• Corpus ID: 51993924

ENGAGEMENT AND INTERACTION IN PARTICIPATORY SOUND ART

@inproceedings{Goudarzi2016ENGAGEMENTAI,
  title={ENGAGEMENT AND INTERACTION IN PARTICIPATORY SOUND ART},
  author={Visda Goudarzi and Artemi-Maria Gioti},
  year={2016}
}

• Visda Goudarzi, A. Gioti
• Published 2016
• Art

This paper explores a variety of existing interactive and participatory sound systems and the role of different actors in them. In human computer interaction (HCI), the focal point on studying interactive systems has been the usability and functionality of the systems. We are trying to shift the focus more towards creative aspects of interaction in both technology development and sound creation. In participatory sound art, the roles of technology creator, composer, performer, and spectator are not always distinct but may overlap. We examine some challenges in such systems, like the ownership of technical and aesthetic components and balancing engagement and interaction among different stakeholders (designer, composer, spectator, etc). Finally, we propose a discussion on participation, human-computer and human-human interaction within the process of creation and interaction with the system. 1. INTERACTIVE SOUND SYSTEMS The process of design and development of interactive sound systems used to be a separate task from sound creation. From design and development to performance, there used to be a linear flow (Figure 1). New interfaces for sound creation, however, allow sound artists and composers to engage themselves more in the process of system design and development. In HCI and software development, an iterative approach of design and development is common where evaluations allow to improve the system in successive iterations. Applications of adapted iterative HCI methods in sound creation range from interaction design to creativity support in sound and technological domains. Studies which incorporate HCI methods to evaluate sound creation systems are mostly focused on how musical tasks are performed. Aspects evaluated might be related to performance [1], the quality of the user experience and the degree of expressiveness [2, 3, 4], the usefulness of the system [5] or participant’s/audience’s engagement [6]. Our approach aims to direct attention away from the system’s accuracy and efficiency. We are more intrigued by nonquantifiable goals and notions such as creativity and engagement. In terms of interaction, we find Suchman’s perspective [7] appropriate for interactive and particularly participatory sound systems. She moves away from a goal-oriented interactivity and meaningful action towards a concept of interactivity in which action is central and goals are emergent. Furthermore, the iterative development of software engineering is not necessarily transferrable to artistic creation. In artistic production iterative processes are part of the creative experimentation and not part of the evaluation of a completed artwork [8]. 1.1 Stakeholders and the scope of interaction In traditional sound making systems (e.g. musical instruments), the designer of the sound system was usually a different person than the musicians (composers and performers). Due to rapid technological advancements, the gap between designers and sound makers is getting smaller. Examples include the democratization of sound and musical instruments, the evolution of Internet, open source software, community based design and DIY (Do It Yourself) instruments. However, sound making is usually left to composers and musically trained people. There are only a few sound artworks that allow people with little or no experience in sound or music to participate in the creative process and potentially increase their awareness about sound in their surroundings improving their analytical listening skills [9]. Figure 1. An overview of the flow of actions in a traditional interactive sound system. Furthermore, in the last decade computing systems such as tablets and mobile devices, which used to be specifiCopyright: © 2016 Visda Goudarzi and Artemi-Maria Gioti. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. cally deployed by engineers and experts, have become more popular among the general public. This has led to a different media ecology, extending the cultural context for interactions through consumer devices and creating a new platform for engagement in participatory art, by using one’s own devices. Having such powerful -potentially sonicdevices in hand, the space becomes the instrument and the stage of creativity that has so far been confined to a small elite of educated musicians expands [10]. In the last decade, research has focused on the development of methods to assist music composition by hiding part of the complexity of creation from the user [11]. This is on the one hand a democratization of sound or any content creation, but on the other hand it can add to the sonic pollution in public spaces. You may hear up to 20 different sounds within a minute coming out of a mobile phone because of different apps. At the same time this has created a new condition for artistic creation: art is not presented only in museums and galleries; it has rather expanded to public spaces much easier and faster than before. 1.2 Design and Development HCI design process could be a goal-oriented problem solving activity informed by intended use, a creative activity, or a decision-making activity to balance trade-offs (e.g. requirements of product compatibility and ease of use may be contradicting.) In a HCI design process there is usually a plan for development and a set of alternatives and successive elaborations. Whether the main design decisions are made by the composer or the designer depends on the goals and complexity of the system. Available computer languages could also have a huge influence on the focus of the design process. McCartney [12] describes the early computer music languages as strong in abstractions but providing very few control and data structures and little or no user functions. Later on, computer music languages such as Max and Pd allowed abstractions, so that in some cases the users are not even noticing that they are programming. These languages allowed for more participation of composers and performers in the process of programming sound systems, without requiring extensive software engineering training. Most importantly, the orientation of these programming languages towards live interaction brought HCI into the focus of both composition and performance, bringing about important changes in both fields. 1.3 Composition and Performance The growing availability of electronic devices and audio programming languages has lead not only to a merging of instrument/interface design and composition, but also to a new understanding of composition and performance as interactive processes. Human-computer interaction in the composition and performance of live electronic music ranges from interface-based interaction, employing human-computer interfaces that translate the performer’s actions into sound, to responsive and autonomous agentbased systems, able to interact with human performers in real-time. The latter approach in particular has broadened our understanding of composition and the traditional roles of composer and performer. By delegating some responsibility to machine agency, the real-time interaction between the performer and the computer is transformed into a dynamical and reciprocal process of communication between human and machine agency. Due to this integration of human and machine agency the spectrum between "fixed" composition and free improvisation is becoming “increasingly densely populated” [14], while the borders between performer and composer, as well as instrument and composition are becoming obscure. An example of the merging of the traditional roles of composer and performer is interactive composing. Chadabe describes interactive composing as ‘a two-stage process that consists of (1) creating an interactive composing system and (2) simultaneously composing and performing by interacting with that system as it functions’ [15]. In interactive composing systems, also known as real-time composition systems [16], the composer is also the performer, while it is impossible to distinguish between composition and performance, since they occur simultaneously. A different approach to interaction in the composition of live electronic music are Di Scipio’s audible ecosystems, in which the field of interaction is defined as the triangular connection among a human agent, a DSP unit and the sonic ambience [17]. In Di Scipio’s audible ecosystemics interaction is expanded to include not only the human agent and the computer, but also the ambience itself as a performance agent. Further examples of interaction strategies in live electronic music performance are performance networks and virtual player systems. Performance networks are technology-based systems that enable remote or co-located collaborative musical performance. Weinberg [18] categorises interconnected musical networks in three different approaches: the server approach, in which the network is limited to the individual interaction between each player and the system, the bridge approach, that enables collaborative performances among performers that are in different locations, and the shaper approach, in which the system uses algorithmic processes in order to generate musical material that the performers can modify collaboratively. Virtual player systems are systems that fall into the player category of Rowe’s taxonomy [19]. In these systems, a virtual player learns from one or more human improvisers and responds to them in real-time. Examples of virtual player systems are those developed by Lewis [20], Bakht and Barlow [21] and Dubnov et. al [22]. Such systems usually employ machine learning in order to produce musical material that is similar to that played by the human improviser. For this reason, the material generated by the virtual player is in most cases pitch-based. This, in addition to thei