“If you don’t give thought to design, users will not take to the technical tools you’ve created.”

T.B: To this day they’ve only played a very small part in our field of activity: this industry is not really an industry so to speak and it only represents a tiny share of the market. It is for the most part composed of small underground companies – with only a handful of research projects and employees hidden in a basement, who play around with ideas and techniques. From what I’ve seen, not even the slightest notion of ergonomics or design has so far been applied to this type of tools. Thus, this field really needs to be explored. One day I still hope to see the domains of computing, music and design working together to come up with user-friendly tools which are more adapted to the needs of both amateurs and well-seasoned composers.

CADI: We shouldn’t fall into the trap of over-simplification either.

T.B: To avoid this, we must strive to design smart interfaces that enable people to understand the workings of the tools they use without oversimplifying these tools in the process. A good example of this simplification is the metaphor offered by the software Reason, which mimics actual real-world tools in order to avoid unsettling users.

CADI: The term “smart interface” requires further explanation. How would you define it?

T.B: One thing is certain: a smart interface is not meant to replace the user’s brain and thinking abilities nor to carry out tasks on its own. It would not make any sense to design such interfaces. It is not a case of removing human intelligence. Human beings need to be assisted in their thought process by being provided with representations, objects or procedures that will act as incentives for their imagination, as Boulez stated. Musical composition and writing devices must be made into true extensions of the limbs and of the whole body, like musical instruments. To do so, we must not create tools that take over the user’s brain but rather ones that can assist human thought by becoming an integral part of their gestural and cognitive flow.

CADI: Is it at this stage that designers should bring in their useful human-centered input?

T.B: In an ideal world it would probably be so. But for the time being no designer has ever actually put his/her knowledge into practice in musical creation – here I mean the tools used by composers. Their skills are only put to use in research tools or in industrially-manufactured tools marketed by huge companies with a small concern for research in design. These types of structures are blatantly lacking in innovative initiatives. It seems like innovation blossoms more in human-sized companies where employees, though not designers, come up with relevant ideas and dare to experiment with new, more inventive modes of representation.

This would be great. But for now, functional innovation, i.e. the type of innovation giving shape to new ways of making and thinking in musical creation, has only aroused the interest of a handful of research labs and small innovative companies. These small firms, eager to explore new ideas and who dare to propose inventive modes of representation, probably cannot afford to implement the hefty design studies required to further their proposals and develop their uses. On the downside, the more prosperous large industrial companies seem to turn a blind eye to their own need for design. As a result, they fail to revamp their models and continue to feed us the same old interfaces over and over ( tracks, virtual mixing-tables, etc.).

MUE - Auréien Pasquier's final degree project carried out with the help of Thomas Bottini, 2008-2009

Down with mimicking the real-world in computer music

CADI: Though computer technologies keep evolving, interfaces remain the same and fail to achieve enhanced performances. What exactly appealed to you in Aurélien Pasquier’s  project MUE – a device created to enhance the sound and visual experience provided by computer-aided musical composition interfaces and to strike up a bond between computer tools and the subconscious of music fiends?

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