Rhythmic interaction design for electronic music: multi-touch technologies, affordances, embodied conceptual metaphors and performance practice

Abstract

Within rhythmic electronic music, I contest that a fundamental mismatch exists between the tools commonly used in its creation, and the musical structures with which they are concerned. This thesis interrogates the state of the art with regard to the rhythmic interface. I discuss how technological determinism and “lock-in” may be seen to affect artistic practice, and present different viewpoints on re-conceptualising the rhythmic interface, beyond prevalent paradigms.

I detail my approach in developing Axis, an intuitive performance tool for manipulating rhythmic loops of audio. Axis has been created in an iterative and modular fashion using open source software. Core to the design philosophy is the primacy of looped audio as a feature of contemporary rhythmic electronic music. Axis uses non-linear, continuous cyclic representations of looped audio objects, which reflect the user’s actions and the system’s behaviour through multi-modal feedback. The design framework has been guided by Lakoff and Johnson’s theories of conceptual metaphor and image schema, and by experientialist perspectives of embodied cognitive perception. I examine the overlapping areas of HCI and electronic/computer music research in considering the relevance of affordances and metaphor in design, with specific regard to the creation of technologically-mediated musical performance systems. The design of this system is based on an adaptable conceptual model for loop-based performance, closely informed by the demands of contemporary creative practice. This work aims to exploit the discernible features of looped audio through considered gestures afforded by a multi-touch tablet interface. In proposing a rethink of the rhythmic interface, I suggest Axis as one alternative that facilitates meaningful, multi-parametric control over the relationships between the actions,processes and structures of rhythmic electronic music.

Date of Award	Apr 2015
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for Employment and Learning (DEL)
Supervisor	Frank Lyons (Supervisor) & Brian Bridges (Supervisor)