But perhaps I should not consider the relationship between traditional "instruments" and music and new digital music a competition. One of Perry Cook's principles when designing computer music interfaces is to, "Make a piece, not an instrument or controller." I think Meredith and I have done exactly that - perhaps more so than many other people in our class and also more than Cook even intended in that we've created an actual narrative that includes our interface but isn't necessarily completely centered around it. Of course, we did create a narrative with the intention of featuring our interface, but it worked out that the two characters just happen to find this crazy Spherical Miracle Machine and are not intending to play or perform with it. Although I think our performance is certainly entertaining, I also have mixed feelings about it in that it lacks flexibility, the possibility of becoming "skilled" at playing it, and most of all, the production of sounds that I find pleasing.
In another arena, however, I think we may continue to see a large difference between traditional musical instruments such as the violin and the piano and new interfaces like the ones designed in our class. In the article Capturing Sound, Mark Katz talks about how technology has made music more portable, affordable, and repeatable, among other things. One factor he acknowledges when he references the Edison Realism Test is that listeners have to be able to conjure a mental picture of the performers to fully enjoy the experience. I can easily listen to a recording of a piano performance and imagine what that looked like to viewers. However, I seriously doubt that anyone could listen to a recording of the Spherical Miracle Machine and be able to imagine what we look like when performing with it. So something is definitely lost in translation, which is a downer for computer/digital/new music.
With these things in mind, I would expect to see digital music continue to grow and expand but only in certain contexts for the near future. I think for it to become more mainstream, the sounds produced will have to become more...well, how should I say it...pleasing? pleasant?Maybe I just don't appreciate some of the more techy stuff, but over the course of the semester, I haven't heard anything that just plain sounds as good to me as any kind of orchestral music. Don't get me wrong - we had some very talented individuals come in and perform for us, and there was definitely a "wow" factor with some of the stuff they did. But as interesting as the performances were, a lot of them didn't really sound good (in my opinion). So I guess that I'm predicting that the world of NIME will remain relatively unknown to the general population until the time when the sounds produced are more mainstream. That's not to say, of course, that NIMEs will be stagnant or not improving and not trying to break into more mainstream arenas. I'll be interested to see how this plays out over the coming years.
