Designing a Musical Instrument:

Enlivening Theory Through

Practice-Based Research
Alvaro Sylleros, Patricio de la Cuadra,
Rodrigo Cdiz

Introduction
The Arcontinuo is an electronic musical instrument that was conceived with the intention of overcoming the difficulties of other
instruments that have failed in getting a consistent place in the
musical scene. Its creation was based on a model founded in concepts of interaction design research and narrative identity that we
intend to describe in detail in the first part of this article. This
model, we hope, could be applied to any design research process
providing an approach to creating products, services and experiences with a quality rooted in the personal and collective organization of meaning. The second part of the article explains the
implementation of the model as a case study, the Arcontinuo.
Where Is Quality to Be Found?
This question, which we take from Robert Pirsigs novel, Zen & the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), is formulated by Phaedrus, the
main character, who muses on the subtle dilemma it poses to the
inquisitive mind. Determined to arrive at a competent understanding of quality beyond its strictly physical aspects, Phaedruss line
of reasoning leads him directly to what we might call the phenomenology of quality. Does quality reside in the objects properties or
in the subjects mind? If quality were an inherent property of the
object, then there should be an instrument capable of measuring it.
But beyond its functional features, the emotional and symbolic
aspects of an object remain elusive. One might argue that quality
resides in the subjects mind, which is equivalent to saying that
quality could be just about anything you wish. But if that were the
case, quality would become entirely subsumed by subjectivity.
However, closer observation into the matter radically contradicts
such a presumption.

Phaedrus argues that quality cannot be independently
related with either the subject or the object and polemically states
that it can only be found in the relationship between the two: It is
the point at which subject and object meet.

doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00264

2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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This finding is decisive, for it suggests to him the idea that
Quality is not a thing. It is an event.1 Quality is the event at which
the subject becomes aware of the object.

And because without objects there can be no subject
because the objects create the subjects awareness of himself
Quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and
objects are made possible.

Pirsig closes his argument with a statement that gives the
impression of an impoverishment in the quality of the designed
environment: products, services, and spaces that induce a poor
interactive engagement.

Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject
and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is
deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of
the subjects and objects, which are mistakenly presumed to be the
cause of Quality.

3
84

Robert Pirsig, Zen & the Art of

Motorcycle Maintenance (New York:
William Morrow and Co., 1974), 215.
Francisco Varela, El Fenmeno de la
Vida (Santiago: Dolmen Ediciones,
2000), 140-50.
Ibid., 67-68.

The Quality of Interaction

The interaction eventor process of interactionbetween two
entities of whatever kind is a basic phenomenon of the natural
world that has been the subject of study by cognitive sciences, such
as psychology, sociology, and anthropology, among others. Let us
take up Francisco Varelas concept of interaction, which he introduces in his work on the biology of cognition. Varela defines interaction as a double coupling process in which an organism draws
meanings from its environment. Mutual modification means that
the outer world, arguably objective in itself, can never appear fully
objective and stable to the observer because what the observer perceives is constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted and,
thereby, modified. The common tendency is to associate communication and information with a purely receptive audience.
But messages are always modified in some way by the interaction
with the receptors point of view. In fact, human organisms are
closed to information but open to interaction as a way of securing
their essential autonomy.2 Varela makes a distinction between the
general environment and the organisms specific world, in which
the latter interacts. This body-in-space clearly functions as a bodyon-space, through its interactions with the environment. However,
the coupling is only possible if these encounters are experienced
from the organisms own perspective. At the same time, the organism cannot live without the regularity or periodicity of this constant coupling. If this coupling or associative activity were to
cease, the organism would disappear.3 Thus, interaction is a critical
event in the quality of each and every form of life.

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The Codetermination of Interaction and Identity

Interaction is not a self-contained fact. Quite to the contrary, it happens within a context, and it is determined by the intention of a
particular identity. As Varela suggests, a correlation seems to exist
between the kind of interaction and the specific identity of the
subject who interacts.

