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May 3-7, 2005

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Schedule

>prompt
Author(s):	Jamie Allen
Instructor:	Hechinger, Nancy
Class:	Final Project Seminar (Wed.)

Keywords:	human computer interface, music, audio, improvisation, mobile music, Bluetooth, wireless

>prompt is a system of portable networked musical instruments, providing a platform for real-time musical communication, improvisation, and learning between people in public places.
>prompt is a tool for uncovering the improviser and musician in us all. people are invited to engage with strangers, friends and whomever else through a handheld musical device. the devices themselves, presently a family of four portable \'instruments\', are designed to take advantage of manual dexterities available to all - pinching, squeezing, tapping, flipping. the devices communicate via Bluetooth protocol - a well suited technology for the localized nature of >prompt\'s interaction. users can initiate jams, >prompt is an instrument system which harnesses the power and wide-ranging potential of digital audio, avoiding the pitfalls of inaccessibility and poor design suffered by traditional western instruments. It will allow for real-time generation and manipulation of sound that allows for flexible, creative play and variation in timber and style. It is a tool which is physically and sonically engaging, yet makes use of preexisting abilities for enlivening people’s relationships to the sound world. it is capable of allowing people a glimpse of what improvisatory acts are about and how powerful they can be.

Personal Statement:	The act of music making has been central to my life, and I feel that the development of a sense of relatedness to sound is full of important lessons, therapeutic value and essential knowledge. The cliché holds true - music is a universal language for all people. It is a means of communication abstract enough to convey the breadth of all human emotion and yet concrete enough to portray distinct properties of people and their environs. Creating with sound is both an act of sculpting of time and relating it to space. Instruments, within this, represent that which “binds time to the measure of control.” They are spatial vehicles for the temporal act of making music. Additionally, the act of musical improvisation is, to me, is an act which can be viewed as a model for the human evolutionary imperative, the creative process and everyday interaction. For a person well versed in the techniques of any improvisational act, every moment can become an improvisation and a situation which is at once your creation and the creation of those around you. Unfortunately, institutionalized music academia, and the related modern segregation of people as “musical” and “non-musical,” prevents everyone from expressing their birthright as musical improvisers. Prior to the last century, musical improvisation has been central to the act of music making in the West. Many non-Western cultures (the Balanese and Northern Idia, for example) have active improvisational traditions today that stem back further than any written musical traditions. All attempts to challenge the transient nature of music through transcription, prior to the recording arts, are entirely secondary and somewhat arbitrary in relation to the experience of music. Even recorded music is, moment to moment, experienced as an impalpable and fleeting sculpture in time. >prompt represents an opportunity to re-invigorate people’s relationships with sound, both as an experience of relating to media creatively and as a shared, real-time collaboration. The opportunity could be important as a means of giving people an impetus for further musical study, by showing them what it’s all for in a certain sense. It also represents the possibility of re-acquainting people with possibly dormant aspects of their real-time creative selves.
