Towards Neurodiverse Sensemaking: Pluralizing Agency in Wearable Music and Participatory Workshopping

Seth Thorn; Anani Vasquez; Corey Reutlinger; Margarita Pivovarova; Mirka Koro

Towards Neurodiverse Sensemaking: Pluralizing Agency in Wearable Music and Participatory Workshopping
Image credit: Seth Thorn; Anani Vasquez; Corey Reutlinger; Margarita Pivovarova; Mirka Koro

Abstract:

We, a team of teachers and researchers, share examples of collectively playable instruments that challenge normative assumptions about intention and agency in digital musical instruments. These instruments enliven neurodiverse sensemaking in participatory design and STEAM learning. Through a multiyear research-practice partnership (RPP), we collaborated with teaching fellows to co-design a curriculum for neurodiverse middle school students that activates computational thinking (CT). This collaboration led to a web-based, quasi-modular interface connected to wearable music sensors. We situate our work within the growing literature on participatory design of collaborative accessible digital musical instruments (CADMIs). We describe how our co-design methods address the complex demands of ecosystemic thinking, sensitive to the varied entanglements that complicate traditional human-computer interaction (HCI) design and evaluation methods. Our pedagogical and methodological approach diverges from deficit-focused strategies that aim to develop neurotypical communication skills in neurodivergent individuals. Instead, we promote cross-neurotype collaboration without presuming a single mode of “correct” communication. Furthermore, we surface the potential of CADMIs by linking this notion to a pluralization of agency that extends beyond one-to-one body-sensor relationships. We develop accessible instruments within neurodiversity and autism contexts, avoiding reification of mindbody relations and recognizing them as dynamic, field-like, and embedded in facilitative relations for these communities.