Brief meeting with Sofia

Hey guys

Jesper and I had a brief meeting with Sofia after the lecture today. We mainly discussed our initial problem statement and our target group.

In regards to our initial problem statement:

• Which collaborative problems arise when two persons use one computer to create electronic music?

Sofia found it too broad. She stressed that “what you ask is what you get”. By this she meant that, instead of asking our self and electronic musicians which kind of problems exist, we should ask whether the problems we hypothesize exists, actually exists. If we just asked whether there exists problems we will get answers in east and west. Obviously, if we find out the problem does not exists we should ask about other problems, but directing the focus in this way delimits the pre-analysis and how much research we have to do. I find this a good point. If we all agree with Sofia’s point of view, I think we should try to put the problems each of us see with the process of two people making music on one computer into words and then try to determine which we find most severe.

Regarding our target group, then she suggests that we talk to Steven, as he has done some work in this area and has tested on musicians as well. Besides this she also asked whether, we would focus on people who already make music together and try to enhance their work experience or people who have tried to work together, but failed - properly due to some of the problems we are interested in.

Overall she thinks we could delimit our problem more.

Other than that, she gave us some names of conferences and organizations which could be of interest. It seems that they are all held in the summer. (Could otherwise have been a pretty nice excuse to have used some of the schools money to travel abroad ;)

• Nime - New interfaces for musical expression (conference)
• SMC - Sound & Music Computing (Organization)
• International computer music conference

Lastly, she mentioned this guy:

• Marcelo Wanderley

She suggested we look him up. He has apparently written some stuff about new musical interfaces which could maybe be useful.

About monday. There are no lectures. Where do you suggest we meet? I think cafés are nice and cozy, but maybe not that suited for working.


/David