Ethnographer doing (self-funded and very part-time) research on technological appropriation through music. Much of my approach revolves around Open Innovation, co-creation, co-development, grassroots prototyping, Maker Culture, etc.
I’ve done research work in a Living Lab which also created the first FabLab in Canada. While it wasn’t music-focused, it had a big impact on my career.
I went to music school as a sax player in college in 1989 and the “MIDI Studio” course was the start of quite a journey, for me.
My PhD research in ethnomusicology and folklore was based on fieldwork among hunters in Mali. Though it may sound quite far from what people consider MusicTech (and hunter’s music only used acoustic instruments, at the time), it did contribute to my insight into technological appropriation.
While I’m not a coder, I do dabble in code. Including some scripting which takes MIDI or OSC. Some of that has been on simple systems based on the Raspberry Pi.
Pianocentrism is a pet peeve of mind: people in MusicTech often use the piano as the template for most of what they do. To me, MIDI 1.0 is very pianocentric. MPE has been a step away from pianocentrism. I’m hoping that people will move further away from pianocentrism by appropriating MIDI 2.0 in the near future.