The Democratization of Musical Interface Construction

Community-Based Design: The Democratization of Musical Interface Construction

a b s t r a c t Owen Vallis and Ajay Kapur The advent of on-line communities has democratized the process of musical interface design and allowed users to directly participate in the future development of the devices they use. On-line communities, acting as centralized repositories for information pertaining to the he age of social networks such as Facebook either as “seed” developers add- development of an interface, T allow users to discuss their and MySpace [1], blogging and the concept of the virtual com- ing new functionality to an inter- munity have transformed the ways in which people do business face or “end users” implementing experiences and ideas as well as providing a framework for and live their day-to-day lives. Catalogs of information about existing iterations from the com- managing information pertaining how a person rates a certain product, hotel, vacation pack- munity. Additionally, we show how to an interface. This centralized age or even the on-line store at which an item was bought software applications developed for access to information regarding are now available to assist other users in making decisions community-designed interfaces are the design, use and develop- about their future purchases. These tools have revolutionized influenced by past and existing ver- ment of an interface both focuses and accelerates the the individual’s power as a consumer and have given every sions while also influencing future developmental process. person the ability to go behind the scenes and research oth- iterations. The idea of iterative and ers’ experiences to make informed decisions on their own open-source design for musical in- purchases. terfaces will then be discussed in a The maturation of on-line communities has also democra- broader context by comparing and tized the way in which digital music instruments and software contrasting the Monome and the Yamaha Tenori-On [4], an are being developed. By providing public access to schematics, instrument designed by Japanese artist Toshio Iwai, as well as firmware and related information, on-line communities allow by discussing the potential difficulties of creating an effective users to build an existing version of an interface or, conversely, open and extensible interface and, in so doing, illustrate how to create new iterations. This open and centralized access ac- an iterative and open-source design process can result in a celerates the developmental process of an interface by creat- much more personalized interface. ing a space in which a large number of users with varied skills can come together to share their experiences and ideas. These on-line communities facilitate public interaction in Musical Interface Development two distinct ways. First, forums allow interface developers and and Design users alike to discuss the usability and features of an interface. Computer music allows for a sound actuator to be decoupled This type of feedback inside a community helps to refine exist- from the sound source. This decoupling presents an opportu- ing designs as well as to suggest future development directions. nity to explore interesting and meaningful mappings between Secondly, a community web site acts as a central repository the actuator and the sound engine. Artists, such as Dan True- and catalog for all this information. This allows new users to man with the BoSSA [5], Max Matthews with the Radio Baton reference existing work when starting with an interface and [6], Curtis Bahn with the sBass [7], Nicolas Collins in his work gives developers a place to share their custom modifications. with the Trombone Controller [8], Joe Paradiso with gestural Both the Monome [2] and the Natural User Interface sensors [9] and wireless technology [10] and Perry Cook with (NUI) Group [3] communities exemplify these ideas, show- the SqueezeVox [11], have created new musical interfaces that ing how the Internet can facilitate an iterative and open-source explore the potential for a high degree of musical virtuos- approach to interface development through community-based ity when an interface is paired with custom electronics or design, and are useful as case studies to show these ideas in software. practice. Using these case studies, we will show how on-line Over recent decades artists have shared their research with communities facilitate public interaction in the development others at institutions such as MIT’s Responsive Environments of an interface, define iterative and open-source design for Group [12], Studio for ElectroInstrumental Music (STEIM) musical interfaces and describe two roles that artists can play: [13], Stanford’s CCRMA [14], UC Berkeley’s CNMAT [15], Princeton’s Soundlab [16] and France’s IRCAM [17]; and, following the creation of these centers for interface research, Owen Vallis (student), New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University, P.O. Box 2332, artists founded The International Conference on New Inter- Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: . faces for Musical Expression (NIME) on 1 April 2001 [18]. Ajay Kapur (teacher), California Institute of the Arts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA With the establishment of NIME, research into new musi- 91355, U.S.A. E-mail: . cal interfaces coalesced into a global community focused See for supplemental files (such as audio and video) related to this issue of LMJ and accompanying CD. See also for materials related to this article. ing how to make better ones [19–22] and how to evaluate

