Touch Screen Collaborative Music: Designing NIME for Older People with Dementia

Stu Favilla, and Sonja Pedell

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

This paper presents new touch-screen collaborative music interaction for people with dementia. The authors argue that dementia technology has yet to focus on collaborative multi-user group musical interactions. The project aims to contribute to dementia care while addressing a significant gap in current literature. Two trials explore contrasting musical scenarios: the performance of abstract electronic music and the distributed performance of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Findings presented in this paper; demonstrate that people with dementia can successfully perform and engage in collaborative music performance activities with little or no scaffolded instruction. Further findings suggest that people with dementia can develop and retain musical performance skill over time. This paper proposes a number of guidelines and design solutions.

Citation:

Stu Favilla, and Sonja Pedell. 2014. Touch Screen Collaborative Music: Designing NIME for Older People with Dementia. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1178760

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{sfavilla2014,
 abstract = {This paper presents new touch-screen collaborative music interaction for people with dementia. The authors argue that dementia technology has yet to focus on collaborative multi-user group musical interactions. The project aims to contribute to dementia care while addressing a significant gap in current literature. Two trials explore contrasting musical scenarios: the performance of abstract electronic music and the distributed performance of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Findings presented in this paper; demonstrate that people with dementia can successfully perform and engage in collaborative music performance activities with little or no scaffolded instruction. Further findings suggest that people with dementia can develop and retain musical performance skill over time. This paper proposes a number of guidelines and design solutions.},
 address = {London, United Kingdom},
 author = {Stu Favilla and Sonja Pedell},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1178760},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {June},
 pages = {35--39},
 publisher = {Goldsmiths, University of London},
 title = {Touch Screen Collaborative Music: Designing NIME for Older People with Dementia},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2014/nime2014_417.pdf},
 year = {2014}
}