Varela makes his argument for the living organisms autonomy as a basic condition in understanding the process involved in
its constitution by establishing two key propositions. The first
proposition defines an organism as the process of constituting an
identity. An identity is a unitary coherence that is not structurally
static but instead is itself a structuring process. The second proposition states that the emergent organisms identity provides it with
a reference point from which to operate within a specific domain
of interaction. Thus, identity and interaction codetermine each
other as two sides of the same coin: the organisms self-organization. 4 In other words, in the case of human organisms, the subject
interacts as a particular identity with a particular aspect of the
objective world, and at the same time the subjects interactions
with that aspect of the objective world build up his or her own
identity. In the animal world, this phenomenon, defined by Varela
as cognitive identity, determines the efficacy of self-organizationin itself indispensable to survivalwithin a specific environment. Actuator and receptor organs linked by a neuronal net
enable the development of actions that require efficacy, such as
hunting, killing, migrating, mating, and so forth. However, this
efficacy is not achieved instantaneously. A long, drawn-out process of recursive interactions, in which trial and error repetitions
build up a strong neuronal path, eventually allows the animal to
acquire the skill or dexterity it needs to increase efficacy. Human
beings share this cognitive efficacy with animals but with a special
difference: They use abstract language. Human language allows
for the exchange of personal experiences. This ability to transfer
knowledge to others by means of narrative and then to formulate
strategies coordinated by language is an evolutionary resource
that helped to save the species, rather poorly equipped in physical
attributes compared to most animals, particularly to our predators.

4
5

Ibid., 51-52.
Giampiero Arciero and Vitorio Guidano,
Experience, Explanation, and the Quest
for Coherence, in Constructions of Disorder, Robert Niemeyer and Jonathan
Raskin, ed. (Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association, 2000), 91-118.
Vitorio Guidano, The Self In Process:
Toward a Post-Rationalist Cognitive Therapy (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991).

Narrative Identity
Basing a substantial part of their epistemology of cognitive
identity on the findings of biologists Varela and Maturana, postrationalist psychologists Vittorio Guidano and Giampiero Arciero
explain human or personal identity as narrative identity. 5 Echoing Varelas proposition that identity and interaction codetermine
each other, Guidano 6 sets personal identity within a reality that
is a multi-dimensional process articulated by different levels of
interaction. From this interactive process, knowledge emerges as a

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85

Humberto Maturana, Lenguaje y Realidad: El Origen de lo Humano, [Language and Reality: The Origin of the
Human] in Desde la Biologa a la Psicologa, [From Biology to Psychology]
Jorge Luzoro, ed. (Santiago: Universitaria, 1989).
8 Guidano, The Self in Process.
9 Maturana, Lenguaje y Realidad, 99.
10 Michael Mahoney, Psicoterapia y Procesos de Cambio Humano, in Cognicin
y Psicoterapia, Michael Mahoney and
Arthur Freeman, ed. (Barcelona: Paids,
1998) and Michael Mahoney, Human
Change Processes (New York: Basic
Books, 1991).
11 Vitorio Guidano, El modelo cognitivo posracionalista. Hacia una reconceptualizacin terica y clnica. (Bilbao: Descle
de Brouwer, 2001), 123.
12 Giampiero Arciero. Estudios y Dilogos
Sobre la Identidad Personal (Buenos
Aires: Amorrortu, 2005), 184.
86

self-referential (autonomous) continuous ordering of the emotional

perturbations experienced in the subjects praxisa perspective
that echoes in turn Maturanas ideas: On the one hand, Every emotion constitutes knowledge, and on the other hand, the subjects
source of knowledge is his or her own personal history of interactions, what I call the ordering.7

Guidano explains this multi-dimensional process by way
of a conceptual model he introduced in 1991: The Self System. 8
Starting from Maturanas ideas that All the things we do, we do
them from an emotion, and Every doing is knowing,9 Guidano
argues that the emotional experience is essential for knowledge
by understanding human knowledge as the tacit, proactive, and
emotional process whereby meaning is attributed to the immediate emotional experience.10 Our self then organizes personal
meaningpersonal because the emotions we experience are
meaningfulat two levels: first, at a tacit level, related to the quality of those emotions and second, at a narrative level, where we
explain these emotions we have experienced. Why do we need
to organize emotions in the form of a narrative or an explanation?
The reason has to do with the need for perceiving ourselves and
our environment as a familiar and stable world.11 For Guidano,
human existence is, among other things, a constant emotional
torrent, and the need for a narrative is essentially the need for
organizing the self when facing that torrent. Narrative allows us to
distance ourselves from our immediate experiences by means of
self-referential symbols (both non-verbal and verbal) that represent
these experiences, conferring to them a certain degree of coherence
with a view to self-organization. Thus, the relation between immediate experience and explanation corresponds to the relation
between experienced meaning and narrated meaning.

