Pet Sounds: Creating Music using Social Media and Mobile Technologies

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposed project seeks to explore the ways in which the power of social media and social interactions-whether online or in the real world-can be harnessed to create digital music. The core methodology of the project is to develop a mobile app, Pet Sounds, which will be used to study these interactions. Pet Sounds will enable users to create a musical self-portrait or 'musical selfie', a musical representation of the user that reflects social experiences. In order to modify this composition, users must engage in different kinds of social interactions. These interactions might take place via social media like Facebook or Instagram. For example, chatting with another user might result in one kind of musical outcome, while tagging friends in a photo might result in another kind of musical outcome. The composition can evolve only through these kinds of social interactions, as well as by undertaking real-world social activities with friends. The musical selfie logs these interactions via different kinds of compositional transformations. For example, the composition might grow longer or shorter in duration; it might add a new voice or voices; it may change timbral qualities, tempo, rhythms, harmonies, and so on. The sounds and music will be generated almost entirely via social activities. Users will be able to share their musical selfies with each other, and collaborate with other users in developing their compositions.This study entails an interdisciplinary collaboration that spans musicology, ethnography, and composition and software design. The researchers will develop Pet Sounds in the context of workshops with diverse groups of participants who have varying backgrounds in music, music technologies, and social media use. The app will be designed to appeal to specialist and non-specialist users alike. While the app itself will not be released as an output during the lifespan of the project, its prototyping will provide the basis for studying socially-based musical interactions. These interactions will be studied via critical perspectives in musicology, sound studies, composition, and interaction design. The outputs of the project will include a co-authored journal article, conference paper, public presentations and performances that will examine the many creative, critical/theoretical and technical dimensions of the research.The research team will be based at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast, the University of Oxford, and the University of Bristol. Workshops will take place at the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed, Bristol. This non-academic partner will be important in attracting a diverse community of creative practitioners, technologists, and general audiences. At Watershed, the research team will conduct a series of Design and Play Workshops, and a Lunchtime Talk. In Belfast, the research team will partner with the Junior Academy of Music to reach music educators and young people aged 12 to 17 years in the context of workshops on 'App-ifying Music'. Other key elements of impact will include hosting a panel for media artists and technologists at an international media arts centre, and a presentation for creative industry professionals at a major industry event.The aim of the research is to show how music making can evolve as a social activity using new digital technologies. The proposed project will be playful, collaborative, interactive, participative and fundamentally social. In this way it diverges from projects in music technology that either require a great deal of skill on the part of the performer or expertise on the part of the listener. Pet Sounds will show that 'new music' and digital music cultures can be inclusive, engaging, and friendly. It will further show that users or participants themselves can play a large role in collaboratively creating compositions that are musically interesting and that draw upon users' own experiences in meaningful ways.