December 2010

Table of Contents

I. Abstract
II. Keywords
III. Introduction
- 3.1 Concept
- 3.2 Design Questions
IV. Significance and Audience
- 4.1 Significance
- 4.2 Audience
V. Methodology
- 5.1 Process
- 5.2 Prototype Overview
- 5.3 User Scenarios
VI. Domains and Precedents
- 6.1 Domains
- 6.2 Precedents
VII. Reflections and Next Steps
- 7.1 Next Steps
- 7.2 Production Plan

For a PDF version of this paper, click here.

I. Abstract

This thesis presents a new interface for musical composition and performance that makes use of the idea of rhythm as it applies to color, shape, and sound. Using tangible, audio-visual interactions, this thesis illustrates how our understanding of visual music and computation can be applied as considerations in musical interfaces. Originating as an investigation into the interaction between rhythm and technology, I’m illustrating how physical and representative objects can translate, transmit, and be encoded with sound.

There is a long history of investigation into rhythm as well as the connections between the visual, sound, and computation, and the goals of this thesis investigation are:

• Use technology as a way to reveal alternative models and interactions with rhythm and composition using color, shape, and sound.
• Provide an interaction that allows for multiple strategies from groups or individuals to reveal positive outcomes.
• As an instrument, the final piece should allow for experimentation, reward for mastery, and be a vehicle for expression.

This paper will review the current status of the project, Rhythm, as completed during the Fall Semester of 2010 by Ryan Raffa, a MFA Candidate in the program of Design and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design.

II. Keywords

Rhythm, Sound, Technology, Composition, Musical Performance, Design Research, Tangible User Interfaces, Generative Music, Computation

III. Introduction

3.1 Concept
This thesis presents a new interface for musical composition and performance that makes use of the idea of rhythm as it applies to color, shape, and sound. Using tangible, audio-visual interactions, this thesis illustrates how our understanding of visual music and computation can be applied as considerations in musical interfaces. Originating as an investigation into the interaction between rhythm and technology, I’m illustrating how physical and representative objects can translate, transmit, and be encoded with sound.

There is a long history of investigation into rhythm as well as the connections between the visual, sound, and computation, and the goals of this thesis investigation are:

• Use technology as a way to reveal alternative models and interactions with rhythm and composition using color, shape, and sound.
• Provide an interaction that allows for multiple strategies from groups or individuals to reveal positive outcomes.
• As an instrument, the final piece should allow for experimentation, reward for mastery, and be a vehicle for expression.

3.2 Design Questions
This project began with the simple question, “What is rhythm?”. From this initial investigation sprouted a series of inquiries that ask how is rhythm embedded within our visually-dominated experiences, how can the visual not only emulate but be encoded with sound and be used for composition, in what ways can visual music be used to understand rhythm, and what are ways in which composition can be intertwined with performance and experimental notation.

3.2.1 What is rhythm?
Within the context of this project, rhythm and experience are seen as one and the same. Whether it is the light reflecting off a city wall, the sound of the breeze blowing through a tree, or the computer on the table top, the world that surrounds us is constantly giving off some form of rhythmic pulse, both perceived and unintelligible.

IV. Significance and Audience

4.1 Significance
There is a long history of rhythm analysis (ex. color, sound, the spoken word, the written word, the physical, etc) and the relationships between them (such as sound and the visual). In light of the constructivist view of learning¹, the mental models and templates that allow us to understand our experiences are based on what we hear, see, feel, and smell. We now have the opportunity to use technology, not as a single lens, but as an addition to our current senses to perceive and apply meaning to the rhythms around us.

Much has been written about how we perceive and apply meaning to all that surrounds us. The French philosopher and music critic, Gabriel Marcel, wrote:

Meaning arises when an individual becomes aware, either affectively or intellectually, of the implications of a stimulus in a particular context. As long as behavior is habitual and ‘unthinking’ the stimuli presented to the mind are neither meaningful nor meaningless…[O]ur experience of such stimuli stands in the same relationship to the meaningful-meaningless axis as the concept of ‘amoral’ stands in relation to the moral-immoral axies.²

The previous decades worth of technological advancement have been predominantly focused on the improvement of systems that we currently have in place. In Why the Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet, Alan Kay writes:

When I was working on personal computers thirty years ago, I realized that as long as a computer sat on a desk and looked like a time-sharing terminal, it wasn’t participating in the actual revolution. It was participating in the automation of the old.³

We are now in a time where technology can and should be designed to explore new aspects of our understanding and expression of our experiences.