Also, the need for narration is inscribed in our human condition as intersubjective beings. The explanation of meaning is a
defining act of the social self, which needs to exchange experiences
with others who, for their part, act as a knowledge mirror, and to
coordinate actions with others to ensure the survival of the group.
The self system proposed by Guidano defines identity as the
systemic process that arises from the relation between experimented emotions (immediate experience) and the explanations
of these emotions. Tacit and explicit knowledge translate what
is exceptional into what is conventional. The self-system operates
by means of two different types of sensibility that William James
described during the early years of modern psychology:12 the
sensibility for the conventional, familiar, everyday experiences
defined as sameness, and the sensibility for the exceptional, diverse,
and new, defined as selfhood. Sameness is perceived as an emotive
sense of continuity of oneself in reference to ones personal history.
Selfhood, or ipseity, is perceived as the constancy of oneself or

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the multiplicity of a who, moment by moment. Our consciousness of our personal history seeks to accommodate the natural
tension between sameness and selfhood by recourse to a narrative
plot with temporal characteristics, wherein language is used to
integrate emotion and explanation into the creation of an explicit
identity. This is what Guidano calls narrative identity.

Which brings us to the question at hand: In what way can
these notions of human identity and of the self-system be useful
for the design research process?

13 Brenda Laurel, ed., Design Research,

Methods, and Perspectives (Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2003), 17-19.
14 Steven Diller, Nathan Shedroff, and
Darrel Rhea, Making Meaning (San
Francisco: New Riders Publishing,
2005), 155.
15 Ibid., 155.
16 Don Norman, Emotional Design: Why We
Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (New
York: Basic Books, 2004), 148.
17 Brenda Laurel, Design Improvisation,
in Design Research, Methods and
Perspectives, 49.

Design Research Process, Interaction, and Narrative Identity

We see in Pirsigs assertion that Quality is not a thing. It is an
eventa call to designers to be more aware of the quality of the
subject-object interaction in designing a product, service, or experience. Laurel, Shedroff, and Ireland,13 among many other experts
writing on design research, have been reflecting since the beginning of this century on how to expand the designers self-referential scopethat is, on how to integrate the pure physical design, or
the form-style problem, what Shedroff calls sensory design,14
with the building of meaning and social value. From this perspective, the understanding of people and culture is these days considered to be essential for the enhancement of design research.

User-oriented or person-oriented design seems to be the
major trend in this field. This design methodology arose first in
the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), which centers its
approaches and techniques on whether intended users can perform their task objectives easily and efficiently. Shedroff later
expands on this methodology by arguing for interfaces and
designs to simply be usable is not enough: They also must be
desirable, useful, needed, and understandable. Because they are
themselves human cultural products, there ought to be an
immense variety of them.15 Norman contributes to this trend by
adding such human dimensions as visceral, behavioral, and reflexive aspects, which emerge in the interaction with a product.16 The
tendency, then, is to design for the subjectand even more than
that, to design with the subject, as participatory design proposes.17

Is the design research process now merely a survey about
the subjects needs and expectations? The focus ought to be right
on the subject-object encounter, which is where the quality
designed is supposed to be found. Thus, we argue for the need to
focus on the process itself. The process of constituting an identity
that emerges from interaction encompasses the entire quality
event, including the specific context in which it happens (the
personal and social world).

At this point, we propose to use the self-system process
approach to make sure that our design research process has an
appropriate epistemological starting point. Our design research

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process is not a literal application of the self-system process but is

simply an extrapolation from post-rationalist psychology to design.
We can observe, in the interaction event, the relationship between
experimented emotions (immediate experience) and their verbal
and non-verbal narratives in the form of tacit and explicit knowledge, where what is exceptional is translated into what is conventional. In other words, it becomes possible to observe and to
register some clues as to how a narrative identity interacts within
its world. After establishing a who (an identity) and its context,
the following steps need to be taken:

1. Gather emotions and their relation to verbal narratives
(tacit and explicit knowledge) in the form of explana tions, reflections, thoughts, considerations, ideas, and
so on. Also gather non-verbal narratives (tacit knowl edge) in the semiotic form of artistic expressions, such
as music, dance, drawings, and the like.

