MirrorFugue : communicating presence in musical collaboration across space and time

[摘要] This thesis examines the problem of conveying presence across space and time. My work focuses on collaborative music, but findings may be generalized to other fields of collaboration. I present MirrorFugue, a set of interfaces for a piano keyboard designed to visualize the body of a collaborator. I begin by describing a philosophy of remote communication where the sense of presence of a person is just as essential as the bits of raw information transmitted. I then describe work in remote collaborative workspaces motivated by this view. I apply this philosophy to musical performances, giving a historical perspective and presenting projects in musical collaboration and pedagogy. Next, I describe two iterations of MirrorFugue interfaces. The first introduce three spatial metaphors inspired by remote collaborative workspaces to display the hands of a virtual pianist at the interaction locus of a physical piano. The second iteration introduces a pianist;;s face and upper body in the display. I outline usage scenarios for remote collaboration between two users and for a single user interacting with recorded material. I then present user studies of a MirrorFugue prototype in the context of remote piano lessons. I outline future work directions for increasing the portability of MirrorFugue, enhancing the sense of presence beyond the visual, and expanding MirrorFugue as an augmented piano platform.

[发布机构] Massachusetts Institute of Technology