Playing with Constraints: Stylistic Variation with a Simple Electronic Instrument

Gurevich, Michael; Marquez-Borbon, Adnan; Stapleton, Paul

doi:10.1162/comj_a_00103

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Overall, participants' comments and actions suggest that the D-Box was perceived as a constrained device, reinforcing the theory that musicians tend to focus on the limits of a design (Magnusson, 2010), which in turn fosters style diversity and musical appropriation (Gurevich et al, 2012). Almost all the participants in the D-Box study worked on the limitations of the instrument, hacked constraints or because of constraints, and in some cases deliberately added them to their personal designs.…”

Section: Perception Of the Instrument: Limited Or Unconstrained?mentioning

confidence: 61%

“…The results from the Cube Instrument study as well as previous literature (Magnusson, 2010;Gurevich et al, 2012) suggest that the development of style is fostered, to a great extent, by the discovery of limitations in the instrument's metaphor. In the case of the Cube Instrument, the simplicity of the chosen design raised a homogeneous awareness of the constrained nature of its metaphor.…”

Section: Perception Of the Instrument: Limited Or Unconstrained?mentioning

confidence: 76%

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Hackable Instruments: Supporting Appropriation and Modification in Digital Musical Interaction

Zappi

McPherson

2018

Front. ICT

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This paper investigates the appropriation of digital musical instruments, wherein the performer develops a personal working relationship with an instrument that may differ from the designer's intent. Two studies are presented which explore different facets of appropriation. First, a highly restrictive instrument was designed to assess the effects of constraint on unexpected creative use. Second, a digital instrument was created which initially shared several constraints and interaction modalities with the first instrument, but which could be rewired by the performer to discover sounds not directly anticipated by the designers. Each instrument was studied with 10 musicians working individually to prepare public performances on the instrument. The results suggest that constrained musical interactions can promote the discovery of unusual and idiosyncratic playing techniques, and that tighter constraints may paradoxically lead to a richer performer experience. The diversity of ways in which the rewirable instrument was modified and used indicates that its design is open to interpretation by the performer, who may discover interaction modalities that were not anticipated by the designers.

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Section: Perception Of the Instrument: Limited Or Unconstrained?mentioning

confidence: 61%

Section: Perception Of the Instrument: Limited Or Unconstrained?mentioning

confidence: 76%

Hackable Instruments: Supporting Appropriation and Modification in Digital Musical Interaction

Zappi

McPherson

2018

Front. ICT

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“…Both smartphones (Swift 2013) and tablets new digital musical instruments, but it is generally accepted that the performer is the most important stakeholder (O'Modhrain 2011), particularly when performing improvised music. Gurevich et al (2012) have used a groundedtheory approach to identify styles and skills that emerge when multiple participants engage with very simple electronic instruments. Fiebrink et al (2011) asked users to repeatedly evaluate interactive musical systems that use machine learning across a number of novel criteria, and this "direct evaluation" was found to have more utility than a typical cross-validation approach for machine learning systems.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Fractured Earth - Sonification and Spatialisation of Seismic Data With Max:msp and Speaker Motion

Dunham¹,

Johnson²

2020

Preprint

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This paper provides an overview of a Max/MSP patch that sonifies seismic data and the use of spatialisation to explore the resulting soundscape. The background to the development of the patch and spatialisation techniques are discussed and a brief overview of the implementation of the patch is provided with contexts for its use. Spatialisation is explored with the use of a new mechatronic speaker system and its use in a live performance. Finally, the paper considers future development of the system.

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“…Twitter famously limited written notes to 140 characters (Gligorić et al 2018), Instagram constrained images to square format, and the (now defunct) Vine platform only allowed six second micro-videos (Redi et al 2014). Constraints are often thought to lead to increased variability and creativity in the arts (Stokes 2008) and in electronic musical instruments (Gurevich et al 2012). Posts in Twitter or Instagram are intended to be frequent, casual, and ephemeral, and it could be that these constrained formats have helped these apps to attract millions of users and encourage their creativity in the written word or photography.…”

Section: Social Music-making and Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data-Driven Analysis of Tiny Touchscreen Performance with MicroJam

Martín

Tørresen

2019

Computer Music Journal

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The widespread adoption of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has made touchscreens a common interface for musical performance. Although new mobile music instruments have been investigated from design and user experience perspectives, there has been little examination of the performers' musical output. In this work, we introduce a constrained touchscreen performance app, MicroJam, designed to enable collaboration between performers, and engage in a data-driven analysis of more than 1,600 performances using the app. MicroJam constrains performances to five seconds, and emphasizes frequent and casual music-making through a social media–inspired interface. Performers collaborate by replying to performances, adding new musical layers that are played back at the same time. Our analysis shows that users tend to focus on the center and diagonals of the touchscreen area, and that they tend to swirl or swipe rather than tap. We also observe that, whereas long swipes dominate the visual appearance of performances, the majority of interactions are short with limited expressive possibilities. Our findings enhance our understanding of how users perform in touchscreen apps and could be applied in future app designs for social musical interaction.

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Playing with Constraints: Stylistic Variation with a Simple Electronic Instrument

Cited by 18 publications

References 27 publications

Hackable Instruments: Supporting Appropriation and Modification in Digital Musical Interaction

Hackable Instruments: Supporting Appropriation and Modification in Digital Musical Interaction

A Fractured Earth - Sonification and Spatialisation of Seismic Data With Max:msp and Speaker Motion

Data-Driven Analysis of Tiny Touchscreen Performance with MicroJam

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