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00058 by guest on 30 September 2021 Fig. 1. An Overview of the Iterative Development History of the Monome. (© Owen Vallis)

their effectiveness and potential [23]. Iterative and Open- of the interface was modified by a small The NIME community built off well- source Development group of artists who added new function- established methodologies developed in Ideas in computer science such as open- ality. In turn, these new functionalities design fields such as human-computer in- source development and version-control present the potential for future iterations teraction (HCI) [24,25], design theory systems allow an individual to access to emerge from the community. The fol- [26,27] and tactile feedback for perform- a community repository related to a lowing section briefly describes the devel- ers, also known as haptics [28]. While the project and learn from or change the opment history of these “seed” iterations. research conducted at these institutions information. With the maturity of mi- of interface design is extensive, prior crocontroller platforms such as Arduino Monome to the emergence of on-line communi- [32], analogous ideas within hardware Created in 2005 by Brian Crabtree, the ties, information displayed on-line was development have become a reality and original Monome is a two-layer uncou- primarily static and did not allow for can now be applied to the development pled NxN device consisting of a matrix of users to interact and discuss ideas and of new musical interfaces. silicon buttons situated over a matrix of information. These ideas have allowed for the it- Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). The Mo- erative and open-source design of mu- nome’s minimal interface allows a user to quickly gain a deep understanding of Community-Based Design sical interfaces to take place. A process of open-source access to schematics, how it works. This greater understanding Recently there has been great develop- firmware and software allows a group of leads to greater exploration as users be- ment in open-source tools that allow individuals to augment a device over a gin to augment the Monome’s function- artists easier access to technically chal- number of iterations. This iterative pro- ality and thereby increasingly customize lenging tasks such as electronics and cess may fork into separate and unique their connection—through the inter- software programming. Projects such development streams as new require- face—to various software instruments. as Arduino [29], Processing [30] and ments are explored. These divergent Upon releasing the original inter- openFrameworks [31] aim to provide iterations may also converge at a later face, Monome created an on-line com- technologists and artists with usable and time, combining functionality into new munity providing users with a place to accessible tools for creating new inter- devices that represent a hybrid of compo- discuss and share their custom software faces. This ease of use is built on strong nents from previous generations. programs and provided open-source ac- on-line communities full of relevant This development is driven by a small cess to the firmware and schematics. Mo- information. number of “seed” artists who contribute nome’s decision to make the firmware As an example, Arduino not only pro- to a repository through iteratively modi- for the interface freely available to the vides a forum where artists can share fying the functionality; at the same time, public allowed an early user to provide ideas, help one another and discuss their a larger group of artists access these re- LED brightness control [34]. projects, but also provides detailed infor- positories to build, customize and imple- mation about devices, including example ment existing versions of an interface in Arduinome projects, technical documents, source their own projects [33]. Monome is a small company that builds code and organized links to related ex- only a limited quantity of interfaces an- ternal web content. This same model is nually; consequently it can be difficult to seen in interface communities such as Case Study I: obtain one of their interfaces. Although for Monome and NUI, where the same The Monome Monome has provided on-line docu- types of information have been used by The Monome serves as a great example ments explaining how to construct an artists to share the way they perform with of community-based iterative design. The interface from scratch, building one still the interface, changes they have made Monome, Arduinome, LUMI, Octinct requires much prior knowledge and skill. to the device, software they have written and Chronome represent distinct itera- All of these factors were motivations and even the music they make with the tive nodes in the design history of the Mo- for a community project we and Jordan interface. nome interface (Fig. 1). Each iteration Hochenbaum started with the help of

