Instruments

I am happy to announce that my book Sound Actions - Conceptualizing Musical Instruments is now published! I am also thrilled that this is an open access book, meaning that is free to download and read. You are, of course, also welcome to pick up a paper copy! Here is a quick video summary of the book’s content: In the book, I combine perspectives from embodied music cognition and interactive music technology. The approach is what I call “embodied music technology”. ...

This week I presented the paper NIME and the Environment: Toward a More Sustainable NIME Practice at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) in Shanghai/online with Raul Masu, Adam Pultz Melbye, and John Sullivan. Below is our 3-minute video summary of the paper. And here is the abstract: This paper addresses environmental issues around NIME research and practice. We discuss the formulation of an environmental statement for the conference as well as the initiation of a NIME Eco Wiki containing information on environmental concerns related to the creation of new musical instruments. We outline a number of these concerns and, by systematically reviewing the proceedings of all previous NIME conferences, identify a general lack of reflection on the environmental impact of the research undertaken. Finally, we propose a framework for addressing the making, testing, using, and disposal of NIMEs in the hope that sustainability may become a central concern to researchers. ...

I have not been very good at blogging recently, primarily because I have been so busy in starting up both RITMO and MCT. As things are calming down a bit now, I am also trying to do some digital cleaning up, archiving files, organizing photos, etc. As part of the cleanup, I came across this picture of my setup for a lecture-performance held at the humanities library earlier this fall. It consists of a number of sound makers, various types of acoustic ones, and also some electronic. Note that I am not using a computer, and there was no projector, so the entire thing is based on talking and playing. Feels very “unplugged”, and gives me (and hopefully the audience) a feeling of performing more than lecturing. ...

I am happy to announce that Springer has now released a book that I have been co-editing with Michael J. Lyons: “A NIME Reader: Fifteen Years of New Interfaces for Musical Expression”. From the book cover: What is a musical instrument? What are the musical instruments of the future? This anthology presents thirty papers selected from the fifteen year long history of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). NIME is a leading music technology conference, and an important venue for researchers and artists to present and discuss their explorations of musical instruments and technologies. ...

There are so many things happening, so I’m seriously lagging behind in writing up my summaries about what is going on. Here are some interesting things: The McGill group had a rendez-vous with Serge de Laubier and his Metainstrument. It looks cool, and it was great fun trying it on, although it will require much more than my 5 minutes to master all the mappings. A group of OSC interested people had a two hour meeting, discussing some relevant topics. The Jazzmutant people had written a suggestion for extending OSC, with schema and classes, and a system for querying and advertising information on the network. Hopefully Matt (or someone else) writes a summary of the discussion. The KeyWorx people have open sourced their software and are developing it in a new direction. Greg Schiemer presented his Pocket Gamelan project. Bill Gaver (Goldsmith’s) held a fascinating keynote, presenting his “early” work on SonicFinder, ARKola, and the DriftTable. Christopher Dobrian and Daniel Koppelman discussed the E(xpression) in NIME.