2. Create two simultaneous scenarios for the gathering
process: sameness or the sensibility for the conventional,
and selfhood or the sensibility for the exceptional.

3. Establish an exhaustive, pertinent set of key interactions
that serves as a reservoir for problems and opportunities
for designing, such as needs and expectations captured
in the sameness scenario, and gestures and behaviors
observed in the selfhood inquiry.

18 Jeffrey Rubin, Dana Chisnell, and Jared

Spool, Handbook of Usability Testing
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 114.
19 Christopher Ireland, Qualitative
Methods: From Boring to Brilliant,
in Design Research, Methods and
Perspectives, 23-29.
88

The data to be gathered consists of a collection of personal meanings, at which we arrive by noting how the subjects explain their
emotions and non-verbal narratives (i.e., their tacit knowledge), so
that in the process of the explanation, the data become explicit
knowledge. Thus, after the data processing is completed (e.g.,
using taxonomies, hierarchical diagrams, statistics, etc.), we should
know more about how our subjects organize meaning. The analysis undertaken can be both qualitative and quantitative over a
small group of people (8 to 12) because establishing archetypes is
advisable to get a deeper insight into the personal meanings of
each subject.18

Placing the gathering into two different experience dimensions or sensibilities as Guidano names them, is important. One
of the scenarios consists in capturing the sameness experience
dimension. Sameness is a synchronic image of meaning, analogous
to a photograph that shows a collection of steady features (emotions, explanations, and non-verbal attributes). An important
instrument in this experience dimension is the interview in any
formwhether focus group, one-on-one, or dyad.19 Other ways of
capturing sameness include looking at what people write in social
networks, listening to what they say in meetings of any kind, or
studying the variety of images and sounds they produce.

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Figure 1
Diagram of the design research model based
on the narrative identity process.

20 Ibid.
21 Laurel, Design Improvisation, 51.

However, this model cannot be used independently because
it will always be contrasted with the selfhood findings or the constancy of oneself, the multiplicity of a who, moment by moment.
It is the sensibility for the unexpected, the contingent, the new. It is
a diachronic image of meaning analogous to a movie that
exposes different emotional and narrative states, such as functional-behavioral issues, body language, special displacements,
movement, the acts of liking or disliking, and many others. An
important instrument for the selfhood capture is ethnography.20
Ethnography and participatory observation have the special virtues of locating the observer inside the movie and of providing a
richer narrative structure by registering parameters such as
rhythm, intensity, order of episodes, plot, and the like. Another
important instrument is informance,21 which consists in building a
determined performance to obtain information.

The results obtained from gathering with both the sameness
and selfhood interactive processes should be compared. In some
situations, the coherence between features and states is subtle.
For example, in some cases, the preferencesmade manifest in
what a person says and in what that person actually doescannot
be exactly the same. Such a finding can be interesting when it
brings to light tacit or explicit aspirations, desires, misconceptions,
and so on. A more discriminating interpretation of incoherence
might lead to very creative and appropriate solutions that might
enhance the quality of the interaction event.

The great benefit of gathering data in the sameness and
selfhood interactive process is the rich reference domain of the
critical interactions reservoir obtained from the research results,
encompassing both negative and positive issues (problems and
opportunities), as well as every tacit or explicit feature or state.
We summarize these ideas by way of a diagram (see Figure 1). The
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place where the experience of quality happens is in the interaction

event between subject and object within a specific context. Because
interaction is not an isolated phenomenon, but a process of double
coupling with identity, the correlation between interaction and
identity is incorporated in the narrative identity process. This
process is what generates tacit and explicit knowledge. As tacit
knowledge in the form of emotions is translated into verbal and
non-verbal narratives, it becomes explicit knowledge. Thus, we
argue for the need to observe narrative identity within two different experience dimensions or sensibilities: (1) sameness, or the
synchronic display of features (the photograph); and (2) selfhood, or the diachronic display of states (the movie), encompassing what is conventional and familiar with what is exceptional
and contingent. When the data gathered from these dimensions is
processed and compared, the design research process proves to be
suitable because it is rooted in the rich reference domain provided
by the critical interactions reservoir. Applying the model in Figure
1 as a methodological strategy for design research allows design
projects to be based on problems and opportunities much more
deeply rooted in the actual quality eventa dramatic improvement over conventional models centering exclusively on the physical design or on the form-style problem.

