Entangling Practice with Artistic and Educational Aims: Interviews on Technology-based Movement Sound Interactions

TL;DR

This paper explores how practitioners from diverse artistic and educational backgrounds engage with movement-sound interactive systems, focusing on their relationship with technology, usability, and learning processes.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights from interviews with practitioners, highlighting common themes and considerations for designing movement-sound interactive systems.

Findings

Technological tools serve as mediators in practice.

Usability and normative aspects influence system adoption.

Learning and practice are central to engagement with movement-sound systems.

Abstract

Movement-sound interactive systems are at the interface of different artistic and educational practices. Within this multiplicity of uses, we examine common denominators in terms of learning, appropriation and relationship to technological systems. While these topics have been previously reported at NIME, we wanted to investigate how practitioners, coming from different perspectives, relate to these questions. We conducted interviews with 6 artists who are engaged in movementsound interactions: 1 performer, 1 performer/composer, 1 composer, 1 teacher/composer, 1 dancer/teacher, 1 dancer. Through a thematic analysis of the transcripts we identified three main themes related to (1) the mediating role of technological tools (2) usability and normativity, and (3) learning and practice. These results provide ground for discussion about the design and study of movement-sound interactive systems.