Motivating programming language design for digital lutherie

Renney, Nathan

Abstract

Digital lutherie is a sub-domain of digital craft focused on creating digital musical instruments: high-performance devices for musical expression. It represents a nuanced and challenging area of human-computer interaction that is well established and mature, offering the opportunity to observe designers’ work on highly demanding human-computer interfaces. Through the integration of instruments and computers, a new digital 'material' is introduced to the craft. And with a new medium comes new tools. Digital luthiers require expressive use of programming languages to draw together multiple different problem domains in creating new instruments. Motivated by initial explorations in programming language design, this thesis explores the motivations for tool choice in digital lutherie and inductively researches what characterises good programming language design for digital lutherie. Findings from 27 standardised open-ended interviews with prominent digital luthiers from commercial, research, independent and artistic backgrounds are analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Our discussion explores their perspectives, generating a set of themes that are analysed and discussed. Through this process, a set of 'selective pressures' on language design is presented in order to help motivate and guide future language design in digital lutherie. We also present how challenges faced by digital luthiers relate to social creativity and meta-design, key components of end-user development. Some suggestions are also made to inspire strategies and approaches to programming language design.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jan 11, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 30, 2024
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10901510
• Award Date: Apr 30, 2024