Context:	>prompt builds upon a body of work and thought bridging the fields of musicology, music creation (composition and improvisation), computer science and embedded electrical engineering. A more philosophical basis for >prompt integrates notions of improvisation into everyday life. There are aspects of >prompt that address the more commercial areas of human computer interface and mobile devices. Attempts at developing new musical interfaces over the past 5 years have spawned enough interest to warrant conference and research publications in the field . Background and relevant theory for these and other areas are outlined below. Music as a Universal Language Of great importance to the formulation of an interactive music system is the metaphor upon which the system is built. There is very little value, in my mind, to attempts at constructing entirely generalized computer improvisers. Far more interesting, and enlightening (in the sense that the modeling of a human process such as improvisation with a computer teaches us a good deal about how the human cognitive system might function) result are found when a system mimics human behavior more closely – i.e.: having a certain taste, or style, or background which it is explicit in its design. I call this “centered in a sound-world.” It limits the improvisational system or interactive musician to a set of behaviors which are a subset of making any sound at all and usually makes for more cohesive, enjoyable play for people interacting. Note that this concept is similar to the development of lexicon or nomenclature in a discussion, either prior to or in course of discussion. In language, rules and structures, however malleable and variable, develop within a discussion in real time. >prompt is framed around a common analogy used in jazz music, that of improvisation as conversation. The intention of the >prompt, at least partially is to give people a mechanism to “say something” musically. This is, in many respects, a facet of all music, be it ‘high-art’ music or hip-hop – there is an implied or explicit motivation of needing or wishing to communicate with others. Jazz improvisation seems a particularly fitting use of this communication or dialogue metaphor, as this music is particularly conversant and social. Ingrid Monson’s groundbreaking look at jazz culture and music is entitled, “Saying Something” and in it she writes of many personal accounts alluding to this idea. She writes: “The importance of communicativeness and the ability to hear is underscored by another type of language metaphor used by musicians: ‘to say’ or ‘to talk’ often substituted for ‘to play.’” A driving concept of >prompt is the facilitation of conversant communication through music along these lines, between people in a public space who might not necessarily engage one another through other means. >prompt is a channel for the universal language of music. The Pro-Am Revolution Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller, writers for the UK web-publisher “Demos” (www.demos.co.uk) have written a book on the role of the professional-amateur in the 21st century called “The Pro-Am Revolution: How Enthusiasts are changing out economy and society.” Using examples from the arts and computing, a case is made that although the 20th Century was shaped by the rise of the professional, the 21st has been and will increasingly be dominated by a kind of thoughtful consumer/producer. The Pro-Am society has been spurred on as a counter reaction to the corporate dominance and runs largely on “cultural capital,” acquired through shows of knowledge and skill within aficionado groups. The idea of an economic and social movement which by-passes the heretofore necessary-evil of a corporate power a captivating one. And there are signs that a Pro-Am movement is having some influence on the music industry. I have not, for example, personally purchased a compact disk or single minute of recorded music in over 3 years. I do have a large collection of digital music in the form of MP3 files, yet a good deal of that is comprised of MP3 collections released under copyright for free over the internet. The majority of this music is made by people with minimal production equipment (for example, a computer and a microphone) in their spare time. I myself produce music as a leisure activity. Software companies, such as Apple, have picked up on this trend and have been releasing Pro-Am geared software for a number of years now. The iLife suite of software is composed of tools for digital photography, audio and video production. Apple touts the software with the following blurb: Just as Microsoft Office has the tools you need to create an outline, a budget or a presentation, iLife offers all of the tools you need for your work outside the office. When you’re ready to kick back and create something spectacular, there’s no better resource than iLife. Andrew Taylor, on his Web Log “The Artful Manager” points to this move by Apple and other companies as the “beginning of what could be the next generation of amateur arts.” He echoes Leadbetter and Miller’s feelings that the cause of this upsurge of hobbyist activity is a reaction to amateurs having been made to feel as if their contributions to creative fields were of little or no value. Creative acts in art and music, it turns out, are not only for the specialist or professional, but for anyone with interest, desire and a few moments to spare. Improvisation as Music & Life Skill Most improvisation music literature is concern with the cognitive aspects of real-time musical decision making, or playing “in the course of composition.” This is extremely engaging work, usually from a musicological or ethnological perspective mostly dealing with the repercussions of improvisation, versus compositional approaches, to institutionalized music practices, education and distribution. , , This backdrop is of course pertinent to my present work in that it speaks to an “Art Neglected In Scholarship,” as the title of one of Bruno Nettl’s succinctly puts it. The improvisatory act has been devalued in the face of the compositional one