Music 256A, Week 5
Chapter 5 of Artful Design discusses the aesthetics of interface design, particularly musical instruments, with digital technologies. The chapter emphasizes the importance of the human body, "our mind's interface," and explores works by artists who have attempted to close the gap between humans and machines (artists like Rebecca Fiebrink, Michel Waisvisz, and Atau Tanaka). This is a unique challenge faced by digital instrument or interface designers; that is, how do we design an instrument or interface whose output feels coupled to human input?
In computer instrument design, there is a layer of abstraction (sensors and software) between the user (you) and the product of the interface (audio, visuals, etc). In digital instrument design, form is decoupled from function; whereas in acoustic instrument design, your actions map directly to and help to physically instantiate every sound the instrument makes: there is a clear mapping between user action and sound, mediated by natural physical laws. In the digital domain, we can make perhaps an infinite number of mappings between user input and program output. This complexity affords us as many new possibilities as it does obstacles... it is easy to be paralyzed when making designs decisions about software when "anything" is possible.
This gets to a couple quesitons posed in the conversations between Perry and Ge; in particular, the idea that functionality is general and aesthetics is specific, as posited by Ge on page 237. in the historical development of technology, we have observed an increase in our functional technological capacities in the way of sensors, processing speed, quality of output, and more. This has enabled us to imagine making and make new things. However, these new things are not just the sum of their many technological parts. Instead, the ingenuity of their assembly, the particular decisions made about their combination, the unique aesthetics that drove every small decision, all come together to make an experience for the user. The experience, itself not characterizable by the technological components that went in to it, is what we are designing when we make a computer music instrument.
I, for one, take this sentiment to heart. I have seen many new interfaces at NIME conferences, experimental gigs in NYC, Princeton Laptop Orchestra rehearsals, etc., that fall short of creating a satisfying experience for the user or musician. This is not to say that all instruments should be fun and easy; for example, it is hard to play the piano well, and it is easy to get frustrated while trying to play, but something about the viscerality and sonic consistency of striking a piano key keeps people coming back. Here are some things I don't like to see:
> people sitting on stage theoretically making the sounds we here with little or no physical or conceptual corroboration (side question: is conceptual corrobaration valuable?)
> people struggling with new interfaces to produce sound that could easily be performed more convincingly on other interfaces
> sensor gloves that map to hugeeeee sounds but really all you are doing is rotating your wrist
I could passive-aggressively list more scenarios, but all I mean to say is, yes: it would be amazing if more instruments and interfaces did a better job at creating an experience in which sound is embodied by the user's actions and the users actions are embodied by the sound... Let's amp up the gain on this feedback loop between human and machine to create tools that we like to use, and which compel us to express ourselves!
In computer instrument design, there is a layer of abstraction (sensors and software) between the user (you) and the product of the interface (audio, visuals, etc). In digital instrument design, form is decoupled from function; whereas in acoustic instrument design, your actions map directly to and help to physically instantiate every sound the instrument makes: there is a clear mapping between user action and sound, mediated by natural physical laws. In the digital domain, we can make perhaps an infinite number of mappings between user input and program output. This complexity affords us as many new possibilities as it does obstacles... it is easy to be paralyzed when making designs decisions about software when "anything" is possible.
This gets to a couple quesitons posed in the conversations between Perry and Ge; in particular, the idea that functionality is general and aesthetics is specific, as posited by Ge on page 237. in the historical development of technology, we have observed an increase in our functional technological capacities in the way of sensors, processing speed, quality of output, and more. This has enabled us to imagine making and make new things. However, these new things are not just the sum of their many technological parts. Instead, the ingenuity of their assembly, the particular decisions made about their combination, the unique aesthetics that drove every small decision, all come together to make an experience for the user. The experience, itself not characterizable by the technological components that went in to it, is what we are designing when we make a computer music instrument.
I, for one, take this sentiment to heart. I have seen many new interfaces at NIME conferences, experimental gigs in NYC, Princeton Laptop Orchestra rehearsals, etc., that fall short of creating a satisfying experience for the user or musician. This is not to say that all instruments should be fun and easy; for example, it is hard to play the piano well, and it is easy to get frustrated while trying to play, but something about the viscerality and sonic consistency of striking a piano key keeps people coming back. Here are some things I don't like to see:
> people sitting on stage theoretically making the sounds we here with little or no physical or conceptual corroboration (side question: is conceptual corrobaration valuable?)
> people struggling with new interfaces to produce sound that could easily be performed more convincingly on other interfaces
> sensor gloves that map to hugeeeee sounds but really all you are doing is rotating your wrist
I could passive-aggressively list more scenarios, but all I mean to say is, yes: it would be amazing if more instruments and interfaces did a better job at creating an experience in which sound is embodied by the user's actions and the users actions are embodied by the sound... Let's amp up the gain on this feedback loop between human and machine to create tools that we like to use, and which compel us to express ourselves!
