Roger Dean, austraLYSIS and MARCS Auditory Laboratories, UWS

Garth Paine, SynC, MARCS, and School of Communication Arts, UWS

The earliest human musical interface was the vocal tract; the latest are computers and other analogue or digital interfaces which use digital encodings to provide a very wide range of potential for the controlled generation of sounds. Whereas traditional instruments such as the piano or the koto have a wide but essentially finite palette of relationships between performer action and sonic generation, contemporary instruments may have an even more malleable one, in principle with infinite palettes. Musicians continually adapted existing technologies (the turntable, the mixing desk etc) for music making, seeking instruments that express the evolving cultural climate. It is critical that new instruments be developed that facilitate and nurture this expression whilst addressing the virtuosic potential inherent in high level music making and embodied in successful acoustic instrument.

We will point to several of the key questions concerning how humans efficiently interact with such interfaces. One is how the instruments can best be adapted to the control possibilities of human action: are current instruments and interfaces any more efficient or accessible than the piano? Do they have the range of generative potential implied by the infinite possibilities? Another is whether and how the interface can be subordinated or applied for efficient transfer of information, affect, or sonic structure, to listeners and whether this is influenced by visually accessible performance gesture. The examples of the laptop 'noise' artist, the solo violinist, the concert presentation of 'acousmatic' music (played directly from recording on disc or cd), and the sonification of data sets (their representation in sound instead of or in addition to graphic image) illustrate some of the immense range of situations in which these issues arise.

The workshop will be illustrated by demonstrations from several recent interfaces, including algorithmic GUI computer instruments.