replication of a DMI.

early prototypes and artistic practice with the mubone

“…It has also proven to be noticeably sustainable, with three years of development so far and no signs yet of slowing down. We note a similar collaborative relationship between, for example, Rebecca Fiebrink and Laetitia Sonami facilitating over 8 years of ongoing development of Wekinator and the Spring Spyre [21], or Joseph Malloch and Andrew Stewart's roles in the development and support of the T-Stick [22][23] and its growing community of practitioners [24]. Although there is no doubt that numerous other participants and contributors have played essential roles in these projects (the mubone included), this kind of central collaborative duo, with a technical artist and artistic technician, may still be a useful model for NIME research, providing a stable core that could improve the longevity and reliability of the instruments and technology developed compared to solo or large group research.…”

The Proto-Langspil: Launching an Icelandic NIME Research Lab with the Help of a Marginalised Instrument

“…Combining small scale studies and "art-research inquiry" [30] in our "machinic encounters" [31] has allowed us to begin to see promising connections, between the music interaction affordances and sensorimotor disruptions [32] of nonlinear dynamics [33][34], and their impact on advanced skill learning [35], AI mind perception in the case of E3P1 [36][37], and AI expectation violation in the case of E3P2 [38]. However, we did so in only very short glimpses, and with an extremely limited vocabulary.…”