Stuff In A Box

Robin Foster, and John Bowers

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract

This performance derives from our ongoing research into ‘hybrid-rummaging’; exploring how the physical performance practice of rummaging can be hybridised through digital technology. Rummaging is a practice centred around using the hands and a box of found objects to make noise. Our hybrid-rummaging expands this practice, seeking to explore how rummaging as a paradigm might be applied at every level of our performance ecology. We work with a range of technologies, from RFID, Bluetooth and video-tracking to tilt switches, electromagnetism and raw voltages, investigating how rummaging might be interfaced with these technologies, and the ways in which the technologies themselves might be appropriated, plundered and rummaged. We believe our practice enables us to speak to fundamental issues in NIME and explore them in performance, matters such as the relationships between gesture and sound, different forms of materiality, and the sense we can give to concepts such as ‘interface’, ‘instrument’ and ‘expression’. Our approach to hybridism differs from many approaches that can be found in NIME. We do not translate one form of materiality into another. We do not get different materials or actions on them to relate via abstraction or representation. Rather, we treat all objects at the same level, a truly flat ontology in which things, our hands included, collide. Our work is, in some respects, a boundary condition for NIME research and performance that we hope will provoke reflection on these and other affairs: it’s all stuff in a box.

Citation

Robin Foster, and John Bowers. 2024. Stuff In A Box. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15028203

BibTeX Entry

@article{nime2024_music_52,
 abstract = {This performance derives from our ongoing research into ‘hybrid-rummaging’; exploring how the physical performance practice of rummaging can be hybridised through digital technology. Rummaging is a practice centred around using the hands and a box of found objects to make noise. Our hybrid-rummaging expands this practice, seeking to explore how rummaging as a paradigm might be applied at every level of our performance ecology. We work with a range of technologies, from RFID, Bluetooth and video-tracking to tilt switches, electromagnetism and raw voltages, investigating how rummaging might be interfaced with these technologies, and the ways in which the technologies themselves might be appropriated, plundered and rummaged. We believe our practice enables us to speak to fundamental issues in NIME and explore them in performance, matters such as the relationships between gesture and sound, different forms of materiality, and the sense we can give to concepts such as ‘interface’, ‘instrument’ and ‘expression’. Our approach to hybridism differs from many approaches that can be found in NIME. We do not translate one form of materiality into another. We do not get different materials or actions on them to relate via abstraction or representation. Rather, we treat all objects at the same level, a truly flat ontology in which things, our hands included, collide. Our work is, in some respects, a boundary condition for NIME research and performance that we hope will provoke reflection on these and other affairs: it’s all stuff in a box.},
 address = {Utrecht, Netherlands},
 articleno = {52},
 author = {Robin Foster and John Bowers},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15028203},
 editor = {Laurel Smith Pardue and Palle Dahlstedt},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {September},
 numpages = {3},
 pages = {180--182},
 presentation-video = {},
 title = {Stuff In A Box},
 track = {Music},
 url = {http://nime.org/proceedings/2024/nime2024_music_52.pdf},
 year = {2024}
}