Ubiquitous music: Perspectives and challenges

Abstract

This special volume features a selection of proposals that prompted positive and extensive discussions within the context of the Ubiquitous Music Workshop held at the Federal University of São João del Rei, MG, Brazil. In its eighth edition and featuring contributions from a host of international participants, this event provided a demonstration of the various approaches that characterise the research and practice of the ubimus field. In addition to the papers selected for this issue and the oral presentations, the workshop also included round-table discussions and artistic realisations, which are an important part of the work of many ubimus practitioners. These musical and artistic results are also addressed in the articles included in this special issue.

Keywords:

• Ubiquitous music
• ubimus
• creativity
• ecologically grounded creative practice
• composition
• aesthetics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Damián Keller http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0866-3066

Notes

1 A detailed discussion of material, social and formal relational properties is beyond the scope of this editorial. In a nutshell, relational properties are derived from the concept of affordance coined by psychologist J. J. Gibson in 1977 (Gibson, 1977) The proposal is still in development and we envisage further exchanges that could impact its meaning and its potential applications. Please see Keller, Barreiro, Queiroz, and Pimenta (2010) and Keller, Lazzarini, and Pimenta (2014) for the concept's motivations and context.

2 https://www.w3.org/TR/webaudio/

3 http://www.freesound.org/

4 New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) is a community and also an annual conference that focuses on the development of digital musical instruments. Its original denomination was New Instruments for Musical Expression. Various researchers have criticised the implications of targeting instruments and self-expression as the main (and sometimes the only) objectives of musical interaction research (see Bown, Eldridge, & McCormack, 2009; Gurevich & Treviño, 2007 for two early examples of these critical analyses)