Some more interesting research on expression, collaboration through music

Contexts of Collaborative Musical ExperiencesBlaine, Fels (2003)

We explore a variety of design criteria applicable to the creation of collaborative interfaces for musical experience. The main factor common to the design of most collaborative interfaces for novices is that musical control is highly restricted, which makes it possible to easily learn and participate in the collective experience. Balancing this tradeoff is a key concern for designers, as this happens at the expense of providing an upward path to virtuosity with the interface. We attempt to identify design considerations exemplified by a sampling of recent collaborative devices primarily oriented toward novice interplay. It is our intention to provide a non-technical overview of design issues inherent in configuring multiplayer experiences, particularly for entrylevel players.

The Interactive Dance Club: Avoiding Chaos In A Multi Participant Environment

Ulyate, Bianciardi (2001)

Our primary goal was to deliver musically coherent and visually satisfying results from several participants’ input. The result, the Interactive Dance Club, ran for four nights at the ACM SIGGRPAH 98 convention in Orlando, Florida. In this paper we will briefly describe the Interactive Dance Club, our “10 Commandments of Interactivity”, and what we learned from it’s premiere at SIGGRAPH 98.

yet some research on collaborative music creation

JamSpace: a networked real-time collaborative music environment

by Michael Gurevich

The motivation, design, implementation and analysis of a networked environment for real-time music collaboration are presented. JamSpace provides a simple hardware and software interface that allows novices to play music together anonymously from isolated locations connected by a local network. The low-latency conditions of a local network allow for real-time rhythmic collaboration. This in turn facilitates satisfaction of the design requirements of accessibility to novices as well as privacy an …

Music and voice: Daisyphone: the design and impact of a novel environment for remote group music improvisation

N. Bryan-Kinns

Music has lost its role as a central part of many people’s everyday action. This paper reports on the design and impact of a novel environment for remote group music improvisation with the view to understanding how we could design more engaging, social, and serendipitous musical environments. The design reported here focuses on the representation of looping music, support for remote collaboration, and support for idea formulation. Observations of use suggest that the environment developed does e …

Application system: Incorporating co-presence in distributed virtual music environment

Byungdae Jung, Jaein Hwang, Sangyoon Lee, Gerard Jounghyun Kim, Hyunbin Kim

In this paper, we present “PODIUM (POstech Distributed virtual Music environment)”, a distributed virtual environment that allows users to participate in a shared space and play music with other participants in a collaborative manner. In addition to playing virtual instruments, users can communicate and interact in various ways to enhance the collaboration and, thus, the quality of the music played together. Musical messages are generated note by note through interaction with the keyboard, mouse …

The Jam-O-Drum interactive music system: a study in interaction design

Tina Blaine, Tim Perkis

This paper will describe the multi-user interactive music system known as the Jam-O-Drum developed at Interval Research Corporation.1 By combining velocity sensitive input devices and computer graphics imagery into an integrated tabletop surface, up to six simultaneous players are able to participate in a collaborative approach to musical improvisation. We demonstrate that this interactive music system embraces both the novice and musically trained participants by taking advantage of their …

Short talks: communication and collaboration: Interacting with music in a social setting

Ali Mazalek, Tristan Jehan

This paper describes the design of a new system for interacting with music in a social setting. MusiCocktail allows users to influence certain parameters of a pre-composed and pre-recorded piece of music in the way they mix their beverages at a social gathering. This new form of interaction with music enables group participation in the creation of a rich musical environment.

Music and voice: Jukola: democratic music choice in a public space

Kenton O’Hara, Matthew Lipson, Marcel Jansen, Axel Unger, Huw Jeffries, Peter Macer

Jukola is an interactive MP3 Jukebox device designed to allow a group of people in a public space to democratically choose the music being played. A public display is used to nominate songs which are subsequently voted on by people in the bar using networked wireless handheld devices. Local bands and artists can also upload their own MP3s to the device over the Web. The paper presents a field trial of the system in a local cafe bar. As well as the value in affording a democratic musical outcome, …

Research for presentation

Intelligent Street: Responsive Sound Environments for Social Interaction – Lörstad, d´Inverno, Eacott (2004)

A project from the Interactive Institute Pitea and the University of Westminster.
People can create a common sound environment by essentially sending text messages with their mobiles that are translated into musical operations. The overall output of the installation is thus the result of the history of dialogue created by the commands of the users. Within the installation the pre-defined commands that are available to users are highlighted on a projected graphic display. If for a certain time nobody sends an SMS to the server, the music´s sound slowly decreases to a barely audible background sound.