in music, as if composition “In the Course of Performance” were somehow deceitful to an audience or fellow performer. Musicology and Music Theory departments throughout the world are only very recently moving towards a musical doctrine which increasingly includes the inclusion of improvisation as both a recognized form and a pedagogical style. The movement of jazz tutelage into institutional academia during the latter half of the twentieth century, as well as an increasingly culturally inclusive outlook has allowed the act of improvisation to be taken more seriously by institutions and individuals alike. There was a time when improvisation was judgmentally viewed as somehow diametrically opposed and inferior in motivation to written traditional Western composition practices. Nettl points to the entry for improvisation, or “extemporization,” in the 1935 edition of the influential Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musician: “The primitive act of music-making, existing from the moment that the untutored individual obeys the impulse to relieve his feelings by bursting into song. Accordingly, therefore, amongst all primitive peoples musical composition consists of extemporization subsequently memorized\" It is easy enough to attempt to dismiss such narrow-minded allusions to primitiveness as part of irrelevant and ineffectual academic opinion. One must consider however, that opinions such as these are an important influence on the molders of public musical opinion through published review and criticism of recorded and printed music. As such, seemingly moot judgments of this type can influence what is available through certain distribution channels, including what makes it to broadcast media, and what is sold in stores (online or otherwise). A more telling analysis of the above commentary would also be underscored by the racial implications of a white scholarly majority endeavoring to devalue the pending popularity of improvised jazz, a largely African-American musical scene and movement. The Grove quote above does at least acknowledge the universal potential of improvisation, in that the term “untutored individual” refers to everyone on Earth, to some degree. There are a few texts that examine the issue of intersection of heretofore extremely easily identifiable boundaries in performed music: the composition, the instrument and the performer. Schnell and Battler have written one such text. The text examines how a designed instrument is essentially a ‘piece’ in that by designing such a thing, you inherently impose limits on what is musically possible (as juxtaposed to an instrument which could explore “all sound” – an impossibility, but an implied juxtaposition nonetheless). By doing this, one is merging the instrument and composition into a single creative work, which I feel is powerful idea, but one not easily absorbed by a general non-musician “user.” There are, of course, repercussions to commercial music distribution systems in all this, were this merging ever to become a dominant paradigm for the music authorship process. David Bernard also makes allusions to the potential problem this implies for copyright law and other matters of reproduction rights in his NIME ’02 paper10. Henrik Frisk further points to a reversal of the tendency to objectify musical work in networked and distributed improvisatory work. Of even more relevance to the kind of programming and computer based interaction routines I interested in, however, are automated improvisation systems. These are typically made by computer scientists with musical interests, and the typical performance context for them is a human playing a traditional Western instrument in duet with a computer running an algorithm or set of algorithms. A great example of a stylized version of this kind of work is “Voyager” by George Lewis. Although most computer musicians who build automated improvisation systems make claims that their system is interesting because it is randomized and hence embodies no human biases at all, George takes the opposite tack. He has said that Voyager plays in an “Afrological way.” That is, George feels he has infused his software with essential elements of African musical culture. Whether or not this is true, it is an interesting and novel strategy. Taking the superstructural or thematic elements of a musical genre (eg.: non-uniform tempo throughout, as in Voyager) and using that as a rule base for a system not only gives the system a starting point that is sociological in origin, but it will no doubt lead to more interesting music. People do not respond to musicians who perform yet seem to ‘come from nowhere’, without background or ideology, so why would you program a computer to behave in this way? A few researches have approached the prospect of how to improvise computer music in general, if we perceive the computer not as another performer, but as an instrument in itself. Leonello Tarabella describes his work in his paper “Improvising Computer Music,” where through use of a video camera to track his body and articulate synthesized sounds. This work is not really of relevance in terms of physical instrument design, however, as Tarabella’s performance context includes only that he wear all black except for over his hands, upon which generic video tracking algorithms are performed. The work described in this document has attempted to center itself somewhere between these last two approaches, where the computer is neither an equal player nor a subjugate mechanism in the expression. The synthesis, to be sure, will be synthesized via computer sound card, etc., but no aspect of the computer algorithms will, for example be capable of creating a composition spontaneously, without human intervention. Every player is responsible and trusted to hold up the musical progression. I make the assertion that improvisation in the 20th Century is a musical skill and pursuit of equal or perhaps greater value artistically and culturally as traditions of notated music composition. A further assertion is that improvisation is a general skill, practiced to various extents, by all people. It