In Hertzian Tales, Anthony Dunne wrote, “In a world where practicality and functionality can be taken for grated, the aesthetics of the post-optimal object could provide new experiences of everyday life, new poetic dimensions.”⁴ In an era where media (specifically sound) consumption has become codified, standardized, and prescribed, there is a large space for play within the realm of media and sound experiences and is an essential understanding for why this project should be done now.

With “post-optimal” design theory in mind, taking computers and other technology out from behind the screen, keyboard, spreadsheet, or “black-box” and introducing new interactions will move the computer away from the printing press and improve it as an instrument in learning and understanding.

Sound interaction will provide the opportunity to familiarize an individual or group with the new perspectives on existing realities. By developing this ability to express through sound, the hope is that new perspectives and ways of thinking will permeate and people will be, as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes, “partially freed from reliance on the objectified consciousness.”⁵

There have been many that warn against the adoption of using technology as a method for understanding, especially as it relates to sound. In the book Philosophy of Modern Music, Theodor Adorno writes, “The adaptation to machine music implies a renunciation of one’s own human feelings.”⁶ In an era where the majority of all popular music is recorded and performed with the drums toeing the line of a click-track, the voices auto-tuned, the guitars processed through digital foot-pedal interfaces, are we all a little less human for hearing (and possibly enjoying) this metronomic machine music? Is it Adorno’s feeling that the click-track beat falls where a human hand would have placed it, or is it that we have relinquished (or surrendered) our autonomy and placed a computer behind the wheel of our culture and our music?

Adorno is missing one of the most exciting areas to explore with beats and rhythm and that is the area that resides between the spaces left by the computer’s methodical measurements of time. Having spent hours upon hours hearing a metronome measuring out hurdles of time, the drummer will find the deeper, more human elements of rhythm that exist at or around the automated time-keeping.

In addition, as opposed to focusing on musician as the performer, Adorno could also look to the club dancer as the performer. In Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space, Peter Shapiro writes, “music organises time with its rhythm, and dancing to it is one of the few ways we have to suspend and stretch time. Even more than solar and lunar cycles, rhythm machines are presently the arbiters of time.”⁷ Using the steady pulse of the machine, our human motions warp its measurements with movement.

In stark contrast to Adorno, Jonathan Kramer, in Postmodern Music / Postmodern Thought, lists out 16 characteristics that he deemed representative of postmodern music. Two that are supremely relevant to this project are that postmodern music “considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts,”⁸ and postmodern music “considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music.”⁹

In reflecting on these two statements, similar to games and the playing of games, music is not something that resides outside of what it is to be human or social beings, but instead is a direct result, a clear reflection, and a contributor to our nature and our culture. Does that explain our natural ability and desire to understand and physically respond to rhythm?

I see this project as a step towards finding our collective balance as it relates to sound composition and consumption. In the book Design as Art, artist and designer Bruno Munari writes:

When the objects we use every day and the surroundings we live in have become in themselves a work of art, then we shall be able to say that we have achieved a balanced life.¹⁰

As a design gesture and acknowledgement of the social responsibility of the designer, as opposed to a mass-produced aesthetic experience, this project aims to provide moments of simple clarity and exploration in both ends and means.

4.2 Audience
The objective is to provide a musical instrument that allows the novice a low enough barrier of use so that they are able to participate and create while providing the expert a balanced level of feedback so there is a reward for experimentation, mastery, and exploration.

With Csikszentmihalyi’s understanding of Flow as well as the unpredictable nature of musical instruments, I plan to address these challenges with multiple levels of play. Each person approaching this instrument will bring their own experiences and views of rhythm (whether grounded in color, shape, sound, or any variation of the three) as well as ability in composition, so there needs to be simplicity in rules but levels of complexity in how colors, shapes, and sounds interact.

V. Methodology

5.1 Process
The idea of continuous prototyping on a set of processes, principles, or design concepts is interesting, invigorating and is being used extensively in this thesis project. Each work is a part of a much larger work (our life’s work), and these works describe micro-cycles of the much larger life cycle. The design process is not defined as a problem-solver, so is it inappropriate to think of it as a never-ending cycle of prototypes within the cycle of creating?

Throughout the process this semester, I used a set of initial questions and constraints (theoretical, material, and/or interaction-based) to create a series of sketches. From there I developed a strategy for how best to execute these prototypes based on my current skill set and available resources (ex. what materials are available in the left-over bin in the Physical Computing room?). I often times would take on more challenging prototypes that were outside of my comfort zone in order to learn a new skill in the process.

