Lalya Gaye • Outside of Dånk! • Teaching

Introduction to Music Technology (IT-University in Göteborg, 2003)

Posted by Lalya on 1 October 2007⋅ Comment⋅ Share⋅  Email ⋅  Print
Tags: electronic music, Göteborg, Interaction Design, interactive music

In 2003, I was a guest lecturer at the Intelligent Products course, Intelligent Systems Design programme, IT-University in Göteborg, Sweden (Head of the course: Dr. Lars Erik Holmquist).

The Intelligent Products course at the IT-University in Göteborg focused on the interplay between the virtual and physical environments, and how the inclusion of computational abilities in our surroundings changes our everyday life. It was meant to give computer science students a sense of the type of consumer products that can be developed with interactive and ubiquitous computing technologies.

My role as a guest lecturer in this course was to broaden the views of the students and make them think of products that could enrich the user’s life, instead of just fulfilling their needs. During my lectures, which focused on music technology and interactive music making products, I used an important quantity of audiovisual material as support and gave the students a micro-controller programming tutorial (control of a Pd patch with sensors). I was also responsible for defining and grading assignments about the topic, and participated in correcting the course’s final exams. Lectures and a short list of resources where students could get more information about field presented in the lecture were made available on-line (unfortunately, the course’s server has since then been put down).

Lectures outline

• Background: history of electronic music and user interfaces for electronic music making
• Interactive music-making products:
  - Specificities of electronic music instruments

- Purposes and user groups for interactive music products
- Interaction loop: types of input, interface, mapping, sound generation, output, feedback, control, interaction during performance

• Implementation: overview of various technologies available in terms of sensing input, mapping and producing sound
• Hands-on tutorial with simple setup (sensors, microcontroller, Pd patch on PC)

Description of student assignments

The students could choose between one of the two following assignments to turn in a week later:

1. Write an essay that would relate the field of alternative musical interfaces to that of intelligent products; reflect on their commonalities, how they overlap and influence each others.
2. Sketch a design proposal for a musical interface, describing input, output, mapping, control mechanisms and usage scenario in details.