Improvising with Machines - Designing Artistic Non-Human Actors
Matthias Laschke, Robin Neuhaus, Marc Hassenzahl, Claudius Lazzeroni · 2020
For musicians, improvising with other musicians is not uncommon. But what happens when musicians engage in musical improvisation with semi-autonomous machines? We investigated a seminar in which design students built machines for musicians to improvise with. We explored the experiences of musicians when improvising with non-human musicians, as well as the challenges of designing non-human musicians. Among other things, we found that while from an outside perspective, the machines appeared as independent actors that interact with the musicians, the musicians experienced them as additional instruments they controlled. The interaction design of non-human actors was challenging for designers.