Development and evaluation of Internet of Things enabled applications for music production and creative practices

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm that introduces the concept of ubiquitous interconnected devices, where everyday objects across the world are connected over computing networks to accept, collect, and exchange data. Although there have been growing implementations of IoT in commercial and enterprise-driven applications, to date it has not seen substantial development and evaluation within creative fields, and less so regarding music and music production. Mixing and recording techniques in traditional forms of music production largely employed the use of physical and analogue hardware. While each hardware device adds its own distinct sound attributes to processed audio, the growth of digital technology and software plug-ins granted more accessibility to high-quality production practices. IoT, however, presents a unique opportunity to maintain desirable characteristics of past (and perhaps lost or disappearing) hardware processes. With IoT-enabled hardware, for example, it is possible to add remote connectivity to rare, expensive, and bespoke physical audio systems. This can promote the concept of the ‘virtually-extended music studio,’ where music producers may work within personal environments and still retain options to access remotely-available devices. This research explores IoT-enabled music processing by utilising practice-based methodologies to develop and evaluate a creative work that facilitates virtual engagement with remote audio hardware. The creative work is compounded by mixed-method investigations that asses and verify open source technologies and current network capabilities that can implement IoT music production systems, and additionally incorporates surveyed music producer feedback to give insight into how IoT can better bridge musicians to the music production process. The resulting analyses exposes how IoT-enabled music systems can empower new forms of creative engagement and collaboration, and can help adapt non-traditional techniques for greater options to express music, revolutionise new markets for equipment hire and distribution, and bring about the ‘best of both worlds’ in terms of analogue and digital production benefits