30 Vallis and Kapur, Community-Based Design

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00058 by guest on 30 September 2021 Monome/Arduino community members controller provided such access with were added, such as potentiometers, in- Brad Hill and Ben Southall in the sum- its strong community of builders who frared IR sensors and a touch screen. Al- mer of 2008. This project, now the Ar- support both development and user though this work represents a substantial duinome [35], was an effort to port the questions. extension of the Monome’s functionality, firmware from the custom circuit used by Since the project was initially released the project is not fully integrating into the original Monome to the readily avail- to the Monome community, significant the larger user community. This could be able and affordable Arduino microcon- Arduinome activity within the com- due to several factors, including custom troller platform. Arduino’s large on-line munity has warranted a separate and firmware, custom serial protocols, unre- community, extensive library, documen- dedicated Arduinome category in the leased build information or the larger tation and additional I/O ports provided Monome user forums. The easier access user community’s unfamiliarity with the new potential for expansion and explo- to the firmware has provided the basis work. It is possible that because of these ration of the Monome as an interface. for a plethora of new firmware modifica- reasons the LUMI’s significant modi- This potential has resulted in community tions and offshoot projects. One remain- fications have not yet had as broad an users adding components as complex as ing hurdle is the lack of extensibility in impact on the iterative design process as fully featured LCD displays and multi- the existing Monome 40h serial protocol. they potentially could. The open-source plexed rows of continuous controllers. This makes it difficult to add completely inclusion of some these ideas into the Monome has fully embraced this modifi- new and novel functionality to the cur- Chronome iteration will hopefully make cation and exploration by including the rent firmware without creating custom these modifications more readily avail- Arduinome on its website wiki. The indi- versions of ArduinomeSerial. A commu- able to the larger Monome community. viduals working on the Arduinomes have nity project called OSCSerial, which con- given back to the Monome community verts between Open Sound Control and Octinct not only hardware modifications but also serial messages, is currently underway at Almost as soon as the Monome 40h was open-source Monome-compatible soft- Monome to create such an extensible released, community users began to con- ware creations, further extending both Multifunctional Protocol Router, allow- template the possibility of adding RGB the Arduinome’s and the Monome’s ing for greater growth and exploration of (multi-color) LEDs to the device. The functionality. the device’s hardware potential. addition of color mapping to individual Both the original Monome 40h sche- buttons would create an additional di- matics and the firmware were made LUMI mension of visual information, allowing available to the public when the device Although the LUMI, an interface consist- performers to map a richer cognitive was released. This allowed individuals to ing of 16 pressure buttons and a touch connection to the controller. One of the source their own components and build screen [36], constitutes a major depar- first successful iterations to include this or modify the interface. With this infor- ture from previous versions—to the was the Octinct, started by Brad Hill, mation publicly available, one might ask extent that its inclusion as an iterative Jonathan Guberman and Devon Jones. why a port of the code to a new micro- Monome device might be questioned—it The Octinct information was originally controller platform was necessary. One does in fact contain a major refinement to closed source. This stalled the progress response is that the number of custom the Monome design. Created at Stanford of the project, as community developers Monomes in comparison to the signifi- in 2009, this project added pressure sen- did not have access to the information. cantly greater number of Arduinomes sitivity to the Arduinome through imple- In 2008, Brad Hill was given permission built indicated there was a need for a menting a simple and effective method by Jonathan Guberman, who developed more “accessible” way to modify the described by Adrian Freed [37]. In ad- the original Octinct firmware, to make Monome’s design. The Arduino micro- dition, several continuous input devices all the code freely available and has since

Fig. 2. The First Three Iterations of the Bricktable (counter-clockwise from top left). (© Owen Vallis)

