Reading Response
It was cool to get to know Perry Cook through the dialogues and history presented in this chapter/interlude. He seems to be such a vibrant, unique, and thoughtful character, and I admired his creative studio space–I’ve always dreamed of building a studio like that myself. However, I did question some of the design principles he (and Ge in this chapter) outlined. Some, like Principle 5.12 “Make a piece, not an instrument or controller.”I eventually came to understand as I read on and examined the work of the laptop orchestras featured in this chapter. Others, like Principle 5.11 “Some players have spare bandwidth, some do not” I still find hard to understand, and other like Principle 5.7 “instant music, subtlety later”, I sort of disagree with. The latter seemed too strong of a statement–I can see how Perry Cook’s Coffeemug and Fillup Glass showcase the strengths of having an instrument that provides some level of instant gratification, and that sometimes the lack of programmability can paradoxically encourage greater creative freedom.
But I don’t think this is always true, or even usually true. To me, having a high skill ceiling is more important than having a low skill floor. Ge outlines in his takeaway from Coffeemug that design should provide “instant amusement, nuance and learning later. Both for the player and the audience, sometimes you gotta win people over first, so they’ll want to explore further.” On the other hand, I feel like some instruments that satisfy this criterion fall short of going further to allow and inspire new creative output in a rich, diverse, and expressive way. The Coffeemug and Fillup Glass, I would argue, fall into this category: they do allow for instant music-making in an amusing and play-enocouraging way, but I can’t imagine playing them for more than 10–15 minutes, let alone putting time and effort into learning how to play it. Elsewhere in the chapter Ge cites the latter as a design virtue, pointing to the piano as an example of an instrument that is trivially easy to start making music on, yet can also afford a lifetime of dedicated study. The low skill floor and high skill ceiling of the piano is what makes it so well-designed. I agree with this wholeheartedly, and to me this is a much more important consideration than “instant music, subtlety later.”
I also am still unclear about what “some players have spare bandwidth, some do not.” means and how it connects to the other design principles. Is “bandwidth” something similar to “ability” or “musical-ness”? I didn’t really know how to tie this in with the other design considerations from this chapter–is the point that we need to design for the “lowest common denominator” by ensuring equal access to creative expression regardless of transferable musical skill or aptitude? I suppose this is an important point, but I was not sure if that was the right interpretation.
There were also several points that I particularly liked. On p. 252 several “sanity check” questions are posed: “Does the end product justify the technology? Does it do at least one thing that can be achieved by no other means? Does the design use the medium to support the right interplay between technology and humans?” These questions seem crucial to computer music instrument design, and design more broadly. All of the laptop orchestra pieces this chapter, I felt, exemplify these principles, and highlight the power of technology as a means of expanding our creative palettes–all of the pieces described some use of sensing, mapping, or synthesis that was not possible with traditional acoustic instruments, and were a vital component in the narrative, concept, and aesthetic design of the music. This principle is one that I think will help guide me in this course and beyond.