On Values, Technological Mediation, and the Artifacts they Create

Brittney Allen; Andrew McPherson

On Values, Technological Mediation, and the Artifacts they Create
Image credit: Brittney Allen; Andrew McPherson

Abstract:

This paper investigates values within the material and sonic cultures of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) research with a focus on the techno-cultural practices prevalent at the NIME conference and in related human-computer interaction (HCI) research. The NIME community, despite its cultural diversity, relies disproportionately on particular technologies, aesthetic priorities, and forms of musical practice, and these affect both the tangible artifacts of NIME research and the stories that are told about them by the authors. We conduct a situational analysis of 26 tangible digital musical instruments (DMIs) from the 2024 NIME conference proceedings alongside 20 artifact-related papers from the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference. Our analysis reveals five emergent values-oriented themes: Unconventionality, Community, Care, Intimacy, and Transformation. We probe areas of convergence and divergence within each theme and speculate on actionable steps toward the generation of differentiable, community-enabled and values-accurate design artifacts.