Vallis and Kapur, Community-Based Design 31

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00058 by guest on 30 September 2021 posted the relevant information to the tionality to an interface, artists may also dominantly relied on the use of tangible community, making several updates to access the growing community resources objects for interaction with the software. the firmware and hardware. Recently, a to inform construction of existing inter- This heavily influenced the development group of artists from the Monome com- faces. One example is that of the Multi- of the software that was designed and munity [38] have been collating all re- Touch Table. This was built upon the used on Brick I. lated Octinct information and begun to famous “seed” interface, the ReacTable refine the original design. [39]. Designed by the Pompeu Fabra Brick II University team, the ReacTable was built The second Bricktable design benefited Chronome on their open-source TUI Protocol and greatly from our increase in resources We have designed a new iteration of the reacTIVision software for multi-touch de- among the NUI Community and began Arduinome that takes inspiration from vices. This open-source access, coupled with the desire to resolve several issues both the RGB LED support of the Oc- with sharing their ideas through publi- with the original Brick. These included tinct and the pressure sensitivity of the cations and demonstrations, lead to the portability, touch response and the over- LUMI. A key goal of the new device was emergence of a plethora of multi-touch all quality of the projected image. to bring both the RGB and pressure func- tabletops. In this case study on the Brick- Research into other multi-touch it- tionality into the existing Monome appli- table [40], our team describes our role erations discussed on the NUI Group cation framework while at the same time as one of many “end users” and how the forums helped inform the construction continuing to use the Arduino platform on-line community aided in making our of a much larger 50-in diagonal multi- as the microcontroller. The additional contributions possible. This section de- touch surface. This greatly increased functionality of this iteration allows for a scribes three iterations of design: Brick the potential for multi-user input. Addi- continuous spectrum of data and opens I, Brick II and Brick III, as seen in Fig. 2. tional research into the NUI community up new expressive ground. The original resources also suggested several differ- Monome design was a discrete-event Brick I ent rear-projection/diffusion materials controller and lent itself well to both Between 2008 and 2009 we and Jordan and was used to develop a more efficient percussive material and triggering time- Hochenbaum built three versions of a touch response. Finally, the NUI com- sensitive events; however, the Chro- large multi-touch surface to explore its munity developed open-source tracking nome’s focus on continuous data will potential uses as a musical interface [41]. software called Community Core Vision now allow for more gestural forms of per- The original Bricktable began in 2008 as (CCV). This application allowed for the formance. The aim of this project is to a way to allow multiple people to expe- use of fingers to directly interact with provide all information to the Monome rience an installation piece through the Brick II. user community in hopes that it will spur use of a multi-touch surface. Research a growth in applications that take advan- into existing multi-touch solutions led Brick III tage of this new functionality. us to the on-line Natural User Interface While Brick II greatly improved on Brick (NUI) community. Forum-member com- I, further improvements were still nec- ments informed every choice in building essary to make Brick a highly portable Case Study II: the interface, including the decision to and stable multi-touch interface. Again, Multi-Touch Table use reacTIVision [42]. The community- research into existing multi-touch itera- While the “seed” stages of the iterative based information on-line at the time tions on the NUI forum led us to design process are necessary to add new func- meant that the completed table pre- Brick III out of lightweight aluminum,

Fig. 3. Programmability versus usability continuum. (© Owen Vallis)

