Interaction topologies in mobile-based situated networked music systems

Abstract

In this paper, we present a complete framework, both technical and conceptual, aimed at developing and analysing Networked Music Systems. After a short description of our technical framework called soundworks, a JavaScript library especially designed for collective music interaction using web browser of mobile phones, we introduce a new conceptual framework, we named interaction topologies, that aims at providing a generic tool for the description of interaction in such systems. Our proposition differs from the theoretical approaches generally proposed in the literature by decoupling the description of interaction topologies from the low level technical implementation of the network. We then report on a set of scenarios and prototypes, illustrating and assessing our framework, which were successfully deployed in several public installations and performances. We particularly show that our concept of interaction topologies succeeds at describing and analysing global aspects of interaction from multiple point of views (e.g., social, human-computer) by allowing for composing simple abstract figures. We finally introduce a discussion on agencies and perception of users engaged in such systems that could later complete our framework to conceive and analyse Networked Music Systems.