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Sidney Fels é professor do departamento de Elétrica e Engenharia da Computação na Universidade de British Columbia, diretor do Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) e coordenador do laboratório de Human Communication Technologies. Possui mais de 20 anos de experiência criando controladores alternativos para música, publicando inúmeros artigos documentando seu trabalho. Mais sobre suas pesquisas pode ser encontrado no seu site.

 

What is your design process for new interfaces for musical expression (NIME)? Do other people take part in this process? What are their roles?
It varies, depending upon the complexity of the NIME. I have done designs where it is just me doing the concept and prototyping and I’ve done ones where there’s a large team working through the NIME process. I’m usually the lead designer though with students participating in refinement when it is one of my NIMEs. For one of theirs, I participate as an adviser. For NIMEs that are done in classes I teach, it is typical for 1-3 people to do the design.


 

What are the main challenges in designing NIMEs?
Best to read the papers I’ve written and course materials from the course that Michael Lyons and I do at various venues. That covers pretty much all of this complicated topic.

 

“The NIME we create are not used outside the academia”. What do you think about this statement?
Mostly, they are in academia. However, I’ve had my NIME used in non-academic settings for public performances. See the DIVA website for example. Tooka had a number of public performances as well. But, for the most part, the NIMEs that I work on are used to explore expressive space from an academic perspective.