Fabio Morreale, University of Auckland - [email protected]

Co-constructing a NIME Performance Pedagogy Workshop @ NIME 2021

Context

In 2020, we introduced a new course on Musical Interface Design as part of an Undergraduate Course in Music Studies at the University of Auckland, NZ. The course has a theoretical and practical component.

• Theoretical: in the first third of the course, students are exposed to different theories and frameworks. This theoretical part, which is developed to show students that developing musical interfaces is not merely a technical endeavour, includes:
  • practical aspects of interface design (bottleneck model, MINUET framework, push-pull effect...)
  • reflections about musician-technology relationship inspired by post-phenomenology (embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity..)
  • discussions on the sociotechnical and political issues affecting commercial musical interfaces (the fallacious narrative of the democratisation of music making)
• Practical: two third of the course are dedicated to introducing students to prototyping musical interfaces using Bela and pd/supercollider.

We also run 1 hour weekly tutorials to allow students to try out stuff and receive feedback on their projects. During the first third of the course, the tutorial time is dedicated to exercises and "games" inspired by the magic-machine (Andersen, Lepri, ...) in which students are asked to imagine as is by magic new instruments. I tried several different exercises, and in what follows, I'll show the one that was possibly the most successful.

Material

I designed a 24-card deck divided into two categories: gestures and (electronic) components.

The gestures deck is composed of 12 cards, each showing an abstract representation of a gesture. There are no parts of the body that are displayed, but rather arrows or shapes that suggest possible directions, and movements, and figures.

Six (out of twelve) cards from the gestures deck

The components deck is also composed of 12 cards, each showing a device or component that is normally found in new musical interfaces.

Six (out of twelve) cards from the components deck

Process

1. Divide the students into two groups: A and B.
2. Ask students to imagine a sound they particularly like, something they might already use in their practice or something they might want to use. Stress they should not consider its practical feasibility at the moment.
3. Each student from group A is given a deck of gesture cards; group B students receive a deck of components cards.
4. By taking inspiration from the cards in their hands, each student is asked to draw the gesture (group A) or the instrument (group B) that produce the sound they imagined at step 1. They are allowed to use more than one card, to "connect" cards together by placing them on a piece of paper and drawing lines, and so on.
5. Students present their projects to their peers in their group.
6. Swap cards: group A is given the components cards, and group B the gesture cards.