Facilitating Collective Musical Creativity - Takana, Tokui, Momeni (2005)
An article about projects from the Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris.
Interactive music systems for the consumers, for the not trained musicians. The artistic mission takes on a social aspect. It is about live social music software. Facilitating social creativity.
The authors introduce two different concepts. The second one is especially cool.
The software CC-Remix allows up to four users to create music together by mixing excerpts from existing songs (-> mash-up culture).
Malleable Mobile Music uses wireless ad-hoc networks to create participative, shared musical experiences amongst listeners. Participants get a custom made device equipped with sensors and network connectivity. By moving and by gripping the device of all the participants music is processed on the fly by a server. Users decide upon a common song that they want to listen to and that want to listen to and that they want to improvise upon. With selecting a song, each participant must create his own musical identity. This can be a specific instrument (e.g. horn or bass) or an identifiable family of sounds (percussion, synthesizer). Now the device serves as an interface to create music collaborativly. For instance, the intensity with which a listener holds the mobile device can be translated intor the timbral brightness of the music. The relative geographic location of users in the group procides a higher level information about the community and drives the mixing of the different musical modules.

The Use of Conventional and New Music Media: Implications for Future Technologies – Brown, Geelhoed, Sellen (2001)

This article is a extensive field study on practices in music use and new media. The article identifies ways to find out about music (which is generally through friends). And also, attitudes on copying/buying, behaviours in compiling and organizing music. The articles implies that different kinds of music media are appreciated in different phases of the “music listening lifecycle”. “Whereas intangible, digital media formats bring many exciting possibilities for enhancement of sharing and creativity, tangible media offer their own affordances in terms of browsing and collecting”.

Push!Music: Intelligent Music Sharing on Mobile Devices – Jacobsson, Rost, Håkansson, Holmquist (2005)

A music sharing application for mobile devices. The aim is to make media autonomosly find people instead of the other way around – throguh an agency in the media file itself. The application also allows making recommendations through ”pushing” of music to other users. The application allows recommending music in a local setting, sharing is collaborative/unaware or pushed/aware.

Personal vs. Commercial Content: The Similarities Between Consumer Use of Photos and Music – Bentley, Metcalf, Harboe (2006)

The article discuss the similarities in sharing behaviour of photos and music. The article covers making allowances for satisficing behavior, sharing media as a way to reminisce or to communicate an experience (tell a story), getting sidetracked while browsing, and similarities in organizing behaviors. What is of most interest for our project is the descriptions of sharing behaviours, media as a way to benefit the communication between people and the use of media to communicate experiences.

Conflict (Brainstorming)

Conflict 1:
while music serves as a way to express oneself’s value and the feelings of the current moment, it creates a tension in social occassions when different values and feelings collide. (I try to make it in a broader sense, so it does not specifically point to only music taste)

p.s. this reminded me of what Helge talked about how radio only plays the music that people will not dislike. We have a lot of services (as Jörn pointed out in the literature list) helping people to find likely-minded people, but we haven’t yet found services in the other way around. seems a interesting idea to think about~

grounds of research for the arguments can be two articles from Jörn:
1. bentley et al,  how people associate media sharing with  story telling of events and emotions

2.  Listening in article(itunes): how people try to express their identity according to how other people might think of them

(I am not completely satisfied with the research listed above, you guys might have better suggestions, I am satisficing for the current moment )

Research

• Jukola: Democratic Muisc Choice in a Public Space . o´Hara

(a cafe in which people could decide the music thats played via a special device)

• The Intelligent Street: responsive sound environments for social
interaction

(a sound installation)
• Accounting for Taste: Using Profile Similarity to Improve
Recommender Systems

WEB.DE Suche

(not especially about music, but about how people in general like to find others who are similar to themselves)

Social Matching: A Framework and
Research Agenda
LOREN TERVEEN
University of Minnesota
and
DAVID W. McDONALD
University of Washington

(again: more general)

((all on ACM))

Articles and research for the future

The Use of Conventional and New Music Media: Implications for Future Technologies (Brown, Geelhoed, Sellen, 2001)

This article is a extensive field study on practices in music use and new media. The article identifies ways to find out about music (which is generally through friends). And also, attitudes on copying/buying, behaviours in compiling and organizing music. The articles implies that different kinds of music media are appreciated in different phases of the “music listening lifecycle”. “Whereas intangible, digital media formats bring many exciting possibilities for enhancement of sharing and creativity, tangible media offer their own affordances in terms of browsing and collecting”.

Push!Music: Intelligent Music Sharing on Mobile Devices (Jacobsson, Rost, Håkansson, Holmquist)

A music sharing application for mobile devices. The aim is to make media autonomosly find people instead of the other way around – throguh an agency in the media file itself. The application also allows making recommendations through ”pushing” of music to other users. The application allows recommending music in a local setting, sharing is collaborative/unaware or pushed/aware.