is a skill of great value and worth nurturing and encouraging in both the young and old, and activities which aid in fueling the improvisational impulse are of enormous consequence to people’s lives. As David Sudnow puts it in his book “Talk’s Body”: “You go places, getting from place to place. You have to get places on time. You find places in the course of moving – withouth rehearsal, doing improvisation. You learn how to use your body to reach the whereabouts of places that form up the setting for such movements. There is reaching and stretching and recoiling and regrouping in this.” Musical Informatics One aspect of the field known as Music Informatics deals with segmentation and the symbolic recognition of musical patterns. This refers to the evaluation of musical parameters (extraction of musical components from a performed, notated or recorded piece of music, e.g.: rhythm) and other analytic processes which can be performed on organized sound structures. Topics in the field of musical informatics are of great relevance to >prompt. Of the strategies most relevant to a simple, game-like communication mechanism between two musical devices, most are analytical extraction techniques for beat based music. This is important when using input from people to ensure that their input influences a subset of musical parameters within the system, without overvaluing or devaluing their influence. If there are mistakes in the input stream, either due to misreading of sensors or received data, or due to human ‘error’ in the sense of the input not aligning with the musical rule base (beat or chord or sequence structure) agreed upon, these need to be evaluated and rejected against intended results. Connectivist principles, as Robert Rowe calls them , are those which take a sequence of inputs from a user and them decide on their viability and degree of change to an overall progression based on connections between them and prior or projected musical ideas are particularly applicable. This is, in a way, a sort of weighted time-average of some musical parameter, for example - the downbeat. When a user decides he or she wants to change the downbeat (in the >prompt system this is a function allotted to the >prompt/rhythm device user only), the system needs to be able to differentiate between this intended result and other possible patterns which would present the same data to the system (such as an error, a doubling of an accent beat no intended to change the actual downbeat). This can be achieved by assessing past downbeats, projecting likely downbeats for the immediate future, and assigning probability to the intention of the incoming beat interval accordingly. Although definitions of Artificial Intelligence algorithms vary, it is from Artificial Neural Network theory that connectivist strategies take their inspiriation. Music Education Often it would seem that musicians are given unwarranted status in our society. There is an impression that a great deal of antiquated notions regarding the composer or musician as ‘beacon to God’ are thought true to this day. We are given queues about ‘God given talent’ and the special unreachable skills that performers and composers possess, where oftentimes the decisive criteria is access to tuition, information or tools for the task. Further, economic interests such as music publishing and record companies, move to stabilize this notion of extraordinariness among performer/composers as it reinforces the value inherent in their products. Any idea that aims to give people creative control of music is inherently of consequence to music education. There is great potential for an improvisation tool which might give beginning music students a sense of “what it’s all for,” in terms of preparation, rote learning, memorization and study. There is a fundamental value in learning to play real-time music, as opposed to pre-composed notated music, as well. Music Therapy is a field closely related to Music Education, and I would love to see what consequence an improvisational tool might have for their work, if any. In music education, there is a barrier to the enjoyment of the experience of making music at the outset. The creation of music, despite many indications to the contrary in music instruction and pedagogical method, should above all else be an enjoyable act. But this is almost never taught as an aspect of music making to the music student. Instead, children and adults alike are left to discover the pleasurable aspects of music following years of rigor, competition and inflexibility! It would be of great use for those starting out interested in music to have an experience of the fun of making large scale musical decisions early on in their music education. It is my assertion that this experience would result in a greater number of people, both young and old, who would continue music studies past an initial encounter. The benefits to music and arts education, as a larger implication, are well documented. A recent public opinion Gallup survey (2003) also indicated that 28 million students in the U.S. do not receive “adequate music education”, despite 80% of those surveyed completely or mostly agreeing with the assertion that “Making Music Makes You Smarter.” There is clearly a gap to be filled in the music education market. Additionally, expanding children\'s horizons by offering a variety of musical input from foreign cultures is a useful way of accomplishing the goals of a multicultural education. The book “Keeping Mozart in Mind” by Dr. Gordon Shaw outlines many of Dr. Shaw’s own research initiatives over the past 20 years or more in music, reasoning and cognition. His group originated the notion of what the early-nineties media coined the “Mozart Effect”. This was a much misinterpreted research phenomenon where students who listened to Mozart piano Sonatas did better on reasoning tasks than after listening to a relaxation tape or silence. Although the research was subsequently clarified to have been an entirely temporary effect, later research by Dr. Shaw has conclusively shown that “music training adds a large additional improvement in