The Memory Cloud: Personal media libraries as affordance and constraint

Yann Seznec

The Memory Cloud: Personal media libraries as affordance and constraint
Image credit: Yann Seznec
  • Format: oral
  • Session: papers-8
  • Presence: remote
  • Duration: 10
  • Type: medium

Abstract:

The Memory Cloud is a musical instrument that uses a player’s own library of personal recordings as sonic material. This paper presents the design of the instrument, situating it within sustainability HCI studies and constraints-based design, before describing the instrument being used by two musicians in a professional context. Over 2000 sounds from the musician’s personal cloud library, dating back over 10 years, were placed in the instrument as the only sonic material available for exploring. I argue that a radically small scale and personal approach could be one strategy for addressing the issues of longevity in NIME, and I suggest that using personal media libraries presents a potential affordance and constraint for musical instrument design.