I picked the paper titled „Where Few NIMEs Have Gone Before: Lessons in instrument design from Star Trek“ by S. M. Astrid Bin. I chose this paper specifically because I was intrigued by the novel idea of basing scientific research and experimentation on ideas shown in popular media and culture. Following, I will give a short summary of the paper and provide my own reflections and opinions about it.
In the paper the author details her journey from her discovery of musical instruments shown in the Sci-fi multimedia series „Star Trek“, to analyzing its structure and purpose in the show and the creation of a functional prototype, DMI (Digital Musical Instrument), of one of such instruments.
She starts of by talking about the role which music and musical instruments serve in Star Trek. Namely, they serve as storytelling devices – they indicate intelligence, are a symbol for humanity and serve to show how different (or similar) alien cultures are to our own. The author briefly talks about three instruments, but ultimately focuses on a fourth one, the Aldean instrument.
She starts by analyzing the instrument and identifying its core features. She also mentions how she was able to get in contact with Andrew Probert, the prop designer for the instrument. Once she had a basic set of guidelines to follow, she started work on the physical prototype. The main body of the instrument was made by laser cutting layers of board and sticking them together. Then other features such as lights, a hand grip and decorative designs were added.
I found the way she translated the instruments‘ ability (as shown in the show) to „translate thoughts“ (aka, to express one’s thoughts/feelings through sound) into actual reality by utilizing just two sensors quite fascinating. The author decided to keep it simple and decided to recreate the two basic responses shown in the show, which are calmness and excitement. To do so, she utilized an acceleration sensor (which we have also already utilized via ZigSim/Sensors2OSC) and a Trill Bar to detect touch (how many fingers are touching? How hard are they gripping/touching?). With just these simple sensors, she was already able to achieve quite a high level of sophistication with regard to actually playing the instrument.
She also talked about how she combined sound and interaction. She created the sounds in Ableton Live and made them interactable in the software Pure Data.
Image taken from the paper.
Lastly, the author talks about how it feels to play it and about her reflections and takeaways. The instrument isn’t hard to control but requires a certain level of self-control and calmness. Depending on how many fingers are used, how tightly it is gripped and the way it is moved, the sound is either a soft, sparkly sound or a more aggressive sound.
One aspect the author mentions, which I found quite intriguing, is how designing a functioning DMI and a TV prop differ. When designing a DMI, the technology is always the main focus and center of the design process. Here, questions such as, „how is it powered?“ and „what can it do and connect to?“ are of vital importance.
The Star Trek instruments on the other hand were designed totally in opposition to this. They did not have to work because the sounds were just added later in postproduction. Instead, they were designed as storytelling devices – how can this instrument convey the message the writers want to get across? What kind of alien culture would come up with such an instrument? How is played? When is music played in this culture? Even though both viewpoints deal with the creation of a musical instrument, they are radically different viewpoints. I found this an interesting point.
The most important
Quotation directly from the paper – see 5. Conclusion
takeaway from this process is that an instrument’s cultural
context, its life as an object that has a role and purpose
in an artistic setting, provides more useful boundaries for
instrument design than technical requirements or available
technical affordances.
I also found it interesting how she came up with the idea of using an accelerometer for the instrument. When she was texting on Instagram, she dropped her phone and an error message popped up saying „rage shake“ – the app thinking that she was shaking her phone in rage (quite interesting how the most common response to frustration seems to be to shake the device). While also being a humorous and unexpected, it also raises some questions why Instagram would be tracking one’s accelerometer data. In any case, I found this quite interesting – inspiration can come unexpectedly and from any place.
All in all I found this paper to be quite interesting. It was approachable for somebody who is not well versed in music/audio production and terminology, such as myself, and focused a lot on interaction design, which was very interesting to me. Basing it on a commonly known, popular media franchise also served to create interest.