Michael Hensel and Achim Menges, in their article “Patterns in Performance-Orientated Design”, investigate patterns that “arises out of the interaction of man-made interventions with the natural environment”¹¹ (as opposed to aesthetically-driven or natural-model driven pattern making) within architectural design. A relevant quote that relates to their discussion of complexity and simplicity, Hensel and Menges write:

From flocking patterns to fractal geometry, the reduction of complexity to a single set of abstract rules has shifted attention away from the messy, embodied realities of existence towards the very real need to create working methodologies that are inclusive, process based and physical.¹²

The goal of Rhythm is not to create complex, visual structures of sound representations, but instead to provide a set of simple rules that allow users to create visual music pieces that transmit the visual and sound rhythms embedded within.

John Cage consistently emphasized that he was not interested in objects; instead he was interested in processes.¹³ Through these processes, Cage was retelling or creating new versions of a similar story, the story of sobering and quieting the mind to become susceptible to divine influences. For this thesis, the process is to realize rhythm through the interaction with technology which is key to exploring and illustrating why certain decisions are made from prototype to prototype.

Cage, in The Tiger’s Eye, wrote “any attempt to exclude the irrational is irrational. Any composing strategy which is wholly ‘rational’ is irrational in the extreme.”¹⁴ This is a powerful statement, especially when applied to the design process. Does the final form need to be “rational”, or is the “why?” and “who cares?” capable of holding a set of irrational outcomes together to say something meaningful?

Cage goes on and writes, “Structure–that is, the division of a work into successive sections and phrases–is controlled by the composer’s intellect. The method of composition and the composer’s materials may either be controlled through rational decision or may be the spontaneous result of improvisation and inspiration. Form, the final result, is the actual content of a composition.”¹⁵

David Carroll, who participated in the final Fall critique of MFA DT Major Studio Interface (2009), said, “look to make the experience more real than real.” This phrase is very influential in how to approach the design process. Now that optimally designed objects have reached the point of saturation, moving beyond efficiency and providing experiences for the brain and body that contextualize and alter how people view their daily lives should be a primary focus.

5.2 Prototype Overview
For the first series of prototypes, I focused on 2-dimensional, screen-based projects, and after reflecting on the experience and receiving valuable feedback, I began creating tangible, object-oriented scenarios.

5.2.1 Proximity Instrument
For this prototype, I used three specific aspects of the user and object interaction as constraints to better develop these ideas. The aspects were:

• proximity
• user input via physical interaction
• user relationship to the installation piece

Using an Ardweeny, small bread board, MaxBotix Ultra Range Finder, a small plastic encasing, hardboard, and a RadioShack speaker, I created a proximity-based sound box that is mounted on the edge of a bicycle wheel. The mount (made of leftover scraps of wood from the Physical Computing room here at Parsons) is attached to the wheel with zip ties.

I wanted to provide some form of physical input for the person interacting with the piece as well as recognize that if multiple people were involved, each person should have a unique sound experience. By including the bicycle wheel as the method for activating the installation piece as well as PVC pipe that can easily be moved, the user has a direct impact on the sounds that they hear.

As the sound box rotates around the hardboard platform, the PVC pipes that are placed on the platform trigger tones based on their distance to the sound box. The tone rises and falls as the pipe comes into and out of range.

I conducted initial prototyping of possible patterns and designs that could be projected or otherwise provided on the platform. I initially played with simple patterns of circles, but based on a suggestion from a classmate, I used patterns based on the golden ratio and the fibonacci sequence as well.

Having addressed location and proximity in this prototype, the next prototype was focused on the consideration of color. Using the understanding of subtractive color, the prototype uses the color of the object to determine the tone that is played.

5.2.2 Tangible Instrument Mock-up
For this prototype, the goal was to demonstrate the possible changes in the interaction when I moved from a 2-dimensional on-screen space to a 3-D physical space. The color, size, and location of the objects placed within the radar field all have an impact on the sounds produced.

5.2.3 Tangible Color Music Instrument
This prototype moves my “radar player” out into physical space and allows users to manipulate and move translucent, colored plastic pieces over a lit background. A camera above the lit platform provides information to my openFrameworks application that is looking for specific data points of hue, saturation, and value. As a virtual “radar” passes over combinations of colors, users are able to compose through exploring sound and the visual.

I focused on three specific aspects of the object and user interaction, which were:

• color
• look and feel
• collaboration

I made 3 different versions of this prototype in 3 days to move quickly through a set of possible components and interactions. The components that were used consistently throughout were several pieces of translucent, colored-plastic (1″ X 1″ and 3″ X 3″), light, and a PS3 camera.

Initially I used a light table which provided a quick set-up but poor image quality (hallogen light) and too small a surface to allow users to work well together. The second and third iteration made use of a milk crate, cardboard spray painted white, and a translucent piece of plexiglass (18″ X 24″).