MobiTip: Using Bluetooth as a Mediator of Social Context (Rudström, Svensson, Cöster, Höök)

A social mobile service where comments or tips given by one person are made available to another when user devices connect on the fly, when users approach connection hotspots, or on demand. Bluetooth connectivity is used to form a social space of nearby devices that is used as key input for the collaborative filtering of tips.  Social space offers an additional source of input for determining the similarity between users.

Research (so far) 31/10/2006

MobiTip
key words: local shared content, bluetooth, mobile phones
A rather academic research project with an implementation in a shopping mall in Stockholm. Again this is more of a research study but not a working business model that actually took off.
People can share information about the places they are at with others via the bluetooth-connectivity of their mobiles. People either receive messages directly from other people with the running software within their reach or from a bluetooth hotspot nearby. People can send tips and informations about a specific place to a nearby hotspot or to nearby people with the running software.

Sharing Culture around iPods and PSPs
There are many (many!) webpages that enable publishing, sharing and downloading of small, very short movies or audio files (podcasts). There are so many podcast directories that it is difficult to keep track. The podcasts cover many topics and come in different flavours. Some podcast-sites are very specific (e.g. the site that only publishes videos that were used in court trials or the site that offers a free wine course and is only about wine).

weedshare.com
A new concept for sharing music files. You can listen to songs three times free before you might descide to buy them. When you then share these bought files on a server for others you can even get some money out of it. Is mainly used by unknown and (hopefully) upcoming bands. Can´t say whether this will be the future or not… – Is not very interesting (for me at least) right now, since I don´t know many of the bands.

soundPryer – joint music listening on the highway
An application for PDAs (prototype) from the Swedish Interactive Institute. People play their music on their PDAs and when they come into the w-lan reach of somebody who is also using this program, suddenly you listen to the music of the other person and vice versa. In their scenarios they used the program in cars on the highway.
Question: Why would I want to listen to music of complete strangers instead of turning on the radio?

Sonic City
A project from the Interactive Institue in Göteborg and the Viktoria Institute, Göteborg. They use different kind of sensors that users wear while walking through the city. From these sensor inputs (e.g. metal detector, light sensor, heart rate measurements, …) music (sound) is created on the fly with a computer. So while walking through the city people hear different sounds depending on where they are and how their physical status (biofeedback) is.
– I am not sure to what extend users feel that they can actually control the music or if the sounds seem to be rather random to them. A cool project.

tunA – a handheld ad-hoc radio device for local music sharing
A project from the (now closed) media lab europe. People can tune into the music that other people within range (w-lan) listen to. You receive a live-stream from other people´s mobile devices (PDAs). Quite similar to soundPryer.

Designing a Mobile Music Sharing System Based on Emergent Properties
A work from the Viktoria Institute, Göteborg. Until now it is only a concept without implementation. But the conceptioners did six interviews and relate to other work within that field. The idea is the following:
Mp3-files on a mobile device (a PDA) are treated as autonomous agents that “live” in an ecology on the PDA. The ecology consists of all the other agents and is affected by the user´s behaviour. Depending on the environment, an agent may thrive or starve, be stimulated or bored, which impacts on its behaviour. A file for instance might die (become deleted) if never played. A file might migrate (beeing copied) to a different ecosystem (a different PDA) within w-lan reach. And so on…
I think it is a pretty new and interesting approach to treat songs like agents. But I am not sure whether I (as a user) would like to give the control to a complex system, not knowing what the system does and how it behaves.

Listening In: Practices Surrounding iTunes Music Sharing
A paper from the CHI conference 2005 from people either working at the Georgia Institute of Technology or at the Palo Alto Research Center.
It is about the habits of people using iTunes and concentrates on the sharing functionality of the program. (People using iTunes can share their music with people in the same subnet.) The authors also make some design suggestions.
One interesting outcome of the study was (– relates to IDENTITY) that people did something that the authors called “impression management”. It means that they started to think about what impression they would make to others. One interviewee of the study said that he had changed his music library only to make a different impression to other people (i.e. he has ripped some more CDs and added them to the library to make a more complete and balanced portrayal of himself since he did not want to be only associated with the music he already had). Also some people only published specific playlists that they wanted to be associated with.
And it seems as if this behaviour was no waste of time since people actually did judge the shared collections and by that also the owner.
The authors also write about the implications coming from the fact that iTunes occupies the grey area between intimacy and anonymity in the music sharing space (since you sometimes know the people you share your music with very well and sometimes you do not know them at all). They also write about if people discover new music through iTunes (– and they don´t).
personal music listening utilites vs. music sharing online communities