Evaluation of live human-computer music-making: Quantitative and qualitative approaches

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, [VOL 67,ISS 11(2009)] DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2009.05.00

The Serendiptichord: Reflections on the collaborative design process between artist and researcher

The Serendiptichord is a wearable instrument, resulting from a collaboration crossing fashion, technology, music and dance. This paper reflects on the collaborative process and how defining both creative and research roles for each party led to a successful creative partnership built on mutual respect and open communication. After a brief snapshot of the instrument in performance, the instrument is considered within the context of dance-driven interactive music systems followed by a discussion on the nature of the collaboration and its impact upon the design process and final piece

Mazi: a Tangible Toy for Collaborative Play between Children with Autism

Best Demo Awar

A Guide to Evaluating the Experience of Media and Arts Technology

Evaluation is essential to understanding the value that digital creativity brings to people's experience, for example in terms of their enjoyment, creativity, and engagement. There is a substantial body of research on how to design and evaluate interactive arts and digital creativity applications. There is also extensive Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature on how to evaluate user interfaces and user experiences. However, it can be difficult for artists, practitioners, and researchers to navigate such a broad and disparate collection of materials when considering how to evaluate technology they create that is at the intersection of art and interaction. This chapter provides a guide to designing robust user studies of creative applications at the intersection of art, technology and interaction, which we refer to as Media and Arts Technology (MAT). We break MAT studies down into two main kinds: proof-of-concept and comparative studies. As MAT studies are exploratory in nature, their evaluation requires the collection and analysis of both qualitative data such as free text questionnaire responses, interviews, and observations, and also quantitative data such as questionnaires, number of interactions, and length of time spent interacting. This chapter draws on over 15 years of experience of designing and evaluating novel interactive systems to provide a concrete template on how to structure a study to evaluate MATs that is both rigorous and repeatable, and how to report study results that are publishable and accessible to a wide readership in art and science communities alike.Comment: Preprint. Chapter to appear in "Creating Digitally. Shifting Boundaries: Arts and Technologies - Contemporary Applications and Concepts", Anthony L. Brooks (Editor), Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/978303131359

A Tool for Generating Controllable Variations of Musical Themes Using Variational Autoencoders with Latent Space Regularisation

A common musical composition practice is to develop musical pieces using variations of musical themes. In this study, we present an interactive tool which can generate variations of musical themes in real-time using a variational autoencoder model. Our tool is controllable using semantically meaningful musical attributes via latent space regularisation technique to increase the explainability of the model. The tool is integrated into an industry standard digital audio workstation - Ableton Live - using the Max4Live device framework and can run locally on an average personal CPU rather than requiring a costly GPU cluster. In this way we demonstrate how cutting-edge AI research can be integrated into the exiting workflows of professional and practising musicians for use in the real-world beyond the research lab

Instrumenting the Interaction: Affective and Psychophysiological Features of Live Collaborative Musical Improvisation

NIME’14, June 30 – July 03, 2014, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Copyright remains with the author(s)

Designing spaces to support collaborative creativity in shared virtual environments

Shared virtual environments (SVEs) have been researched extensively within the fields of education, entertainment, work, and training, yet there has been limited research on the creative and collaborative aspects of interactivity in SVEs. The important role that creativity and collaboration play in human society raises the question of the way that virtual working spaces might be designed to support collaborative creativity in SVEs. In this paper, we outline an SVE named LeMo, which allows two people to collaboratively create a short loop of music together. Then we present a study of LeMo, in which 52 users composed music in pairs using four different virtual working space configurations. Key findings indicated by results include: (i) Providing personal space is an effective way to support collaborative creativity in SVEs, (ii) personal spaces with a fluid light-weight boundary could provide enough support, worked better and was preferable to ones with rigid boundaries and (iii) a configuration that provides a movable personal space was preferred to one that provided no mobility. Following these findings, five corresponding design implications for shared virtual environments focusing on supporting collaborative creativity are given and conclusions are made

Measuring Affect for the Study and Enhancement of Co-Present Creative Collaboration

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