Creative Mobile Music
From Collective Dynamics to DIY Culture
Atau Tanaka
Chair of Digital Media
Acting Director, Culture Lab Newcastle
Twitter: @atautanaka

Mobile Music Experimentation
5 Projects, 5 years, 15 minutes
 Ubiquitous Computing
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear.
They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until
they are indistinguishable from it.” Mark Weiser (1991)
 Sony CSL Paris (2001)
 Mobile Music Workshop (2004) L. Gaye, Sonic City
 Clicmobile SA (2005)
 Culture Lab
(2007)
A. Bassoli, TuNA

Malleable Mobile Music
Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, 2003
 Making a pop song interactive
 Serverside Re-mix Engine
 Streaming delivery over wireless
 Social Remix:
Can music be a carrier
of social information?
 Choreography of
Shared Experience

UCD - User Centered Design methods
Sony CSL Paris / INRIA, with Olivier Bau, Wendy Mackay
 Imagining the MP3 player of the
future
 Ethnographic interviews
 Structured brainstorming
 Participatory design

UCD – Human Computer Interaction
New form factors
 Inspired by novel visual displays
– Sony CSL Tokyo
 Navigation
 Communication
 Association

UCD, HCI, and rapid prototyping
Mu20 : a mobile music object
 20 channel audio object
 Inverting surround
sound
 Haptic feedback

Net_Dérive
Sony CSL Paris / Clicmobile (2006)
with Petra Gemeinboeck, Ali Momeni
 Locative Media
 Wearable Computing
 Situationist Dérive
 Live, fluid media
synthesis

Net_Dérive
Sony CSL Paris / Clicmobile (2006)
with Petra Gemeinboeck, Ali Momeni
 Live geotagged photostream
 Geography as musical interface
 Visualization and
Sonification of trajectories
 Connecting gallery
and the street

Dry Run
Great North Run cultural program / Culture Lab (2008)
with NAME, Clicmobile, Bren Ratliff, David King
 Locative technology in major sporting event
 Tracking emotion and exertion of
training experience
 Drawing upon
sports psychology

Dry Run
Great North Run cultural program / Culture Lab (2008)
with NAME, Clicmobile, Bren Ratliff, David King
 10 participants tracked
over 3 months training
 Geotagged photos+MP3
 Post-run questionnaire
– Multimedia blog
– Associating experience
to place and music

Dry Run
Great North Run cultural program / Culture Lab (2008)
with NAME, Clicmobile, Bren Ratliff, David King
 Translating the experience of sport
 Reappropriating surveillance technologies
– Visualization across
time, across people
– Insight into the human
experience
 The Ideal Playlist
 Lead up to
London 2012
Olympics

Chip Tune Marching Band
Culture Lab / Maker Faire UK (2009)
Jamie Allen, Kazuhiro Jo
 Mobile doesn’t have to mean mobile phone
 The sustainability question:
– Devices need power
– Generate one’s own energy?
 DIY (Do It Yourself) culture
– Make your own instrument
– Autonomous, off grid

Creative Mobile Music
From the Lab to Gallery to the Streets
 Transplanting technologies,
creating new musical contexts
 Shifting roles :
– Instrument builder/Composer
– Producer/Performer
– Consumer/Participant
 Ubiquitous technology changes public perceptions of
performance, possibility, and creativity