math performance.” The understanding of tonal relationships for example, as an experiential phenomenon, aids in the spatial-temporal reasoning such as mental imaging and pattern recognition. Tony Wigram’s book “Improvisation: Methods and Techniques for Music Therapy Clinicians, Educators and Students” , is prefaced by stories of inner-city high-school students who became more outgoing, more engaged with their studies and less confrontational due to their enthusiasm around learning to improvise. Tina Blaine, at the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University (one of the designers of Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project in Seattle) has written about the ability of improvisational play methods to “encourage collaboration, communication and connection amongst groups.” Mobile Music Mobile music devices, are now a 50-year old technology, yet with the introduction of each new variation, there seems to be a disproportionate societal reaction. The pocket transistor radio began selling in 1954, further making the ‘transistor’ a household. It became a symbol of post-war American innovation, a nod to the bright future of American industry and society heralded by technology. Similarly, the Sony Walkman, introduced in 1979, was the subject of great discussion, portable sound became a fashion symbol as well as change in the way people experienced sound. The Walkman brought with it the idea that the content on a personal stereo device could be as personal as the device itself and the mixed-tape was born. We are presently experiencing the iPod and portable MP3 device boom, bringing about an even further manipulability to our experience of sound-in-space. An important trend to note with the above short history is that each new iteration of the portable music device gives progressively more power over content to its users. The transistor radio represents a conventional one-to-many broadcast paradigm, all users listened to what was being produced and broadcast by radio entities of the day. The walkman added to this technology, generally providing both an AM/FM band receiver along with a cassette player (and recorder in later variations). There was now a freedom of choice implied by the cassette – it was up to the user what cassettes to bring with him or her for the trip to the beach. Later the mixed tape again increased this malleability of content, coming out of the truly personal relationships people were developing with their personal stereo. Those of my own generation (now late 20-somethings) remember the mixed tape as a fondly individualistic expression of who one was at a certain age. Your tape collection was an extension of yourself. And with the extended battery life, unlimited playlists and alarm-clock like functions of the iPod, portable music devices have become a \"tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self.\" Mobile music is now moving towards integration with other portable devices such as PDAs, mobile phones and portable gaming systems. Generalized software systems for remixing music on cell phones are on the horizon, as a few marginalized development are already underway for limited operating platforms. New academic conferences on the topic are being started to address the social and technological directions and repercussions of mobile music technology. , One presupposed draw back to the proliferation of mobile music devices is that to a large degree they render public spaces non-public or individually private. Mobile music device users are in many ways psychologically removed from the spaces they find themselves in. This has been the topic of Gideon D’Arcangelo’s National Public Radio series “Walkman Busting.” Privacy within public space has become such a feature of mobile music devices that their purveyors have begun using it as a selling point. The picture shown in Figure ### was taken on April 28th, 2005 at the corner of Bleeker Street and Lafayette in New York City. It is a billboard for the electronics retailer BestBuy showing an MP3 player and the text, “ ‘do not disturb’ signs, coming to noho.” Figure 1 - Photograph of an NYC billboard showing an personal digital audio player and the text, \"\'do not disturb\' signs, coming to noho.\" The composition, distribution and commercialization of ring-tones on cell phones has become the topic of some discussion as of late. There is a large industry growing out of users’ inclinations towards elaborate ring-tones, and collections and authorship thereof. Cell-phone users in the E.U., the U.S. and in Asia, portable device users want to reflect a personal, musical expression of their own personalities every time their phone rings. New Interfaces for Musical Expression The field and academic conference known as New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) represents the efforts of many institutions and individuals to redefine the way in which music is performed and experienced, given the power of present day technologies to facilitate this redefinition. The first NIME proceedings were part of the CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing in Seattle, Washinton. At least one derivative outcome of this first conference was the realization that the making of expressive controllers for computers could lead to the development of better human computer interface tools for the masses. This remains a core value of the NIME community to this day, although more recent work tends to be more artistic and less user centered in design. Selected Prior Work A commercial example of the type of design I am interested in, as far as skill-entry-point is highly specific in terms of the musical context to which it belongs. This is the DJIIB Box by Yamaha (Figure 1) – a device purported to allow “anyone to play in minutes without training or practice.” Although working towards an interesting model, it is quite obviously geared towards a technology-savvy burgeoning musician. The sounds sets are not extensible, and there is very little potential for real-time interaction with others, as playout is primarily done through headphones to the user. The unit is battery powered, however, and hence “mobile,” which allows for interesting performance/practice paradigms. Figure 2 – The DJIIB from Yamaha A soon to be released project by Sony development, design by Henry Dunn, “BlockJam, is a better example of musical metaphor than the DJIIB. The BlockJam toy product is intended as a linear, off-line sound editing toy, were one assembles blocks to represent different musical ‘choices.’ After your selections are made, you are able to set the music in motion and hear what your chosen configuration sounds like. This is a wonderful design as the connectivity of the blocks in space suggest linearity in time, as well as allowing for parallel musical events (the branches on either side of Figure 2 represent things which occur simultaneously in reference to the main time line in the centre). Figure 3-Sony’s BlockJam toy design A fine-arts approach to instrument design for the non-musician is given by Dominic Robson with his “Play! Sound Toys for the Non-Musician.” This is a gallery piece, made up of various objects fitted with sound sensing elements, so that one can ‘play’ them while visiting the space. I very much like the common everyday object approach that Robson used for the piece, as they afford more interaction through familiarity. People are more likely to play with familiar objects. More academic, research-oriented projects abound. A very good hardware design project, although someone arbitrary in its use of musical metaphor in its physical design, is David Merrill’s the “FlexiGesture: A sensor-rich real-time adaptive gesture and affordance learning platform for electronic music control.” (See Figure 4.) Figure 4- The FlexiGesture from David Merrill There’s are many good features of this project, as Merrill tried to use user-centered design approaches, studied users’ interaction with tool he design and tried to generalize the gestures required to use the device such that they could be mapped to many sound generating systems. With the FlexiGesture, you need no musical instrument experience, and there is a ‘learning’ period for the device, where you teach it the motions you’d like to make, and then assign music functions to them. This adaptability is a fantastic idea, and is one way of trying to personalize a device such that it feels like an individualized expressive tool to the user. The device, however, in the end looks a little like a high-tech lemon squeezer, and suggests very little in the way of direct translation into musical use. This aspect would not be so severe were the form of the device not so arresting looking, or perhaps slightly smaller. “The distance between idea and music [should be] navigable by means of physicalised models,” writes Joel Ryan of STEIM (the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music in Amsterdam). It would appear that Merrill created both a very good idea and likely interesting musical ouput, but did not provide a path of conceptual navigation between them. That is, the controller of musical processes is a good generalized platform, and the synthesis algorithms may be attractive or novel, but there does not seem to be an obvious impetus (e.g.: playing to other people or game-like play) for use of the FlexiGesture by anyone except Merrill. This may have been intentional, but is not allied with the motivation behind >prompt. There are many instrument design projects of relevance to >prompt. I have look at a multitude of NIME conference proceedings, as well as others. In the interest of brevity and for the purpose of documentation, I have other musical instrument designs and writings I have leverage insight from here. , , , , , , , , , A project by HP that is in many ways a framework of what my instrument design could fit into. The Djammer is shown in Figure 5. It is a network enabled MP3 player that also has the ability to ‘scratch’ the MP3’s as would a DJ or producer in Hip Hop music. The project is apparently due to be released quite soon, and is a fantastic step towards giving people some degree of authorship over the music they listen to. It is, however, limited to a single interaction, and has no facility for recording the environment for inclusion in a performance. That is, its design is based around server-client architecture, and as such the players must provide source material for manipulation. Figure 5-The DJammer concept design mock-up
Audience:	The audience for >prompt is primarily the non-musician with interest in music. This audience represents a great number of music consumers, radio listeners, and anyone else with a penchant for singing in the shower or car… but likely only when alone. This audience could be viewed as a broad potential music education audience (a segment of society generally perceived to be of school age, despite decreasing music education in schools). A recent Gallup survey indicated that 28 million students in the U.S. do not receive “adequate music eduation”, despite 80% of those surveyed completely or mostly agreed with the assertion that “Making Music Makes You Smarter.” I am interested, for the first iteration of >prompt, in finding a musical direction for the devices which allies itself with a particular aesthetic. That is, the “sound world” which is being created, be it country or jazz, hip hop or free improvisation, the system must be rooted in a common sonic language, or at the very least structure (as opposed to building a system for the manipulation or creation of all sound). As such, I will be developing a sound aesthetic which appeals primarily to my own age group, as I am most familiar with the likes and dislikes of this group. As a device, the you could invision the >prompt selling in a demographic of general consumers who would purchase and use lower-end PDAs, mid-range mp3 players, and the like. The popularity of the iPod throughout Western culture speaks to the universality of certain product design concepts within this demographic. As it is a locally networked device, there will be facility for interaction with other people, in public or private places, wherever two or more people with a >prompt are found, locally.
