Super Size Me: Interface Size, Identity and Embodiment in Digital Musical Instrument Design

Title of the Paper

Super Size Me: Interface Size, Identity and Embodiment in Digital Musical Instrument Design

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Digital Musical Instrument Design, Embodied Experience
• Keywords: Large-scale digital interfaces, interface design, digital musical instruments, embodiment, entanglement, effort, interaction

Research Background and Problem

• Identified Issues or Challenges: Advances in digital technology have led to a trend of miniaturization in interface design, which conflicts with the unchanging dimensions of the human body. The trend of miniaturization in digital musical instrument (DMI) design may overlook opportunities to explore the potential of larger interfaces.

• Significance: The size of an interface not only affects user behavior but also influences the formation of user identity. For music creation and performance, interface size plays a crucial role in shaping the relationship between embodiment, effort, and cultural diversity.

• Research Motivation: The study aims to explore how large-scale digital interfaces impact musicians' behavior and self-perception, and to understand, from the perspectives of embodiment and entanglement theories, how technology reshapes human identity and culture.

Solution

• Methods or Solutions: A large-scale digital musical instrument (2 meters wide, tall) was developed, and 10 musicians were invited to create compositions using this instrument. A longitudinal study over three weeks was conducted to examine how interface size influences performers' behavior, identity perception, and the music creation process.

• Innovative Aspects: The study systematically explores how large interfaces interact with diverse body sizes, musical backgrounds, and creative styles, providing new insights into the entangled relationship between technology and humans.

• Implementation Steps and Techniques:

  1. Designed a large digital musical instrument, including physical hardware (PVC pipes, 20 pendulums, etc.) and software (audio algorithms based on Pure Data).
  2. The instrument's pitch was designed in ascending C# melodic minor scales, encouraging melodic creation while emphasizing texture and timbre exploration.
  3. Using a longitudinal approach, participants performed and practiced for three weeks, one hour per week, completing several original musical compositions.
  4. Data was collected through video recordings of performances, semi-structured interviews, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Research Findings

• Specific Findings: The designed instrument significantly influenced participants' performance behaviors, including:

  • Prioritizing comfortable pitch ranges during performance, with less focus on melody.
  • Changes in embodied experiences, such as feeling empowered, requiring more arm strength, or relying on bodily memory.
  • Encouraging participants to innovatively explore new gestures and techniques through interface design.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions: Unlike the miniaturization trend in digital musical interfaces, this large-scale instrument design emphasizes the impact of spatial dimensions and embodiment on music creation. The new design thinking, based on the relationship between the body and space, helps break traditional design paradigms.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • Participants noted that the effort required by the instrument design (e.g., stretching or arm strength) was crucial to their creative and performance processes.
  • All participants completed the assigned creative tasks, though individual habits, styles, and innovative approaches varied.
  • Many participants demonstrated an entangled relationship with the instrument and reshaped their musical identities through its use.

• Limitations and Future Directions: Limitations:

  1. The study sample was limited to 10 musicians, and the instrument's generalizability was not validated.
  2. Practical limitations of large instruments in terms of storage and portability.

  Future Directions:

  1. Explore the impact of even larger or differently scaled instruments on performance behavior.
  2. Test user perceptions of large interfaces across different cultural, physical, and technical backgrounds.
  3. Promote the instrument within broader musical communities to encourage diversity in interface size design.