32 Vallis and Kapur, Community-Based Design

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00058 by guest on 30 September 2021 as well as to use a cloth-based side panel this “completed loop” of hardware and Programmability system and a new HD projector. These software, the Argos project [44] was built versus Usability changes were made possible through the off the resources found at the open- Finally, while on-line communities can resources available at the NUI Group Frameworks community, implementing produce unique iterations of an interface web site and finally addressed the issue an application that simplified the design- by providing a space to share informa- of portability that had plagued previous ing of GUIs and extended the usability tion on construction and customization, designs. of CCV and the multi-touch hardware there is a downside to a highly customiz- interfaces. able approach [47]. The increase in mod- Community-Driven ularity requires an initial investment in order to set up the desired functionality, Software Design Monome–Tenori-On such as learning the technical languages Comparison On-line communities have not only de- and skills required to understand the mocratized the hardware development Both the Monome and Multi-Touch in- system behind the controller. This allows of musical interfaces; they have also terfaces represent an interesting, subtle the user to create a custom interface but similarly democratized the process of and significant shift in how a community also creates an initial decrease in “plug-n- music interface software development. of users may approach interface design. play” productivity; however, this decrease Community software developers ac- We have shown how open-source on- in productivity can be mitigated by access tively listen to requests from users and line repositories of information have to experts within the on-line community. regularly implement these ideas in new enabled users with access to the Inter- With the help of the on-line community, applications for the interfaces. This pro- net to learn, build and augment musi- productivity will begin to increase as the cess creates a feedback loop inside the cal interfaces. Contrasting the Monome interface provides the user an extremely community forums; real-world use of with the Yamaha Tenori-On shows how custom and intuitive device. In contrast, the interfaces informs the development a community-driven open and iterative fixed functionality provides immediate of software application ideas. Conversely, design approach, compared to a closed- productivity, but very often circumvents software design requirements can drive box design approach, can lead to greater the learning process facilitated by on- the development of new functionality versatility in use. line community discussion. Additionally, for an interface. In this way, software The Tenori-On was introduced by fixed functionality often prevents the informs the design of new hardware, Yamaha in 2008 and, like the Monome, interface from communicating in ex- and hardware informs the design of new contains a two-layer, uncoupled, NxN actly the way the user desires. These two software. device consisting of a matrix of buttons ideas—immediate usability and custom- An example of this is the Monome situated over a matrix of LEDs. Unlike ization—can be thought of as extremi- community’s large repository of free the Monome, however, the Tenori-On’s ties of a spectrum (Fig. 3). At one end and open-source custom software. Spe- firmware is locked, its design specs are can be placed sensors, microcontrollers cifically, in an iterative process similar to not made public and the device does not and software development and, on the the hardware development, an applica- easily support hardware modifications. opposite end, volume controls, panning tion known as MLR, a program which When compared with the Monome, the knobs, filter knobs or any input or out- allows for the resequencing of buffered Tenori-On has not seen the same com- put device assigned to only a single task. loops of audio using the Monome [43], munity of users, library of applications Iteratively designed open-source inter- has seen users take an existing open- or variety of uses develop. Even though faces effectively sit over a very large area source application and create custom these two devices share a very similar of this spectrum, allowing for both com- versions that are then shared back with form, the history and function of the two plete hardware customization and im- the larger community. This process helps interfaces could not be more divergent. mediate use. This broad usage is due to drive new hardware ideas, including the The Monome has spawned a wealth of several factors stemming from an on-line desire to display visual information from custom applications, a thriving user com- community-based design approach, in- the application on the Monome’s LEDs munity and several major hardware itera- cluding open-source hardware/software using multiple colors. Implementing tions, while the Tenori-On has remained and a strong community involvement in this multi-color support was a central unchanged in its design and fixed in its the device’s application development. motivating factor in developing the functions, in spite of its being an inter- Chronome. esting and well-conceived instrument. While open-source software is not a This is not to imply that commercial Conclusion new idea, coupling it with open-source devices are not capable of being open We have presented a community-based hardware results in a powerful combi- source and successful. As an example, open-source iterative model of interface nation that allows users to explore new the apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch design in which expert users, making up ideas and helps drive development. Soft- have allowed users to create custom ap- a small percentage of the community, de- ware such as reacTIVision and the NUI plications for the devices, and 300,000 velop new and innovative functionalities. group’s CCV finger-tracking program programs existed as of 20 October 2010 These extended functionalities are then were developed as open-source projects [45]. Although the hardware, firmware made available to the larger user com- that required most users to build custom and software are not open source in the munity without requiring the commu- hardware devices in order to use them. strict sense, the device still allows users nity to learn the technical details of the Without access to the on-line community to define custom behaviors and function- interface. The majority of users benefit resources regarding hardware designs, ality. This ability to create custom pro- from these developments and in return the software programs would not have grams has been exploited by musicians to share their experiences with the rest of had the physical interfaces needed for create entire frameworks for rapid pro- the community, contributing novel appli- people to implement their ideas. As an totyping of new musical interfaces using cation and modification ideas. By allow- example of projects that benefit from the devices [46]. ing for a community to develop, modify