Methodology:	Core Features, Media & Technology A user engages with the product similarly to their present activity surrounding portable music devices, but their relationship to the media they are listening to will be forever changed. For children, this might mean using the >prompt as a toy, for adults it might be a means of passing idle time or transit time, but in all cases it gives the power of creative authorship through sound to people using it. The localized nature of the network required for the interaction presupposed between >prompt improvisers suggests use of a short range technology such as Bluetooth or Radio Frequency. The interface for the device is simple and audio-centric. It does not make use of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), or any other visually-centered interface technology which might distract the user from the sound world they are sculpting. The physical interfaces are designed to provide ease of familiarity to the user, so they can be ‘navigated’ through touch after a short learning period. The musical system for prompt is, in essence a ‘machine musician’ as alluded to by Robert Rowe. He describes a general computer program with musicianship as an entity which understands (i.e.: makes sense of) musical input and performs music expressively. With each of the 4 >prompt devices (2 of which were fully prototyped), I was trying to examine different interface levels of complexity both in interface design and musical output. It was my conjecture that these would then compliment different entry points for users to the >prompt system. As with the selection of which instrument to learn (e.g.: guitar or drums, violin or dulcimer) when someone is learning a traditional musical instrument, different >prompt components serve different needs, personality types and tastes. System Architecture The prototype architecture for >prompt forms what is known as a Bluetooth “piconet.” That is, multiple >prompt devices act as “slaves” (single-point connection devices) connect to a single Bluetooth enabled “master computer” (multi-point connection device), and then transmit extremely low latency (<1ms) onboard sensor information. The onboard electrinics are specific to each device, but are all based on a Microchip PIC architecture and all transmit over a unique serial protocol. There is also a return protocol to facilitate updates to the prompt devices from the central pioc The >prompt devices themselves are completely wireless. No sound generation takes place on the >prompt prototypes, however, and thus they require localized access to a computer running Max/MSP to function. Implemented Hardware Features Each of the two prototyped >prompt devices includes, as a munimum the following on-board sensors: 1. Two ON/OFF status light emitting diode sets (LEDs). 2. A Qprox touch sensor intended for power-on (QT113). That is, each device is designed to begin transmitting sensor data when it is picked up or touched. 3. Two duel-axis accelerometers (Analog Devices ADXL311 ) for measurement of tilt, pitch (spatial) and yaw. This was included in order allow for gesture recognition and orientation awareness of the device. 4. Two network status lights that indicate the Bluetooth network status of the device. Each prompt device has a particular blinking pattern which it sends to devices receiving the request. This serves to give the received user indication of the ‘type’ of >prompt user that wishes to to indicate the request of a ‘Jam Request” by another user. (Note that audio feedback is also given in the form of a spoken directive.) 5. A tactile switch at the base, used to accept incoming jam requests. Further to this each device is designed with onboard sensing elements, such as joystick potentiometers and pressure sensors, depending on the function of the device.
