Designing Constraints: Composing and Performing with Digital Musical Systems

摘要

From both informal and formal surveys (e.g., Magnusson and Hurtado Mendieta 2008) of myrnmusical systems, I have realized that in learning the instrument and engaging with its expressive potential, people are only initially concerned with the affordances of the interface. The main bulk of the time spent in learning the instrument involves building a habituated mental model of its constraints. Similarly, the Phalanger affords hand-gesture recognition, but in performance, the user focuses primarily on the relationship between gestures and parameters in the sound engine. These parameters define the instrument more than any physical camera or screen-based representation.