TY - JOUR
T1 - Addressing nime’s prevailing sociotechnical, political, and epistemological exigencies
AU - Hayes, Lauren
AU - Marquez-Borbon, Adnan
N1 - Funding Information:
Through the neoliberal lens of the quantification of the value and impact of research itself, NIME exists within an academic climate in which counting matters: for promotion, for tenure, and for gaining future funding. Yet the favoring of particular modes of research, both through methodology as well as citation practices, contributes to shaping both the historical narratives and future directions of the field. As Sara Ahmed (2016, p. 148) has carefully articulated, “when citational practices become habits, bricks form walls”. Here Ahmed is referring to uncritical habits of sticking to “well-trodden citational paths” that only perpetuate and strengthen the dominance of “writers who just happen to be there”. Related work on citation practices within CHI demonstrates the often throwaway nature of providing references, where no critical engagement with the work is given beyond its inclusion as mere supporting evidence or validation (Marshall et al. 2017). We should also consider NIME’s discourse surrounding the democratization of DMIs—a theme that comes up repeatedly—against the financial costs of participating in academic conferences, particularly for students and faculty who are not funded by research labs, and moreover artists who are not supported by academic institutions. Anecdotally, during a NIME town hall in which barriers to entry were being discussed, a participant whispered privately to one of the authors, admitting to being surreptitiously in attendance as a nonpaying guest of the conference: It was the participant’s target community, but the registration fees were simply unaffordable. The point here being that this is not an abstract issue but a real problem.
Funding Information:
We are grateful for conversations with Owen Green, Georgina Born, Jessica Rajko, Amble Skuse, Grisha Coleman, and the feedback from attendees at NIME 2020, all of which have informed this work. Thanks to Owen Green, Tobias Feltus, Franziska Schroeder, and Romain Michon for their suggestions and comments on the text.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2021/7/27
Y1 - 2021/7/27
N2 - Nearly two decades after its inception as a workshop at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) exists as an established international conference significantly distinct from its precursor. Although this origin story is often noted, the implications of NIME’s history as emerging from a field predominantly dealing with human–computer interaction (HCI) have rarely been discussed. In this paper we highlight many of the recent—and some not so recent—challenges that have been brought upon the NIME community as it attempts to maintain and expand its identity as a platform for multidisciplinary research into HCI, interface design, and electronic and computer music. We discuss the relationship between the market demands of the neoliberal university—which have underpinned academia’s drive for innovation— and the quantification and economization of research performance that have facilitated certain disciplinary and social frictions to emerge within NIME-related research and practice. Drawing on work that engages with feminist theory and cultural studies, we suggest that critical reflection and, moreover, mediation is necessary to address burgeoning concerns that have been raised within the NIME discourse in relation to methodological approaches, “equity, diversity, and inclusion,” “accessibility,” and the fostering of “rigorous” interdisciplinary research.
AB - Nearly two decades after its inception as a workshop at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) exists as an established international conference significantly distinct from its precursor. Although this origin story is often noted, the implications of NIME’s history as emerging from a field predominantly dealing with human–computer interaction (HCI) have rarely been discussed. In this paper we highlight many of the recent—and some not so recent—challenges that have been brought upon the NIME community as it attempts to maintain and expand its identity as a platform for multidisciplinary research into HCI, interface design, and electronic and computer music. We discuss the relationship between the market demands of the neoliberal university—which have underpinned academia’s drive for innovation— and the quantification and economization of research performance that have facilitated certain disciplinary and social frictions to emerge within NIME-related research and practice. Drawing on work that engages with feminist theory and cultural studies, we suggest that critical reflection and, moreover, mediation is necessary to address burgeoning concerns that have been raised within the NIME discourse in relation to methodological approaches, “equity, diversity, and inclusion,” “accessibility,” and the fostering of “rigorous” interdisciplinary research.
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U2 - 10.1162/COMJ_a_00562
DO - 10.1162/COMJ_a_00562
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85111620875
VL - 44
SP - 24
EP - 38
JO - Computer Music Journal
JF - Computer Music Journal
SN - 0148-9267
IS - 2-3
ER -