5.3 User Scenarios
I set these prototypes up in the 10th floor lab here at Parsons and had a series of Design and Technology students (both MFA and BFA) try each of them. A total of 5 groups of students tested this instrument.

Within each of the scenario’s, the sets of user groups attempted different approaches to the plastic pieces. I feel these approaches differed based on the user’s own creative style. Some stacked them, others bound them with tape, and one even tossed the plastic pieces in the air and let them fall randomly on the lit plastic platform of the instrument.

In relation to the collaborative element, I feel the actual set-up of the prototypes influenced the users. The first prototype only allowed people to approach it from 2 sides, so there was a limited amount of space. Comments from users such as, “Oh, I’ll wait until you’re finished,” or, “Sorry,” were prevalent.

The second and third prototypes allowed users to approach the instrument from 3 sides, and the level of collaboration, such as combining colors and adding to a single piece together, was much more evident. The feedback that I received was directed more towards possible next steps and additional elements to include, which I felt reflected a successful prototype that provided an accurate representation of where I am at with the process.

VI. Domains and Precedents

6.1 Domains
Rhythm, sound, technology, tangible user interfaces, generative and procedural music composition, and visual music

6.2 Precedents
6.2.1 Visual Music
Many have looked at the connections between the visual and sound over the past three centuries. Musical notation and written language represent traditional approaches while the work of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, Len Lye and Oskar Fischinger’s moving images, as well as John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s collaborations can be seen as more experimental approaches to understanding these connections.

At the beginning of “Journalism in the Age of Data”, IBM researcher Fernanda Viégas states, “Half of our brain is wired for vision.” Viégas goes on and says, “Vision is the biggest bandwidth that we have in terms of sensory information to the outside world.”¹⁶ Our understanding of what surrounds us, and thus the meaning we apply to it, is driven primarily through what we see. The importance of providing a visual experience as a part of this project cannot be understated.

While discussing my plans for this project, fellow classmate, Manuel Rueda Iragorri, suggested I read the chapter “Bit by Bit by Bit” from the book Code. In the chapter, Charles Petzold dissects the underpinnings of bar codes (and other visual codes that can be seen by computers and by humans) and how their fundamentals are based in binary. The discussion and imagery is visually inspiring and brings up constraints that need to be incorporated into the design and architecture of the visual music codes of this project.

Experimental notation techniques in works such as Ivan Vyshnegradsky’s Temple of Light (1943) and John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1960) illustrate the deinstitutionalizing of traditional notation in favor of exploration and experimentation.

Paul Klee’s Variations (1927) and Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #273: Lines to points on a grid (1975) provide a framework for how the combination of variation in condensed line and color can be used to provide rhythmically complex compositions.

František Kupka’s The Cathedral (1913), Paul Klee’s Fugue in Red (1921), and Armin Martinmuller’s Hommage A Froberger Opus 225 – Lamentation (1981-1982) speak to how patterns of shape and color can emulate music and provide brief synesthesic-based experiences.

Christian Marclay’s Chalkboard (2010) provided museum goers with a collaborative score and Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-On (2005) inserted the physical back into the digital instrument.

With an understanding of the different styles of music, this thesis proposes what a collaboration between Larry Levan and John Cage would sound like if they had this tangible instrument to use?

6.2.2 Tangible User Interfaces (TUI)
When reviewing music educator James Mursell’s views on rhythm and music, Reimer and Wright wrote, “rhythm in music must literally be felt in order to be experienced…Listeners perceive rhythmic patterns in sensory media (even media that seem nonrhythmic) and invent structures if needed.”¹⁷ The mental structures that we create to understand and rationalize are based on our collective experiences up to this point. What needs to change is not specifically the methods in which we learn, but the structures we use to understand our current times.

With the theory of learning that Seymour Papert and Constructionists put forth¹⁸ and in light of James Mursell’s views on rhythm, providing a tangible experience where users are free to experiment and build out their own compositions is key to the success of this project. Projects such as James Patten’s Sensetable (2001), Golan Levin’s Scrapple (2005), and Reactable Systems Reactable (2009) all address how TUI’s can be used in creative sound experiences.

Other recent projects, such as Atelier Hauert Reichmuth Instant City (2006) and James George and Daniel Peterson’s Temporary Cities (2010) show how visual music can blur the distinction of object, sound, and composition.

