On the previous section I identified three types of roles for interfaces: intercommunication, mediation and facilitation. Intercommunication role will not be explored in my project, that said condition is not adequate for the general aim of this thesis, where communication between participants is priority. Consequently, the ground between mediation and facilitation is the direction I will pursue for designing the system.
I also have discussed how the experience should be in terms of interaction. However,a remaining question is: What is this for? There is a wide range of expectations towards the musical experience that this project could address. Ranging from entertainment to musical performance, the wide spectrum of expectations deeply influence on the characteristics of the interface. The final product could then range from a toy–in the case of entertainment–to a musical instrument in the case of music performance. Although at this point I cannot say exactly what my project will be, I am certain about what I don’t want: is not going to be a toy, and is not going to be an instrument.
Since this project is targeting group experiences, the internal social relationships between participants need special attention. The question here is: Who will participants collaborate with? It is completely different if they collaborate with their couples, with their bosses or with a complete strangers. Different levels of intimacy between participants require different contexts, features and roles for the interface. Trying to understand where my project should fall in this wide social spectrum, I created a bi-dimensional graph plotting level of intimacy and context. These two conditions influence on each other, so it is important to find the most adequate combination of both. For instance, an interface meant to be used in the living-room would be completely different from one that is set up in a public plaza. The decision to work in the public or in the private sphere is relevant (and difficult!) so I’m not completely decided on this yet, however making this graph helps me to narrow the scope of possibilities by choosing an area.
Making research on social gatherings in diverse contexts, one of the social activities that caught my attention are rituals of Native Americans around drum circles. In this rituals, many of the things I’m interested in are present: collaboration around a sound context, communication between participants, a sense of belonging to a community with common goals. The interaction is interesting too, a very simple gesture–hitting the drum in a constant pace–creates something really powerful and beautiful: humans singing to the spiritual world. Here, no musical expertise is really needed and the most important thing is the social experience.
Another example are community music groups. There are some institutions that create activities around music for members of a given community, where people with different levels of musical expertise can participate in collective experiences. One of the most noticeable institutions is the Developmental Community Music[1], that organize experiences for different communities such as neighborhoods, office spaces, schools and any kind of community interested in participating. The goal of DCM is to facilitate musical group experiences with the aim of developing self-improvement, communicational skills, teamwork skills and spiritual fulfillment. The power of sound.
Getting into spaces, I started looking to places that create intimacy and behavioral change, trying to understand what are the conditions to allow this. The karaoke bars and booths–so popular in Japan–are perfect examples of spaces that meet those conditions. Karaoke spaces are usually used by groups of friends looking for an entertaining experience. Within this space, people behave in a completely different way as they would do outside; entering a karaoke booth implies some behavioral rules responding to special rules that exist only inside the room. As described By Salen and Zimmerman[2], a Magic Circle has its own set of rules, and these rules create a parallel space of reality:
“…Within the magic circle, special meanings accrue and cluster around objects and behaviors. In effect, a new reality is created, defined by the rules of the game and inhabited by its players.”
So, what conditions make spaces become a place for intimacy and behavioral change? It seems that the basic variables are: light conditions, area of space, sound conditions, space distribution and services. In a karaoke space for instance we have dim lights, a closed space (proportional to the number of participants), a good sound quality, a right distribution of furniture that encourages the activity, and food and drinks at hand. The combination of all these provide the necessary environment that karaoke requires.
In a similar fashion, Photo-Booths are also spaces with their own behavioral rules. It is interesting that although all what these booths do is nothing more than taking a set of pictures, using one is usually a fun experience and it produces a profound behavioral change on the participants. There is something very unique about entering a very tight box, making people share their personal space with others. Again, the photo booth conditions: dim lights, very tight space, small seats, and a curtain that separates the booth-world from the ordinary. In this case, just like the karaoke example, the interface sets the rules and drives the behavior; the time between each picture, the amount of pictures, the view area of the camera, are things that encourage people behave in a certain way for a certain period of time.
I want to point out something I saw one night at a local bar in Brooklyn: a group of ten to twelve people were playing traditional American music. They were not officialy a band, they were people getting together to make music. Following the tradition of the musical style, violins, mandolins, double basses, guitars, violas, and the essential banjo were part of the ensemble. People were displaced in a circular shape, distributing along various layers of distance from the center. Closer to the center, the more experienced musicians played their instruments, conducting the performance. Moving away from the center, a second layer of intermediate musicians followed the ones in the center, assuming a supporting role to the ensemble.
On a third layer, behind the intermediate layer, people that either were learning how to play the instrument or were getting to know the style also assume supporting roles, sometimes just observing and listening to the music. I had the chance to talk to them, and they explained that they were not a band. They were people meeting every two weeks to play together, “The group is different every time we meet depending on who shows up, we always have new people that we never met before” said one of the participants. The most experienced musicians have their own bands, they do this because it’s fun and for meeting and sharing with people with similar interests. “Anyone with an instrument and can participate and learn.”
The beauty of these meetings is that novices and experts come together, and feel comfortable in the same experience. Even though is clear that there are different levels of participation according to the different skill levels, socially everyone is equal, and everyone’s invited. I witnessed that myself: when they ended playing a couple of songs, one of the guys in the center introduced himself with the one sitting on his side, after talking a while, they exchanged their guitars, this seemed to me a welcoming ritual for a stranger.
The findings from this section were very enlightening, now I have a better understanding about the conditions of spaces that encourage collaborative interactions. The idea of a booth remains in my mind, and definitely some of their characteristics will be incorporated into my project.
_____________________
[1] http://playsinglaugh.com
[2] Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric. Rules of play: Game Design Fundamentals. London: The MIT Press, 2004.