4 Performer/Instrument Interaction Models

Joel Chabade has some thoughts on performer/instrument interaction models in the latest SEAMUS newsletter. His classification system goes:

1. Simple: there is a "simple, predictable response" to input (he critiques these models in a NIME 2002 paper)
2. Fly-by-wire: the performer has an abstracted, high-level control of the system
3. Interactive: the instrument acts autonomously, responding to the performer
4. Interacting with life: the performer shares control of the sound with the system, as a sailor shares control of the boat with the waves

The difference between the third and fourth models seems a little unclear, but besides that there are useful distinctions here. "Simple" vaguely corresponds to what I'll call as transcoding, where you interpret one type of data directly as another (gestures as sound parameters). "Fly-by-wire" is a few-to-many transcoding. "Interactive" and "Interacting with life" can be modeled by including a noise source in the transcoding or by adding memory.