Abstract
This article explores how computation opens up possibilities for new musical practices to emerge through technology design. Using the notion of thecultural probeas a lens, we consider the digital musical instrument as an experimental device that yields findings across the fields of music, sociology and acoustics. As part of an artistic-research methodology, the instrumental object as a probe is offered as a means for artists to answer questions that are often formulated outside semantic language. This article considers how computation plays an important role in the authors’ personal performance practices in different ways, which reflect the changed mode-of-being of new musical instruments and our individual and collective relations with them.
Highlights
Computation has been central to the development of new interfaces for musical expression, and this has been followed with new musical practices
These digital musical instrument (DMI) are increasingly decoupled from the established relationships we have with more traditional musical instruments
We propose that cultural probes can be used as a theoretical toolkit to explore how we relate with DMIs
Summary
Computation has been central to the development of new interfaces for musical expression, and this has been followed with new musical practices. Much of the knowledge and many of the methods that have emerged in experimental music practices have been fragmentary, often responding to individual and specific artistic and musical problems These fragments partially revolve around academic communities such as those assembled for NIME conferences since 2002, and institutions such as STEIM, established in the Netherlands in 1959. Whilst this largely heterogeneous assemblage of practices and ideas among connected communities has addressed different musical, social and technological elements of DMI culture, how computation has changed the mode-of-being of such musical instruments more generally has been less widely realised or discussed. Whist commercial digital keyboards can fit this definition, we focus on those DMIs which have novel interfaces and mapping strategies These DMIs are increasingly decoupled from the established relationships we have with more traditional musical instruments. This article is based on reflections around our creative processes when working with computational devices, and are the outcome of a workshop held at Goldsmiths, University of London, in early 2019
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