Thesis submission ID 789 | created
| last updated
John Brendan McCloskey, inGrid: A new tactile, tangible and accessible digital musical instrument for enhanced creative independence amongst musicians with quadriplegic cerebral palsy
Repository (hard copy): Library, Ulster University, Magee
General specialism: Music Technology
Abstract:
In digital music-making activities musicians with physical disabilities employ both accessible and generic control interfaces; accessible controllers capture broad input gestures and map them onto discrete output events, whereas consumer digital musical instruments (DMI’s) offer extended control only through artefact multiplication (more buttons, sliders and dials). The interaction paradigm common to both consumer and specialised controllers reveals limited dimensions: click-and-dram or select-and-move. It is common practice in inclusive music activities for an able-bodied facilitator to expose access to low-level parameters via sequential and non-real-time processes, on behalf of the musician with a physical disability; these factors constrain real-time independent creative self-expression.
The current research details the explicit needs and capabilities of a small group of digital musicians with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, garnered through participatory design and mixed methods. The project methodology draws on tools and models from the fields of assistive technologies and from mainstream DMI design. Project participants contribute data pertaining to preferences and capabilities, and evaluate key iterations of the evolving prototype. The practice-led and participatory design ethos relies on demonstrably repeatable and preferred gestural capabilities, without seeking to maximise physical ability in a rehabilitative context. The underlying mapping strategy exposes, in real time, a transparent hierarchy of dynamic sound parameters commonly accessed through facilitated, offline and sequential processes.
A congenital physical impairment is immutable, but there are aspects of a DMI performance environment that can be altered and enhanced: control interface, ergonomics and the mapping strategy. The design ethos underpinning inGrid emphasises the dimensionality and the accessibility of both these elements. The result is a new prototype accessible DMI, and enhanced performance-control model, and further evidence of the value of adapting applicable models and tools in a person-centred creative context.
John Brendan McCloskey, inGrid: A new tactile, tangible and accessible digital musical instrument for enhanced creative independence amongst musicians with quadriplegic cerebral palsy
PhD, University of Ulster, 2014
Repository (hard copy): Library, Ulster University, Magee
General specialism: Music Technology
Abstract:
In digital music-making activities musicians with physical disabilities employ both accessible and generic control interfaces; accessible controllers capture broad input gestures and map them onto discrete output events, whereas consumer digital musical instruments (DMI’s) offer extended control only through artefact multiplication (more buttons, sliders and dials). The interaction paradigm common to both consumer and specialised controllers reveals limited dimensions: click-and-dram or select-and-move. It is common practice in inclusive music activities for an able-bodied facilitator to expose access to low-level parameters via sequential and non-real-time processes, on behalf of the musician with a physical disability; these factors constrain real-time independent creative self-expression.
The current research details the explicit needs and capabilities of a small group of digital musicians with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, garnered through participatory design and mixed methods. The project methodology draws on tools and models from the fields of assistive technologies and from mainstream DMI design. Project participants contribute data pertaining to preferences and capabilities, and evaluate key iterations of the evolving prototype. The practice-led and participatory design ethos relies on demonstrably repeatable and preferred gestural capabilities, without seeking to maximise physical ability in a rehabilitative context. The underlying mapping strategy exposes, in real time, a transparent hierarchy of dynamic sound parameters commonly accessed through facilitated, offline and sequential processes.
A congenital physical impairment is immutable, but there are aspects of a DMI performance environment that can be altered and enhanced: control interface, ergonomics and the mapping strategy. The design ethos underpinning inGrid emphasises the dimensionality and the accessibility of both these elements. The result is a new prototype accessible DMI, and enhanced performance-control model, and further evidence of the value of adapting applicable models and tools in a person-centred creative context.
Thesis submission ID 789