Sources:	New Interfaces for Musical Expression website: http://hct.ece.ubc.ca/nime/ Monson, Ingrid Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. 261 p., 6 line drawings, 19 musical examples. 6 x 9 1996 Series: (CSE) Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology, P. 84. Leadbetter, Charles & Miller, Paul. The Pro-Am Revolution: How Enthusiasts Are Changing Our Economy and Society.” Published (2004) online at: http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/proameconomy/. There are many such free MP3 “record labels” and artists. For example hellothisisalex is one popular group that releases all their material through their website, for free: http://www.hellothisisalex.com/ Apple’s iLife website: http://www.apple.com/ilife/ Taylor, Andrew. “The Artful Manager” Web Log, posted Wednesday, January 7, 2004: http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/65604.php Nettl, B. Thoughts on Improvisation: A Comparative Approach. The Musical Quarterly, Vol. LX, No. 1 (1974) Nooshin, L. 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Conclusions:	Conclusions & Potential Implications >prompt is a very viable idea as a device, a social platform, a musical interface and educational tool. The prototype implementation described in this document was very successful considering the materials and methods available, and in terms of establishing criteria for further iterations of the project. Success Fulfillment Limited user testing has not allowed for full measurement of success of the >prompt system as outlined at the beginning of the project. Preliminary indication among peers and those to whom I have presented the idea, are encouraging. There is not presently a well-developed system which one might equate to >prompt available, and trends in mobile music device design and development point to its near inevitability as a general concept. From a learning standpoint, the project has been an achievement. I have been able, for perhaps the first time, to truly devote my artistic compulsions and values to the design of an interactive music system for other people. As a musician and artist, I have not had many opportunities to approach a problem from the standpoint of what might work for other people, in new and generalized contexts. There are many levels upon which people might want to interact with a sound environment. This alone has been a great thought process for me to move through, particularly as I had no conscious knowledge of never having really worked on a sound-related project in such a user-centered way before. Fueling the Improvisatory Impulse Although there has been limited time for user feedback, it is my hope that user testing data will show that people are comfortable in using the >prompt to articulate real-time musical processes. For the time being, I am assured that within the limited, technocratic user community of ITP and other peers who have been exposed to it, that the device design of >prompt devices themselves are successful. I have had many comments from onlookers regarding the striking look of >prompt and everyone instantly wants to pick up and touch the devices. I have more than once heard cries of “I want one!” regarding the >prompt devices in the halls of ITP. Sociological & Economic impact In closing, I would like to point to the overarching sociological direction to which I think creative empowerment projects like >prompt are pointing. In his essay, “Improvisation in the political economy of music” Alan Durant makes the following assertion about improvisatory acts in music: “As something people do for themselves, too, improvisation stresses independent activity rather than passive consumption… The challenge posed by improvised music might thus be though to have large-scale political or epochal reverberations, linked to the circumstances in which music is produced, circulated and heard.” I feel, as Durant does, that giving people distributed control over media is a means of re-articulating the importance of the individual’s role in the support and distribution of creative works. The entire domain of interactive art in this way speaks to a breaking apart of the look-but-don’t-touch boundary and giving people power to influence media and art forms which before recently were one-way transmissions from the artist/producer. When we begin to play music to one another, there will be less opportunity for marketplace powers to extract profit from the means of production and distribution of the medium. As ITP’s own Douglas Rushkoff writes, “Turn off your cell phone and speak to that guy sitting next to you on the bus. That\'s about the most subversive thing you could do.” >prompt, as a concept, is to music what the World Wide Web was to computers – a means of format-specific networked one-to-one exchanges. Henrik Frisk later reinforces this notion with a comment on the implications of networked music systems: “…In spheres of distribution and consumption of music, there is a tendency to objectify the musical work. As the power and irrational control exercised by the institution of distribution increases, the freedom of choice and influence of the listener decreases… It is fair to assume the bringing in an uncontrollable agglomeration of participants influencing the distribution of muical events will disturb this order.” >prompt, as a distributed system for audio entertainment, is a step on the way to a society structure in a way which appreciates and values musically creative acts by everyone who has interest in participating.