Digital Musical Interactions: Performer–system relationships and their perception by spectators

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Gurevich ◽  
A. Cavan Fyans
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Digital Systems ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Musical Interactions ◽  
Ecological View ◽  
The Relationship

This article adopts an ecological view of digital musical interactions, considering first the relationship between performers and digital systems, and then spectators’ perception of these interactions. We provide evidence that the relationships between performers and digital music systems are not necessarily instrumental in the same was as they are with acoustic systems, and nor should they always strive to be. Furthermore, we report results of a study indicating that spectators may not perceive such interactions in the same way as performances with acoustic musical instruments. We present implications for the design of digital musical interactions, suggesting that designers should embrace the reality that digital systems are malleable and dynamic, and may engage performers and spectators in different modalities, sometimes simultaneously.

The Anthropomorphic Analogy: Humanising musical machines in the early modern and contemporary eras

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-180
Author(s):  
Rebecca Cypess ◽  
Steven Kemper
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Physical Computing ◽  
Western Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Systems ◽  
Historical Contextualisation ◽  
Sensor Interfaces ◽  
The Relationship

Since the late twentieth century, the development of cybernetics, physical computing and robotics has led artists and researchers to create musical systems that explore the relationship between human bodies and mechanical systems. Anthropomorphic musical robots and bodily integrated ‘cyborg’ sensor interfaces explore complementary manifestations of what we call the ‘anthropomorphic analogy’, which probes the boundary between human artificer and artificial machine, encouraging listeners and viewers to humanise non-musical machines and understand the human body itself as a mechanical instrument.These new approaches to the anthropomorphic analogy benefit from historical contextualisation. At numerous points in the history of Western art music, philosophers, critics, composers, performers and instrument designers have considered the relationship between human musician and musical instrument, often blurring the line between the two. Consideration of historical examples enriches understandings of anthropomorphism in contemporary music technology.This article juxtaposes the anthropomorphic analogy in contemporary musical culture with manifestations of anthropomorphism in early seventeenth-century Europe. The first half of the seventeenth century witnessed a flourishing of instrumentality of all sorts. Musical instruments were linked with the telescope, the clock, the barometer, the paintbrush, and many other instruments and machines, and these came to be understood as vehicles for the creation of knowledge. This flourishing of instrumental culture created new opportunities for contemplation and aesthetic wonder, as theorists considered the line between human being and machine – between nature and artifice. Manifestations of the anthropomorphic analogy in seventeenth-century conceptions of musical instruments help to contextualise and explain similar articulations of the anthropomorphic analogy in the present day.

Keyboard Span in Old Musical Instruments: Concerning Hand Span and Overuse Problems in Pianists

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-171
Author(s):  
Naotaka Sakai
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Contributory Factor ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
The Right ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Relationship

The keyboard spans (i.e., octave spans) of old keyboard instruments was compared with those of modern pianos to explore whether the relationship between keyboard span and hand span is a contributory factor in overuse problems among pianists. The distance on the keyboard between the left side of the C4 key and the right side of the C5 key was measured in 120 old keyboard instruments, including 26 harpsichords, 8 clavichords, 7 spinets, 4 virginals, 75 pianofortes, and 20 square pianos, manufactured from 1559 through 1929. The oldest harpsichords and pianoforte showed a keyboard span equal to that of the modern piano. In late 18th and early 19th centuries, the span diminished by 3 to 6 mm on average. In the later 19th century, the keyboard span returned to the 188-mm modern size. Unfortunately, almost all famous piano pieces composed in that 100-year period use a small keyboard, and this fact is compatible with the paradoxical situation that many modern pianists struggle with difficult piano techniques on a modern keyboard, which is broader than the old type that the 18th and 19th-century composers used.

Digital Images

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Matthews ◽  
Gavin Perin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Digital Systems ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
Material Form

The valence of any visual paradigm and its accompanying technologies is subject to the contingencies of political regimes and cultural shifts. The instigation, implementation and even reconfiguring of any associated technological system effects a translation and adjustment to the structure and use of these supporting mechanisms that both re-defines the relationship between object and viewer and ultimately influences its translation into material form. The permeation of digital systems throughout contemporary urban space is typified by Internet Protocol webcam systems, instigated by civic authorities for surveillance and the imagistic promotion of iconic city form. This paper examines how this system’s reception and subsequent translation of transmitted data signals into digital information not only presents new material to mediate people’s engagement with public space, but moreover, how it presents new opportunities for the designer to materialize its three-dimensional form within the spatial ambiguity of virtual and real-time environments.

scholarly journals Scales of sustain and decay: making music in deep time

Popular Music ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Philipp Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Radioactive Material ◽  
Industrial Processes ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Nuclear Decay ◽  
Electric Guitar ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between the human time of music making and the temporal layers that pervade the natural resources of musical instruments. It therefore offers case studies on two of popular music's most common instruments, the electric guitar and the synthesiser, and their symbolic and material temporalities: guitar players’ quest for ‘infinite sustain’ from Santana to today's effects manufacturers and the ‘psychogeophysical’ approach by artist and theorist Martin Howse, who developed a synthesiser module using radioactive material in order to determine musical events by nuclear decay. While language uses metaphors of sustain and decay as figurative ways to express both musical and planetary dimensions, practices of music offer alternative ecologies of relating the seemingly unrelatable scales of deep time and musical time. If in the Anthropocene humankind becomes aware of its role as a geophysical force, thinking about making music in the Anthropocene requires an awareness for the temporalities involved in the materials at hand. Besides an ecological perspective, the article looks at various media (magazines, ads, and manuals) and thus positions economical mechanisms of the musical instrument manufacturing market as a small-scale experimental setting for larger-scale industrial processes.

