Transmitting Digital Lutherie Knowledge: The Rashomon Effect for DMI Designers

Eevee Zayas-Garin, Charlotte Nordmoen, and Andrew McPherson

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

• Year: 2023
• Location: Mexico City, Mexico
• Track: Papers
• Pages: 350–357
• Article Number: 49
• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11189206 (Link to paper)
• PDF link

Abstract:

As the field around computer-mediated musical interaction drives attention to its sociotechnical, political and epistemological exigencies, it becomes important to be guided by disability studies, and for researchers and designers of accessible digital musical instruments (ADMIs) to foreground the lived experience of disabled musicians. This resonates with the movement to promote disability justice in HCI. In this paper, we introduce a case study of the design of a string-less guitar, which was developed in collaboration with a guitarist who lost his ability to play due to impairment. We present this work as an exploration of the Rashomon effect, a term that refers to the phenomenon of multiple witnesses describing the same event from their own perspective. We argue that the Rashomon effect is a useful way to explore how digital musical instrument (DMI) designers respond to NIME's interdisciplinarity, and to reflect on how we produce and transmit knowledge within our field.

Citation:

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{nime2023_49,
 abstract = {As the field around computer-mediated musical interaction drives attention to its sociotechnical, political and epistemological exigencies, it becomes important to be guided by disability studies, and for researchers and designers of accessible digital musical instruments (ADMIs) to foreground the lived experience of disabled musicians. This resonates with the movement to promote disability justice in HCI. In this paper, we introduce a case study of the design of a string-less guitar, which was developed in collaboration with a guitarist who lost his ability to play due to impairment. We present this work as an exploration of the Rashomon effect, a term that refers to the phenomenon of multiple witnesses describing the same event from their own perspective. We argue that the Rashomon effect is a useful way to explore how digital musical instrument (DMI) designers respond to NIME's interdisciplinarity, and to reflect on how we produce and transmit knowledge within our field.},
 address = {Mexico City, Mexico},
 articleno = {49},
 author = {Eevee Zayas-Garin and Charlotte Nordmoen and Andrew McPherson},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.11189206},
 editor = {Miguel Ortiz and Adnan Marquez-Borbon},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {May},
 numpages = {8},
 pages = {350--357},
 title = {Transmitting Digital Lutherie Knowledge: The Rashomon Effect for DMI Designers},
 track = {Papers},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2023/nime2023_49.pdf},
 year = {2023}
}