Motivation and Background

Digital technologies are deeply intertwined with music. They make way for collectives and communities of practice to form, often in dialectic processes of practice shaping technology and technology shaping practice. They enable new forms of artistic creation, expression, and distribution, and are the reasons why communities like NIME exist. At the same time, digital technologies have a growing environmental footprint, from manufacturing and mineral extraction for devices, as well as the energy consumption and waste associated with digital infrastructures, altogether contributing to environmental degradation. We are in a situation where many of the activities and infrastructures related to digital technology–and to NIME research–cannot or should not be maintained in the future if we want the earth to remain liveable, despite our complex attachments to these.

This workshop is an adaptation of the Atelier SEnS, the Sciences, Environnements and Societies Workshop, developed by Sophie Quinton and Éric Tannier and distributed under the licence CC-BY-NC 4.0, We aim to create a space of structured, collective reflection, for members of the NIME community to discuss the consequences of our research, the values that it conveys, and to make a first step towards imagining what a redirection of NIME research could look like in mid- to long-term trajectories towards sustainability.

So, beyond the direct environmental footprint of the digital technologies that make up essential components to our communities and practices, as well as flying to conferences among others, what role does our work in NIME research play in the destructive behaviour of our societies? Can something that is a new interface ever be one that is not geared towards generativity and addition? Can there be a subtractive approach to interface design for musical interaction? How can NIME as a community imagine doing without or doing with less? And ultimately, does our research contribute to building a world that corresponds to our values?

To tackle these questions we must learn to clearly articulate the values that shape our work, and understand the complex relationships between our research, the environment and the societies in which we live. We are deeply attached to our technologies, both as individuals and as societies, and immediate abandonment in search of a more sustainable future is likely to be brutal, undemocratic, and serve a series of repercussions across the long and complex value chains involved in the infrastructures behind digital technologies. But in the same way that not all humans are equally responsible for climate change, not all technologies are equally resource intensive. However, measuring the environmental impact of a specific technology is very complex, if not impossible. Hence, while we are not able to measure the exact impact of our technologies, we are collectively attached to the infrastructures behind these, and a redirection needs to take place if the earth is to remain liveable.

Different Approaches to Address Sustainability

In Human--Computer Interaction (HCI) research, we see two main trajectories of works grappling with sustainable digital technologies: The first draws from technology-optimism and takes a stance of ecological transition. It relies on technological advancements and making technology 'greener' and more efficient to avoid catastrophes. The second trajectory, more commonly found in the design sub-community of HCI with roots in the 'ontological turn' in anthropology, a posthuman or more-than-human approach, typically adopting a critical stance of ecological reconnectionism. The latter argues that we are finding ourselves in this situation—the Anthropocene—due to an ontological disconnection between humans and non-humans, hence the urgency to decentre the human and to reconnect with nature and the living. Both stances share an ontological continuity with the way our world is organised, within modernity and modern capitalism. Currents with roots in the ontological turn are especially critiqued for being depoliticised and for not providing actionable insights. Other, more marginal stances take approaches of exodus and revolution, in form of rupture or removal from the organised world (such as Harney and Moten's Undercommons. Hence, as bluntly described by philosopher Alexandre Monnin, we find ourselves between two extremes, business as usual—carbofacism—on one side, to rejection of technologies, civilisation etc.—an immediate and global exit of the anthroposphere despite our attachments to it (or entanglements with it)—on the other.

In NIME research, questions around the 'constant pursuit of novelty', innovation, as well as the longevity, durability, obsolescence and disposal of new interfaces have been discussed for over a decade. In addition to concerns regarding the (un)sustainability of fabrication practices and the lack of continued musicianship and established performance practices, this discussion opens up for a problematisation of the generative ontology of design as a discipline and its never ending 'world-making' activities and performances.

For more details and references to literature, please refer to the workshop proposal.

Workshop Objectives

We aim to explore ways of knowing and ways of theorising NIME research that are less inclined towards innovation, and together move beyond questions of individual responsibilities and try and make larger scale community reflections.

Considering the nature of design—and NIME—itself being geared towards innovation and generativity, we aim to adopt a critical stance that seeks to rupture with this ontology. To do so, we propose a workshop centred on our collective dependencies on large, unsustainable technology infrastructures. Then, through a deeper understanding of the NIME community's attachments to these infrastructures, we aim to explore how or if the community collectively can redirect some of these dependencies and attachments. With this approach, we seek to offer a different avenue towards sustainable futures than those outlined above and we are brought to consider potential substitutions and renouncement in planned, democratic and non-brutal ways.

Furthermore, with a different ontological grounding of NIME practice, we can start imagining 'subtractive' practices, 'doing without' or 'doing with less', which both addresses computation within planetary limits and opens up avenues to respond to the lack of continued musicianship and community in NIME by bringing about and uplifting practices that can sustain through time and withstand technology trends. We can imagine practices where we nurture our abilities for proficiency, transmission and preservation of bodily knowledge. Such active engagement and growth, through what Bidet and Rigoulet describe as "an activity involving sustained learning and practice, in proximity to oneself and the materials involved, where one can progress, improve, and create indefinitely" stands in stark opposition to the ever more increasing, digitally led, division of labour that perhaps ultimately leads to deskilling and skill rebound, where lowered demands of effort to reach proficiency leads to an increase in use and hence increasing environmental footprint, not to mention increasing global inequalities.

The objectives of the proposed workshop are:
1) To provide a setting to collectively discuss the consequences of our research, the values that it conveys, and more generally how NIME research fits in the Anthropocene.
2) An attempt to broaden the discourse around societal and environmental impact and NIME research, and build upon already existing dialogues concerning the apprehension towards the innate 'new', 'novelty', innovation-focused discourse in our field, from which we potentially can start articulating a different ontological underpinning of works surrounding music technology (and sustainability).

As layed out by the Atelier SEnS: "This requires some understanding of the history, economics, law, philosophy, sociology, politics, and ethics of our disciplines, for which many of us have received no training. The SEnS workshop has been designed to provide tools and resources for this purpose, and we will make use of these. The workshop therefore also provides an introduction to science and technology studies, in particular to the philosophy, history, and sociology of science." No prerequisite knowledge of the subject matter is required to participate in the workshop.

Finally, the objective is not to reach a consensus between the participants, but rather to provide everyone with the opportunity to reflect and take a stance on current environmental and social issues in a respectful and constructive setting. By confronting ideas and sharing knowledge, the goal is then to find common ground across our differences.

We aim to provide a space for questions around what really deserves to be produced, how, for whom?