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Improvising with Machines - Designing Artistic Non-Human Actors

Published: 25 April 2020 Publication History

Abstract

For musicians, improvising with other musicians is not uncommon. But what happens when musicians engage in musical improvisation with semi-autonomous machines? We investigated a seminar in which design students built machines for musicians to improvise with. We explored the experiences of musicians when improvising with non-human musicians, as well as the challenges of designing non-human musicians. Among other things, we found that while from an outside perspective, the machines appeared as independent actors that interact with the musicians, the musicians experienced them as additional instruments they controlled. The interaction design of non-human actors was challenging for designers.

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  • (2022)It Can Be More Than Just a Subservient Assistant. Distinct Roles for the Design of Intelligent Personal AssistantsNordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3546155.3546699(1-17)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
  • (2020)Otherware needs Otherness: Understanding and Designing Artificial CounterpartsProceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society10.1145/3419249.3420079(1-4)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2020

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '20: Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2020
    4474 pages
    ISBN:9781450368193
    DOI:10.1145/3334480
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 25 April 2020

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    Author Tags

    1. animistic design
    2. autonomous system
    3. human-technology relations
    4. interaction design

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    • (2022)It Can Be More Than Just a Subservient Assistant. Distinct Roles for the Design of Intelligent Personal AssistantsNordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3546155.3546699(1-17)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
    • (2020)Otherware needs Otherness: Understanding and Designing Artificial CounterpartsProceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society10.1145/3419249.3420079(1-4)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2020

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