Lalya Gaye • Organisation of Events • Research • Teaching

Exploring Sonic Interaction with Artefacts in Everyday Contexts

Posted by Lalya on 8 August 2008⋅ Comment⋅ Share⋅  Email ⋅  Print
Tags: Interaction Design, International, sound, Workshops

On 23 June, Lalya from Dånk! co-organised a hands-on workshop about Exploring Sonic Interaction with Artefacts in Everyday Contexts at IRCAM in Paris, France, as part of the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD’08). The other co-organisers were Karmen Franinovic and Frauke Behrendt.

This workshop introduced participants to the use of creative interaction design methods when exploring the design of sonic interactions with computational artefacts. Specifically, focus was on physical interactions that rely on continuous sonic feedback. Participants generated future scenarios and concepts for such interactions, and everyday sounding objects in context were taken as a starting point. By taking part in the workshop activities, participants got an embodied understanding of the challenges of designing for meaningful and engaging physical interaction with computational sonic artefacts. Methods employed in the workshop were thus good complements to the cognition or technology-based approaches to designing sounding objects that are mainstream within the ICAD community.

This one-day-long workshop was divided into four parts:

• warm-up exercises: voicing out objects, soundwalk, sonic postcards, sonic playtable
• creative idea generation through design “speed-dating”
• concept exploration through bodystorming and sonic interaction relabelling
• final presentation and discussion.

The workshop was aimed at an ICAD audience, but welcomed a wide range of participants with various backgrounds such as artists, designers, musicians, programmers, educators, cultural and media studies scholars, etc. No previous technical knowledge or design experience were required. The workshop gave participants the opportunity to explore key aspects of tangible interaction and continuous sonic feedback, all in an activity-based way: as the workshop consisted of low-tech small group exercises and interaction-focused creative activities instead of paper presentations or technology tutorials, participants were invited to have an active role and to engage all senses in the exploration of this type of situated sonic interaction. The focus was taken away from technology itself and turned instead towards the situated activities of using technology.

More information
* Call for participation [link]
* Workshop website: [link]
* Workshop abstract: [pdf]
* Flickr Gallery

The workshop was funded by the European Union Sonic Interaction Design (SID) COST-ICT Action.