Relational Properties in Interaction Aesthetics: The Ubiquitous Music Turn

Taking as a point of departure recent theoretical advances in Interaction Design and Human-Computer Interaction (Lowgren 2009), we discuss a body of knowledge gathered in Ubiquitous Music practices (Keller et al. 2011a) during the last six years. New concepts and methods have been proposed to describe aspects of the ideation and materialisation of experiences with technology. Pliability (Lowgren 2007) and anchoring (Keller et al. 2010) are two of the multiple design qualities that surfaced in interaction design that impact information technology creative practices. We present results of experiments addressing creativity support for ubiquitous music making through the time tagging metaphor (Radanovitsck et al. 2011). The studies serve to exemplify how relational properties can be integrated within creativity-centred design. Our research indicates that sonic relational properties may provide affordances for proto-musical phenomena. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of this proposal highlighting its impact on everyday musical creativity.