An Enactive Aproach to Digital Musical Instrument Design: Theory, Models, Techniques

Digital musical instruments bring about new problems and prospects for musical performance. In An enactive approach to digital musical instrument design, Newton Armstrong argues that these problems and prospects are theoretical and philosophical as much as they are technical. Drawing on the enactive cognitive science of Francisco Varela and others, as well as the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Armstrong outlines a model of interaction based around circular chains of embodied interdependency between performer and instrument, and examines the ways in which technological resistance to human action plays a key role in the incremental acquisition of performative skill. This book is addressed to musicians and artists working with interactive systems, to theorists of new media, and to researchers and designers interested in human factors in computing.