Ethics at NIME (Workshop NIME 2019, Porto Alegre)

This workshop is intended to discuss how we think about and handle research ethics at NIME conferences. A number of NIME papers involved studies on/with humans. Most of these are on volunteering adults, but there are also examples of studies with children, and with patients. We also see an interest in the community to carry out research on/with animals. NIME’s current ethical guidelines do not take these perspectives into account. The Steering Committee therefore sees the need to develop better and more up-to-date ethical guidelines for the conference. This is to create an increased awareness about the needs for ethical considerations in the community, but also as guidelines for reviewers and conference chairs. NIME is proud of being a very heterogeneous community, covering people working in a large number of different scientific disciplines, artistic practices, as well as R&D in the industry. Needless to say, this breadth of perspectives also means that it is difficult to impose the same guidelines on all studies. NIME researchers also have to abide to a number of different regulations at institutional, regional, national, continental and international levels. The workshop will consist of short introductions to some challenges faced when carrying out research on/with humans and animals, in both scientific and artistic contexts. This will be followed by group-based brainstorming and a final plenary discussion