22 Claudio Bertin et al., The Arcontinuo:

A Performer-Centered Electronic Musical
Instrument, in Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference
(San Francisco: International Computer
Music Association, 2010), 80-87.
23 Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, Analog
Days (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2004).
24 Ibid, v.
25 Ibid, vi.
90

The Arcontinuo: A Practical Application of Innovation

in Electronic Musical Instruments
As a practical application of our design theory, we present the
Arcontinuo, 22 an electronic musical instrument we have been
working on since 2009. The creation of musical instruments is, for a
variety of reasons, probably one of the most demanding challenges
in design. As Robert Moog states in the foreword to Pinchs and
Troccos book,23 Musical Instrument Design is one of the most
sophisticated and specialized technologies that we humans have
developed [] [W]hen we speak of musical instruments today, we
understand that we are talking about precisely made and finely
tuned objects.24

Moog emphasizes that music-making requires both the
musician and the listener to function at the very limits of their
perceptive and cognitive capabilities. Therefore, a musical instrument has to be as effective as possible in translating the musicians gestures into the sonic contours that he [sic] is envisioning.
When musicians perform, says Moog, they feel their instrument
responds as they hear the sounds that it produces.25

In traditional musical instrument performance, the relationship between the musician and the instrument is a highly
developed one. Long years of daily practice are needed to acquire
an intimate and thoroughgoing knowledge of the instrument in all
its physical and mechanical attributes and to become proficient at
it before the musician can be said to have actually mastered the
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26 Atau Tanaka, Musical Performance

Practice on Sensor-Based Instruments,
in Trends in Gestural Control of Music,
Marcelo Wanderley and Marc Battier,
eds. (Paris: IRCAM, 2000), 389-406.
27 Daniel Arfib, Jean-Michel Couturier,
and Loc Kessous, Expressiveness and
Digital Musical Instrument Design,
Journal of New Music Research 34,
no. 1 (2005): 126.
28 Tanaka, Musical Performance Practice
on Sensor-Based Instruments, 390.
29 Arfib et al., Expressiveness and Digital
Musical Instrument Design, 126.
30 Axel Mulder, Towards a Choice of
Gestural Constraints for Instrumental
Performers, in Trends in Gestural Control
of Music, Marcelo Wanderley and Marc
Battier, eds. (Paris: IRCAM, 2000), 32.
31 Sile OModhrain, A Framework
for the Evaluation of Digital Musical
Instruments, Computer Music Journal
35, no. 1 (2011): 28-42.
32 Bert Bongers, Physical Interfaces
in the Electronic Arts: Interaction Theory
and Interfacing Techniques for Real-Time
Performance in Trends in Gestural
Control of Music, 42.
33 Tanaka, Musical Performance Practice
on Sensor-Based Instruments, 399.

instrument. Seen in this light, the relationship between a musician

and the instrument is much more complex than we might expect
from the typical interaction between a human being and a
machine. An obvious reason is that our relationship with a musical
instrument is based on the time we spend living with it.26

When inventing acoustical instruments, designers have to
find the optimal compromise between the abilities of the human
body and the physical constraints involved in sound production.
The gestures used in the act of playing an instrument depend to a
large extent on the physics of the instrument.27 Hence, the physical
object and its acoustic properties are the medium between the performers act of playing and the sound produced. By way of the
instrument, the performer is able to affect all aspects of the music,
from the micro level of timbre to the event level of note articulation, to the macro level that reflects compositional structure.28

The case of electronic instruments is somewhat different
because sounds can be generated without any physical constraints,
and the designers are free to choose whatever gestures they prefer
and to make them link up with the sounds produced in whatever
way they want.29 Electronic musical instruments have made possible the dissociation of the control surface (e.g., keys, sliders, valves,
etc.) from the sound-generating device (e.g., speakers).30

For many years, the keyboard and its accompanying set of
knobs were the standard interface devices used in the making of
electronic music. But a large body of experimental work now connects HCI theory with music performance. 31 The wide variety of
sensors available has made possible the translation of virtually any
real-world physical gesture into electrical energy, so that they
serve in fact as a control signal for an electronic sound source.32