Vallis and Kapur, Community-Based Design 33

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00058 by guest on 30 September 2021 and re-envision an interface through an puter Music Controllers,” Proceedings of NIME (Se- 41. Jordan Hochenbaum Owen Vallis, et al., “Musical iterative process, a new model for open- attle, WA: National Univ. of Singapore, 2001). Applications for Multi-Touch Surfaces,” Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Media Arts, Science, and Technology (UC source interface design has been created; 20. Perry R. Cook, “Re-Designing Principles for Com- Santa Barbara, CA: 2009). a model that encompasses both basic us- puter Music Controllers: A Case Study of SqueezeVox Maggie,” Proceedings of NIME (Pittsburgh, PA: 2009). 42. Martin Kaltenbrunner and Ross Bencina, “re- ers and advanced developers alike. acTIVision: A Computer-Vision Framework for 21. Daniel Arfib, Jean-Michel Couturier and Loic Table-Based Tangible Interaction,” Proceedings of 1st Kessous, “Expressiveness and Digital Musical Instru- International Conference on Tangible and Embedded In- Acknowledgments ment Design,” Journal of New Music Research 34, No. teraction (Baton Rouge, LA: ACM, 2007) pp. 69–74. 1, 125–136 (2005). The authors would like to acknowledge the invalu- 43. See . able contributions of Jordan Hochenbaum in build- 22. Doug Van Nort, “Instrumental Listening: Sonic ing the Arduinome and the Bricktable, without Gesture as Design Principle,” Organised Sound 14, No. 44. Dimitri Diakopoulos and Ajay Kapur, “Argos: An which those projects would not have been possible; 2, 177–187 (2009). Open Source Application for Building Multi-Touch the hard work, vision and openness of Brian Crabtree Musical Interfaces,” Proceedings of ICMC (New York: and Kelly Cain at Monome; and the great work of 23. Chris Kiefer, Nick Collins and Geraldine Fitzpat- 2010) pp. 69–74. Brad Hill and Ben Southall in helping to make the rick, “HCI Methodology For Evaluating Musical Con- 45. See , 14 De- Arduinome a reality. We also thank Dimitri Diako- trollers: A Case Study,” Proceedings of NIME (Genova, cember 2010. poulos, Jim Murphy and Memo Akten for their work Italy: 2008). on developing musical applications for the Brick- 24. Jon Drummond, “Understanding Interactive Sys- 46. Georg Essl, “Urmus—An Environment for Mo- table. Lastly we acknowledge Sergi Jordà and Martin tems,” Organised Sound 14, No. 2, 124–133 (2009). bile Instrument Design and Performance,” Proceed- Kaltenbrunner’s work on TUIO and reacTIVision, as ings of ICMC (New York: 2010). well as Seth Sandler and the rest of those who have 25. Rebecca Fiebrink, Dan Trueman et al., “Toward helped from the NUI Group forums. Understanding Human-Computer Interactions in 47. Cook [19]. Composing the Instrument,” Proceedings of ICMC (New York: 2010). References and Notes Manuscript received 1 January 2011. 26. David Birnbaum, Rebecca Fiebrink et al., “To- 1. See and . Proceedings of NIME (Vancouver: National Univ. of Vallis is fascinated by the intersection of sound Singapore, 2005). 2. See . and technology. This curiosity has driven Val- 27. Joseph Malloch, David Birnbaum et al., “Towards lis to explore a diverse range of projects includ- 3. See . a New Conceptual Framework for Digital Musical ing producing the work of other musicians, 4. Yu Nishibori and Toshio Iwai, “Tenori-on,” Proceed- Instruments,” 9th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (Montreal: 2006). composing his own music, building various ings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) analog and digital audio processors, creating (Paris: IRCAM, 2006) pp. 172–175. 