Workshop Title: NIME Eco Wiki - a crash course

A collective tool to foster environmental awareness in NIME

Description

In 2020, the NIME conference added a number of new officers to address ethical issues related to the topics of the conference, including environmental issues. This workshop is proposed by the three environmental officers, who have initiated the NIME Eco Wiki and a framework to raise awareness and engagement around ecological and environmental issues.

The NIME Eco Wiki is a repository of resources that can support more environmentally friendly practices and is meant to be a living document, open to contributions from the entire community. The framework, developed in collaboration with Alexander Refsum Jensenius, is a matrix designed to help practitioners to reflect upon their research, and is flexible enough to encompass research spanning from the arts and humanities to engineering. The matrix consists of two primary axes: research stage and resources.

The intent of this workshop is to introduce these tools to NIME and foster the involvement of the community in the creation of new entries and use of the existing ones. To this end, we propose a three-hour workshop consisting of two main activities: 1) applying framework to own practice and identifying potential topics for inclusion in the Wiki, and 2) creating new Wiki content. Ideally, we expect participation of 20-30 people.

Introduction

• 1. Introduction of framework, Wiki, issues (15 minutes)

  In the first activity, we will present the framework, describing each element of the two axes. Introduction of the Wiki follows, where we will present the current entries, intended structure, and mechanism for creating new content (to be used later in the workshop). Finally, we will highlight non-trivial issues related to growing and maintaining the Wiki like social inclusion, gender diversity and community governance. The framework, Wiki, and these issues are discussed in a companion paper (co-authored with Jensenius) we have submitted, which will be distributed to participants ahead of time if accepted.

Activity 1 - Framework application and identification of Wiki topics

• 2. Application of framework to personal NIME practice (10 minutes). In this phase, we will ask each participant to use the framework to analyze their own NIME practice. To this end, in advance, we will create a single PubPub document with a section for each participant, in which they can simply fill the table.

• 3. Develop Wiki topics from framework (30 minutes). Participants will break out into four groups to review the tables created in activity 2, with each group focusing on one of the four research stages of the framework. This activity is composed of two sub-activities:

  • 3a - Discuss the individual frameworks; reflect on obstacles and biases (15 minutes). Each group will discuss their assigned research stage, highlighting possible issues, biases, and obstacles related to that aspect of NIME work.

  • 3b - Create a list of new possible Wiki entries (15 minutes). Based on the discussion, each group creates a list, as long as possible, of possible new entries for the Wiki.

• 4. Short group presentations (20 minutes). Participants join back together and each group makes a short presentation of identified issues and proposed topics. The organizers will create a list of all the suggested topics in one shared PubPub document.

• 5. Participants select topics for Wiki entries (5 minutes). Every participant selects one or two topics they would like to create a Wiki entry for in the successive activity.

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Activity 2 - Creating of new Wiki entries

• 6. Creation of new entries (45 minutes). Each participant creates a new entry for their selected topic(s) Wiki. If multiple participants selected the same entry, they may work together or individually. At this stage, redundancy only means that several entries will be edited down to one. The entries do not need to be fully complete but can focus on just some aspects of a chosen topic. Participants will write their entries to individual preconfigured PubPub documents containing the Wiki entry template that will be set up beforehand.

Conclusion

• 7. Group discussion (30 minutes). The workshop concludes with participants returning to one group. A discussion will cover the overall experience of the workshop, and identify priorities for the growth of the Wiki and its applications in NIME practice. In this phase, we will also show how to upload new entries to the Wiki, to foster people to create new entries autonomously.

Short Description

In this workshop, hosted by the three NIME environmental officers, participants will be introduced to the NIME Eco Wiki, a repository for addressing environmental and sustainability issues within the NIME community. During the workshop, the participants will discuss how practices on the communal as well as the individual level may become more sustainable and they will create new additions and ideas for the Wiki.

Organizers

This workshop is organized by John Sullivan, Adam Pultz Melbye, and Raul Masu. Since 2020 John, Adam, and Raul are the NIME environmental officers, coauthored the NIME environmental statement, and proposed the NIME Eco Wiki.

John Sullivan, Input Devices and Music Interaction Lab, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, McGill University, Montreal.
John is in the process of completing his Ph.D. in Music Technology where his research focuses on HCI and user-driven design and evaluation of new instruments for performance. His dissertation “Built to Perform: Designing Digital Musical Instruments for Professional Use” examines how active and professional performers take up novel instruments into their practice through user surveys, co-design workshops, and practice-based instrument design collaborations with musicians. John holds an M.F.A. in Intermedia from the University of Maine where his research focused on the development of large-scale interactive installation works. Prior to his graduate studies, John enjoyed a career as a professional bass player and multi-instrumentalist, releasing nine albums with various indie rock bands and touring in the throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. www.johnnyvenom.com

Adam Pultz Melbye, Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, freelance composer, musician and sound artist.
Adam is currently undertaking a practice-led Ph.D. at Sarc, Belfast, exploring double bass resonance and performance through complex adaptive and semi-autonomous feedback networks. Of these, the most recent is the FAAB (Feedback-Actuated Augmented Bass) a hybrid instrument developed in collaboration with Halldór Úlfarsson, which won the Best Music Award at NIME 2020. Adam has released three solo albums and appears on an additional 50 releases. He has toured Europe, the US, Japan and Australia and has performed at festivals such as Wien Moderne, Copenhagen Jazzfestival, Yokohama Jazzfestival nownow (Sydney) and New Adits (Austria). He has composed and recorded music for theatre, film and dance and has created sculpture with the project Every Vessel. www.adampultz.com

Raul Masu, FCT/NOVA University of Lisbon and ITI/LARSyS.
Raul is an HCI researcher who explores the potential of sound, and a musician who plays with interactive computers. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Digital Media at the Department of Informatics, NOVA University of Lisbon, and affiliated with the ITI/LARSyS. Raul has graduated in Electronic Music (BA) and Composition (10-Years Diploma – Master level equivalent) from the Music Conservatory of Trento. After his graduation, he worked as a research assistant at the Interaction Lab (University of Trento). This period highly influenced his conception of HCI, in particular toward a humanistic approach to HCI. Raul's scientific articles are published in international venues in the fields of Music Technology and HCI. As a musician, he composed, programmed, and performed works presented in various contexts in the form of performance or installation. These include the Moving Digits Creative Europe project (Tallin, Düsseldorf, Madeira), Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam), SMC Conference 2020 (Turin), Centro Italiano di Cultura (Tokyo), Queen Mary University (London).

Additional Speakers

Alexander Refsum Jensenius, University of Oslo, Department of Musicology, RITMO. Alexander will be involved as speaker in the first introduction as he created the framework with us.

Preferred Length of Workshop

3 hours

Technical and Space Requirements

For the workshop we will setup a PubPub Dashboard with a number of documents that we will use throughout the session. The workshop is easy to run online with the different groups working in different rooms or channels, or in person with people simply working in groups. In case of a hybrid setting, the in-person group can constitute one working group for the group activity while the other can work online. The live session can run either on Jitsi (managed by the workshop hosts) or Zoom (if provided by the conference organizers).

Links to Supporting Media

The NIME environmental Statement: https://nime.org/environment/

The NIME Eco Wiki: https://eco.nime.org/