scholarly journals “First Week Is Editorial, Second Week Is Algorithmic”: Platform Gatekeepers and the Platformization of Music Curation

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiziano Bonini ◽  
Alessandro Gandini
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Key Informants ◽  
Data Platform ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Music Streaming

This article investigates the logics that underpin music curation, and particularly the work of music curators, working at digital music streaming platforms. Based on ethnographic research that combines participant observation and a set of interviews with key informants, the article questions the relationship between algorithmic and human curation and the specific workings of music curation as a form of platform gatekeeping. We argue that music streaming platforms in combining proprietary algorithms and human curators constitute the “new gatekeepers” in an industry previously dominated by human intermediaries such as radio programmers, journalists, and other experts. The article suggests understanding this gatekeeping activity as a form of “algo-torial power” that has the ability to set the “listening agendas” of global music consumers. While the power of traditional gatekeepers was mainly of an editorial nature, albeit data had some relevance in orienting their choices, the power of platform gatekepeers is an editorial power “augmented” and enhanced by algorithms and big data. Platform gatekeepers have more data, more tools to manage and to make sense of these data, and thus more power than their predecessors. Platformization of music curation then consists of a data-intense gatekeeping activity, based on different mixes of algo-torial logics, that produces new regimes of visibility. This makes the platform capitalistic model potentially more efficient than industrial capitalism in transforming audience attention into data and data into commodities.

scholarly journals From print to digital: First steps in collecting digital music publications in UK legal deposit libraries

2020 ◽  
pp. 095574902096786
Author(s):  
Amelie Roper
Keyword(s):  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Music Publishing ◽  
Digital Format ◽  
File Formats ◽  
Close Cooperation ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Pdf Format ◽  
The Relationship

As a result of the 2013 Non-Print Legal Deposit Regulations, the United Kingdom’s legal deposit libraries acquired two large collections of digital music publications in PDF format: 43,165 from Music Sales and 13,167 from Faber Music. These constitute their back catalogues for the period 2013 to 2018. This article considers the genres of music that were collected, the relationship between printed and digital output and intended users. The increasing prevalence of digital publication in the United Kingdom’s music publishing industry was evident, with 99% of the content collected from these firms in this period in digital format. The ‘near duplication’ of content through the production of variant editions contributed greatly to the volume of output. Although 71% of content was popular music, other musical genres were also represented. Most of the publications were intended for performance rather than academic study. Despite the tendency to reprint extracts from printed publications digitally, there is currently little potential to switch UK music publishers from print to digital deposit. To truly reflect the nation’s cultural heritage, future collecting will need to embrace the breadth of the United Kingdom’s digital music publishing industry. Legal deposit libraries will need to collect publications with accompanying audiovisual content, those in multiple parts, proprietary music notation file formats and interactive content delivered via apps. This will require workflows that can accommodate publishers producing a handful of publications and those publishing at scale. The sustainability of collecting relies on close cooperation between libraries, composers, publishers, distributors, aggregators and music notation software providers.

Opportunities for Practice-Based Research in Musical Instrument Design

Leonardo ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Instrument Design ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Musical Interactions ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
The Relationship

This paper considers the relationship between design, practice and research in the area of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). The author argues that NIME practitioner-researchers should embrace the instability and dynamism inherent in digital musical interactions in order to explore and document the evolving processes of musical expression.

Ronsard, the Lyric Sonnet and the Late Sixteenth-Century Chanson

1994 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 65-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanice Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way ◽  
Poetry And Music

Music was an important metaphor for Ronsard, and references to music and musical instruments are frequently found in his poetry. His writings about music are few, however. In his article ‘Ut musica poesis: Music and Poetry in France in the Late Sixteenth Century’ Howard Brown has referred to two of the most explicit examples of such writing: the preface to Le Roy and Ballard's Livre de meslanges (1560) and the passage from Ronsard's Abbregé de l'art poëtique françois (1565) on the desirability of union between poetry and music. Such passages are important in illuminating poets' attitudes towards music and in demonstrating ways in which the relationship between text and music could be conceptualised in the sixteenth century. They are frustratingly vague, however, about how the poets' ideals should be achieved, and they leave many practical questions unanswered. Did poets have any influence on composers' choices of texts? Did movements in poetic circles ever affect the pitches or rhythms of musical settings – that is, could poets influence the way music sounded?

scholarly journals Economic Implications of Digital Transformation

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Rita Mura ◽  
Armando Sternieri
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Digital Systems ◽  
Organizational Changes ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Productivity Paradox ◽  
Working Together ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Controversial Concept

In a firm perspective the simply availability of digital systems does not necessarily lead to success. On the contrary, it requires that firms accompany digital resources with the development of best organizational practices which implicates a transformation in term of e.g. organizational changes and innovation. Digital technologies allow companies to improve productivity in two ways: by making hard improvements that dramatically increase the efficiency of intelligent machine and processes, and by making soft improvements that increase the efficiency of people working together. The paper highlights various discussions on the relationship between ICT investment and productivity. However, this framework has outlined a relatively more cohesive body of thought which, by seeking to overcome the controversial concept of the productivity paradox, highlights the existence of a significant relationship, not just between ICT and productivity, but also between certain multiplying variables which represent ICT and other complementary factors.

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