Existing works on interactive sonification of movements, i.e., the translation of human movement qualities from the physical to the auditory domain, usually adopt a predetermined approach: the way in which movement features modulate the characteristics of sound is fixed. In our work we want to go one step further and demonstrate that the user role can influence the tuning of the mapping between movement cues and sound parameters. Here, we aim to verify if and how the mapping changes when the user is either the performer or the observer of a series of body movements (tracing a square or an infinite shape with the hand in the air). We asked participants to tune movement sonification while they were directly performing the sonified movement vs. while watching another person performing the movement and listening to its sonification. Results show that the tuning of the sonification chosen by participants is influenced by three variables: role of the user (performer vs observer), movement quality (the amount of Smoothness and Directness in the movement), and physical parameters of the movements (velocity and acceleration). Performers focused more on the quality of their movement, while observers focused more on the sonic rendering, making it more expressive and more connected to low-level physical features.

Sound Forest is a music installation consisting of a room with light-emitting interactive strings, vibrating platforms and speakers, situated at the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts. In this paper we present an exploratory study focusing on evaluation of Sound Forest based on picture cards and interviews. Since Sound Forest should be accessible for everyone, regardless age or abilities, we invited children, teens and adults with physical and intellectual disabilities to take part in the evaluation. The main contribution of this work lies in its findings suggesting that multisensory platforms such as Sound Forest, providing whole-body vibrations, can be used to provide visitors of different ages and abilities with similar associations to musical experiences. Interviews also revealed positive responses to haptic feedback in this context. Participants of different ages used different strategies and bodily modes of interaction in Sound Forest, with activities ranging from running to synchronized music-making and collaborative play.

In this paper, we present the Nebula, a garment that translates intentional gestures and implicit interaction into sound.Nebula is a studded cloak made from a heavy fabric that envelopes the wearer with many pendulous folds. We describe the design process, and specifically highlight three material investigations that show particularly important material connections that were fundamental to the experience of the garment: How the draping and construction of the garment allowed for implicit interaction, how the studs were used both as a computational sensing material and a strong visual component, and how the sound design exploited tangible material qualities in the garment. Finally, we discuss how such material investigations in general can be put to use. Both as a way to produce evocative connections in the materials available in design work, but also as a way to extract legible design intentions for other designers and researchers.

In this paper, an installation is presented that connects Stanford and Stockholm through a one-of-a- kind combination of instrument and venue: the Skandia Wurlitzer theatre organ (Wurlitzer serial no. 1254) situated in the KTH R1 Experimental Performance Space, a disused nuclear reactor. A continuous stream of musical data, audio, and video between the two places explored the capabilities of the digital to play with the concepts of presence and embodiment, virtuality and the physical.

This Studio offers researchers and designers an opportunity to investigate and discuss prototypes and in-process projects from a perspective that expands beyond material aspects, to also cover social and cultural ones. Participants will bring a project, device, or platform, which will be discussed as sociomaterials that actively participate across multiple social and cultural contexts. This perspective, as well as the prototypes and projects brought by the participants, forms the core of the Studio, where conversation will emerge over several phases: from the demonstration of the individual projects as things, to the generation of speculative fictions as to the role and use of these artifacts in the world. Finally, we end with a discussion of infrastructuring and appropriation of the artefacts and their social roles. The themes that will be examined in this Studio are agency, emerging behaviors, embeddedness and design strategies from a sociomaterial perspective of artifacts.