Creating a performer/instrument dynamic is a worthy goal
in electronic instrument design. It entails the creation of the material conditions that allow performers to attain such a level of technical command and such depth of intuition in their interaction
with the instrument that they no longer need to be consciously
aware of the technicalities of its manipulation. How to achieve this
intuitive musical fluency with a technology-based instrument
becomes an artistic challenge.33
The Design Research Process
As we have suggested, the governing idea behind design research
consists in capturing meaning from personal identities to identify
and understand the relevant interactive behaviors, and then to
progressively give shape to a physical object that incorporates
these behaviors in the intentionality of its design. This process
can be imagined as a spiral, with alternating cyclical stages of
testing and redesigning based on a specific population of potential
users. Through the sameness and selfhood experiences previously

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described, the findings are synthesized as key interactions that

eventually serve as the source of new problems and opportunities
for the design process.
Stage 1: Sameness Capture
The essential goal of this stage is to capture the narrative elements
of what people say about a given topic. The procedure consists in
conducting personal interviews, which can be done in a variety of
formats. We chose an axial and open conversation technique: axial,
because instead of relying on a survey of objective questions, a discussion of topics derived from our research goals was proposed;
and open, because any spontaneous deviation from the topic of
conversation was considered potentially meaningful. Our subjects
were 17 musicians representing a wide range of social and professional backgrounds and interests, some of which included performance on electronic and acoustic instruments. The subjects had
different degrees of musical proficiency, and their ages ranged
from 22 to 58.

The topics proposed were the following:

Instrument manipulation

Control over timbre, pitch, and rhythm

Cognition and learning

Performing on stage

Electronic instruments

Acoustic instruments
The session was recorded on video and analyzed afterward.

The main goal of the sameness stage is to elaborate a narrative summary. To that end, the needs and expectations were sorted
by topic and evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively. Thus,
the research methodology captures the symbolic and emotional
aspects of what participants would expect from an electronic
instrument. Key interactions become extremely valuable when
used as triggers for the design process. In our case, the most relevant key interactions found were the following:

I want the instrument to have continuous pitch. The
capacity to produce continuous pitch was highly
desirable. The musicians argued that the limitations
of discrete pitches, as evidenced for example, when
playing a piano, was acceptable for mechanical devices,
but that electronic instruments should allow for an
unrestricted division in the pitch space. A recurrent
narrative was that I would like to rub my finger over
a surface to get a continuous pitch. This objective
instance of a strong interaction led us toward a
technology closer to current touch-screens and
farther away from the idea of keys, buttons, or any
kind of discrete keyboard.
92

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The instrument should allow for the use of human gestures.
Subjects were interested in ergonomic and haptic
interfaces. The physical effort involved in playing an
instrument for long periods of time becomes relevant
when performers opt for a specific body posture or
kinetic articulation.

I would like to customize the interface. Most potential
users habitually interact with computers and would
expect their instruments to have the same flexibility.
They have developed skills to interact with interfaces,
such as setting parameters, remapping, loading, and
creating new sounds. They expect to find similar
features in a musical instrument.

I dont have time for a long learning process; it has to
play easily. Not everyone is meant to play instruments.
It should be challenging, difficult. It should provide
the opportunity to develop a skill. The learning process
was the topic that elicited the most divergent responses.
Subjects who played electronic instruments were
looking for a plug and play type of design solution,
while subjects who played acoustic instruments were
looking for an instrument that would require a more
gradual development of skills and that would allow
for the accuracy and sophistication of human control.

I need a portable object that I can carry easily, like an
acoustic guitar. Carrying a big or heavy instrument
was considered inconvenient. The human capacity
to transport an instrument imposes constraints on
its size and weight.

The performance should be interesting to watch on stage.
Some electronic musical devices and interfaces are
not visually appealing to the audience because the
musician-instrument interaction does not appear to
relate organically to the performance. Thus, taking
into account the visual effect of the interaction
between the musician and the instrument and,
especially, allowing the audience to see what the
hands are doing are important.
Stage 2: Selfhood Capture
As discussed previously, selfhood is the dimension of contingencyof the fact, the action. Although the observation of selfhood can take place in the context of a concert or rehearsal, in our
case where the main goal consisted in capturing musical gestures,
we designed a more controlled experience.

