Processual and Experiential Design in Wearable Music Workshopping

This paper describes a series of workshops in which dancers participated in the design of collectively-playable, computational, wearable musical instruments, exploring ensemble experience in improvised events. We describe the progressive phases of layering and computationally creative learning that occurred during our workshops with epistemically and culturally diverse groups of participants. Our approach is motivated by processual and experiential design, as well as a relational approach using collective sonic mappings. The media instruments we constructed during our workshops are based on trial-and-error development of signal processing symmetrizing action and perception, designed without pre-schematizing, abstract models of user intention or semantics. Hence we outline a pre-reflective, pre-individual, sub-semantic approach to relational media synthesis.