28. Edgar Berdahl, Hans-Christoph Steiner and interactive multi-touch installations and de- 5. Dan Trueman and Perry R. Cook, “BoSSa: The Colin Oldham, “Practical Hardware and Algorithms signing new hardware interfaces for musical for Creating Haptic Musical Instruments,” Proceedings Deconstructed Violin Reconstructed,” Proceedings of expression and interaction. In 2008, Vallis International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Bei- of NIME (Genova, Italy: 2008). jing (1999). graduated from the Music Technology program 29. See . (MTIID) program at California Institute of 6. Max Matthews and Andrew Schloss, “The Radio- 30. See . the Arts and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. Drum as a Synthesizer Controller,” Proceedings of ICMC (Ohio State Univ., 1989). in Sonic Arts at the New Zealand School of 31. See . Music, Victoria University of Wellington. His 7. Curtis Bahn and Dan Trueman, “Interface: Elec- 32. Massimio Banzi, Getting Started with Arduino recent work focuses on developing tools for live tronic Chamber Ensemble,” Proceedings of NIME (Se- (O’Reilly Media/Make, 2008). computer music performance, both as a solo attle, WA: National Univ. of Singapore, 2001). 33. For more technically detailed information re- artist and as part of larger ensembles such as 8. Nicolas Collins, “Low Brass: The Evolution of garding the iterations of the Monome and Brick- The Machine Orchestra. Trombone-Propelled Electronics,” Leonardo Music table, see ; Owen Vallis, Jordan Journal 1, No. 1, 41–44 (1991). Hochenbaum and Ajay Kapur, “A Shift Towards Itera- Ajay Kapur is currently the Director of the tive and Open-Source Design for Musical Interfaces,” 9. Joseph A. Paradiso, “The Brain Opera Technology: Proceedings of NIME (Sydney, Australia: 2010); Jordan Music Technology program (MTIID) at the New Instruments and Gestural Sensors for Musical Hochenbaum, and Owen Vallis, “Bricktable: A Mu- California Institute of the Arts. He is also Interaction and Performance,” Journal of New Music sical Tangible Multi-Touch Interface,” Proceedings of a Lecturer of Sonic Arts at the New Zealand Research 28, No. 2, 130–149 (1999). Berlin Open (Berlin: 2009). School of Music at Victoria University of Wel- 10. Joe Paradiso, “Wearable Wireless Sensing for 34. See , 20 November 2009. Ph.D. in 2007 from University of Victoria Workshop on Wearable & Implantable Body Sensor Net- combining computer science, electrical engi- works (London: 2004). 35. Vallis, Hochenbaum and Kapur [33]. neering, mechanical engineering, music and 11. Perry R. Cook and Colby N. Leider, “SqueezeVox: 36. Mike Gao and Craig Hanson, “LUMI: Live Per- psychology, with a focus on intelligent music A New Controller for Vocal Synthesis Models,” Pro- formance Paradigms Utilizing Software Integrated systems and media technology. Kapur gradu- ceedings of ICMC (Berlin: 2000). Touch Screen and Pressure Sensitive Button Matrix,” Proceedings of NIME (Pittsburgh, PA: 2009). ated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering 12. See . and Computer Science from Princeton Univer- 37. Adrian Freed, “Application of New Fiber and 13. See . sity in 2002. He has been educated by music Malleable Materials for Agile Development of Aug- technology leaders, including Perry R. Cook 14. See . mented Instruments and Controllers,” Proceedings of NIME (Genova, Italy: 2008). and George Tzanetakis, and received mentor- 15. See . ship from robotic musical instrument sculp- 38. See . 16. See . heart trained on drum set, tabla, sitar and 17. See . 39. Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner et al., “The other percussion instruments from around the ReacTable,” Proceedings of ICMC (Barcelona, Spain: world, Kapur strives to push the technological 18. See . 2005). barrier in order to explore new sounds, rhythms 19. Perry R. Cook, “Principles for Designing Com- 40. Hochenbaum and Vallis [33]. and melodies.

34 Vallis and Kapur, Community-Based Design

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_00058 by guest on 30 September 2021