Based on the information gathered during the sameness
stage, the subjects were made to listen to sets of recorded and synthesized sounds. They were asked to listen to every sound and
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93

Figure 2
Categorizing scheme for gestures, based
in osteokinematic motions (the basic joint
movements of the human body).

then, in a second hearing, to produce or suggest a gesture that, to

their minds, would be required to generate that specific sound.
Moreover, whenever the subjects imagined objects while listening to the sounds, they were asked to depict those images. The session was recorded on video, and all the gestures, comments, and
drawings were quantified and analyzed. The result of this process
yielded relevant information about gestures. A set of gestures
based on osteokinematic motions 34 and incorporating most joint
movements was used to categorize the gestures, as detailed in
Figure 2. The upper limb gestures were the most recurrent in all
sound categories, especially elbow flexion and extension, shoulder
motions, and finger flexion and extension, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3
The five most recurrent basic gestures.
Percentages were calculated by dividing
the total count of each gesture by the total
number of observed gestures.

34 Donald Neumann, Getting Started

in Kinesiology of the Musculoskeletal
System Foundations for Physical
Rehabilitation, Donald Neumann, ed.
(Philadelphia: Mosby, 2002), 4-11.
94

Stage 3: Mockups
Based on the key interactions gathered in the sameness and selfhood stages, mockups were built and tested on subjects. The most
recurrent gestures, objects, and interactions were used to shape
three different mockups shown in Figures 4, 5 and 6.

Each mockup was assessed in terms of its functional,
emotional, and symbolic traits. The mockup that received the highest assessment is shown in Figure 4. From a functional point of
view, the elbow rotation seems to be a very natural gesture for
music articulation. The percentage of recurrence (72%) is clearly
indicative of an efficient gesture that mainly uses one articulation
to displace the hand over a curved surface. Instrument size was
similar to what musicians described in the sameness stagethat is,
a size that allowed for easy and comfortable handling by the
human body. Emotional issues, as well as the aesthetics of the
shape, were highly valued. Symbolically, the benefit of capturing a
natural ergonomic gesture, along with the hand position, up front
facing the audience, was highly appreciated.
DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014

Figure 4
Mockup based on elbow rotation,
finger extensions and a rigid surface to
be finger rubbed.

Figure 5
Mockup based on shoulder extension
and abduction with a rigid conic surface
to be rubbed by hand.

Figure 6
Mockup based on shoulder and elbow
extensions with two semi spheres
on the hands.

Stage 4: Functional Prototype

A more elaborate shape was designed for the construction of the
playing surface, shown in Figure 7. The basic material used is
wood, while the shoulder strap is made of aluminum. The instrument can be adjusted to fit different body shapes and sizes.
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Figure 7
Functional Prototype: The Arcontinuo.

Conclusion
The musical instrument created was strongly determined by the
proposed design research model. For example, its continuous and
curved shape, which, to our knowledge, no other electronic musical instrument possesses, was suggested from the data collected
through the sameness and selfhood captures. We believe that one
benefit of gathering data using our model is the possibility of
obtaining a multidimensional set of critical interactions, encompassing both problems and opportunities, for designing useful
objects in a great variety of domains.

By embracing an epistemological point of view centered on
the quality of the interaction between the subject and the object,
we have achieved a design research model that seeks out and
finds key interactions relating to the personal identity of the exact
consumer group for whom the product is destined. These interactions are captured by means of two experiential dimensions:
sameness and selfhood. These two dimensions are addressed in
an alternating cyclicalor spiralingprocess in which the object
is progressively adjusted to the expectations, feelings, needs, gestures, and opinions of that particular consumer group. Thus, the
object designed is conceived and materially put together to reflect
the users meanings; it thereby receives the users intellectual and
emotional acquiescence, as most successful innovations ought to
do. However, the designers creativity and artistry in producing
the form will always be decisive in the process of translating these
meanings into a product.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for
their helpful comments, and Dr. Gary Kendall and Nicols Goic
for their valuable feedback and suggestions. This research was
funded by grants from VRI Pontificia Universidad Catlica de
Chile, FONDECYT N 11090142, FONDECYT N 11090193, and
FONDART, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes, Government of Chile.
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