Re: [microsound] music in the digital age

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> People who design interfaces aren't marketing staff.  They are most
> likely familiar and possibly take part in research in Human Computer
> Interaction.  They attempt to understand how and why a user interacts
> with software a certain way, using ideas from psychology where possible
> (an obvious example is the 7 +/- 2 rule).
> 
> An example of what an interface designer might do is try to make certain
> aspects of their interface afford certain actions.  When you see a door
> knob, for example, it affords you putting your hand on it and turning
> it.  When you see something change colour when your mouse moves over it,
> it makes you want to click on it.
> 
> Commercial software is obviously influenced by the brand that produces
> the software, as users of software made by Apple, Propellerheads, Native
> Instruments and Steinberg will be aware.  However, this branding doesn't
> necessarily dictate how the interface should behave, which is a separate
> and very serious subject - not (just) an attempt to sell something.
Hmmm - from responses I'm thinking that most people haven't read the
article. No problem, but when I talked about interface I think it would have
been surmised from the context that I was talking about interface as
relating to the inflexibility/narrowness of mp3 software design and its
poverty as an interface for conceptual/emotional interaction. Interaction
with music/sound is of course rarely if ever unmediated by
circumstance/context. This is the age old white gallery space debate.

Sediment's response was one I expected to receive on this list and fair
enough, but his/her preference is not one that is the focus of my piece. An
album or cd cover is a conceptual interface - as Alex points out the view
that it is to do with branding is way too simplistic and reductive, it is
much more personalised and subtle in many/most cases. That layer of
communication is lost with iTunes and mp3s. I find it strange that computers
have predominantly impoverished rather than enriched music by reducing it to
the status of a filetype, subject to an unimaginative filing system, and
failing to provide a standardised set of functions which might facilitate
the imaginitive exploitation of the multimedia opportunities afforded by the
availability of so much processing power . There will doubtless be some who
welcome this, though I'm not one of them.

Cheers, Colin.


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