Responsive Devices and Systems for Expert Music Interaction

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Computing technology (CT) has a tremendous impact on our everyday life, including the way we communicate with each other, make purchases and drive cars. Similarly, CT has an immense impact in music composition, production and performance. Indeed, new musical forms and contexts have appeared that are mostly, or totally, based on CT, transforming the way we think about, generate and interact with sounds. Given the extreme cognitive and physical requirements involved in high-level musical performance, it is essential to provide musicians with advanced, responsive and reliable tools with which they can express themselves. It is also essential to understand how they interact with such technologies and how they develop performance expertise, i.e. how experts become experts. To tackle these issues, we will carry out a research program in two directions: 1)The development of tools for music interaction, specifically functional prototypes, by creating responsive devices with embedded sound synthesis and advanced vibrotactile feedback allowing for advanced musical interactions; 2)The analysis of the development of performance expertise with functional prototypes. We will develop several functioning prototypes designed for responsiveness and reliability required for sound and musical interactions. We will extensively use fast prototyping tools available at the recently established Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI)-funded Performance Research Laboratory (PRL) at McGill University to create a variety of functional prototypes, track performer movements and actions over time and correlate them with expertise development through qualitative analysis (questionnaires and peer evaluations).Functional prototypes will then be given to musicians who will be able to develop interaction/performance techniques over time in PRL's controlled environment, from a several weeks to a few months (longitudinal studies), then using the unique CFI-funded Multimedia Room, allowing for audience participation. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, we will track the development of expertise and probe how complex music interaction skills are developed over time. Using the knowledge obtained from this research, we will create novel technologies that fulfill the needs of highly-skilled performers using reliable and responsive CT in musical contexts, allowing them to perform in expressive ways, independently of the form of music they create.