6.3.2 Rhythm Theory
Despite my intimacy with it, answering the question “What is rhythm?” is complex. When responding to that exact question, Henri Lefebvre, the French sociologist and philosopher, and Catherine Régulier wrote:

Everyone thinks he knows what this word means. In fact, everyone perceives it in an empirical way that is very different from knowledge; rhythm is part of the ‘lived’, but that does not mean that it is part of the ‘known’. There’s a big gap between an observation and a definition, and an even bigger one between grasping a rhythm — the rhythm of a tune, of breathing, or the beating of the heart — and being able to conceive of the simultaneous intertwining of several rhythms, their unity in diversity.¹⁹

In discussing rhythm, music, and our minds, Oliver Sacks, professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, wrote, “We anticipate the beat, we get rhythmic patterns as soon as we hear them, and we establish internal models or templates of them.”²⁰ Similar to Mursell’s view of rhythm, we cannot help but create models and templates that allow us to understand, but what Sacks does affectively is bring up a valuable point that patterns don’t necessarily have to be felt but can also be heard and seen.

Sacks discusses further the implication of rhythm and the group mind, and writes:

[t]he binding is accomplished by rhythm–not only heard but internalized, identically, in all who are present. Rhythm turns listeners into participants, makes listening active and motoric, and synchronizes the brains and minds (and, since emotion is always intertwined with music, the “hearts”) of all who participate.²¹

The rhythmic patterns and models that we have are not just constructed by individuals but are a component to group understanding and learning.

VII. Reflections and Next Steps

7.1 Next Steps
There are a number of challenges and exciting updates that need to be addressed in the coming months, which can be broken down into 3 specific areas:

• Different user needs as they relate to Flow
• Variety of experience
• Extensibility

Matt Leacock, Yahoo user experience designer and the game designer behind Pandemic, spoke of his challenges during his “What Can Board Games Teach Us?” lecture at Google. Leacock illustrated these exact same challenges when reviewing his approach to Pandemic, and I see many parallels between game design and instrument design as this project develops.

The chief parallel being the creation of a system that responds to many types of users. As a musical instrument, it must have a simple and transparent rule set implied by its affordances and respond to the skill level of the participants.

In addition to that, the goal is also to provide ease of composition and variation. By providing multiple instrument states (ex. simple composition mode and complexity mode) as well as reward for exploration, my goal is to encourage users to try multiple strategies when interacting with the instrument.

Embracing the core beliefs of open-source as referred to by Steve Lambert in his talk “Free” at the New Museum, the system should be available to be modified, updated, adjusted, and reinvented by the users. As opposed to a black box that provides many barriers to reinterpretation, this project should imbue and embody open-source theoretic aesthetics.

In the book dadaism by Dietmar Elger, Kurt Schwitters was quoted as saying, “you know exactly as I do what art is: it is nothing more than a rhythm. But if that is so, I shan’t bother myself with imitation or the soul, but purely and simply produce rhythms with whatever takes my fancy.”²² This approach and understanding of rhythm should be one of the many voices that can be heard through the instrument.

Near the end of his TED talk about Flow, Csikszentmihalyi states, “the question we are trying to address is how to put more and more of everyday life in the flow channel and that is the kind of challenge that we are trying to understand.”²³ I feel that by providing an exploratory instrument that provides simple interactions with rhythm and technology, we will find new ways of seeing and understanding our daily lives that produce a more balanced life experience.

7.2 Production Plan
7.2.1 Winter Break Deadlines
December 30th – Updated sound (Max MSP) and color processing (openFrameworks)
January 3rd – Completed list of new components and supplies
January 6th – Integrate camera / projector interaction
January 9th – Complete in-house testing
January 15th – Compile list of conferences and festivals where I want to submit this work
January 21st – Test updated prototype with following user groups:

• Guerra Paint Shop Staff and Patrons
• New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music Students and Professors
• Urban Arts Partnership Students and Staff / New Youth City Students and Staff
• Parsons Students, Alumni, and Professors

¹ Piaget.
^2 Marcel, 9.
³ Kay, 8.
^4 Dunne, 20.
⁵ Csikszentmihaly, 28.
⁶ Shapiro, 132.
⁷ Ibid, 139.
⁸ Auner and Lochhead, 16.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Munari, 27.
¹¹ Michael Hensel and Achim Menges, 89.
¹² Michael Hensel and Achim Menges, 96.
¹³ Cott and Cage.
¹⁴ Bernstein, 118.
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Journalism in the Age of Data.
¹⁷ Reimer and Wright, 130.
¹⁸ Papert.
¹⁹ Lefebvre, 193.
²⁰ Sacks, 261.
²¹ Sacks, 262.
²² Elger, 60.
²³ Csikszentmihaly, TED Talk.

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