Extensible Embodied Knowledge: Bridging Performance Practice and Intelligent Performance System Design

A wealth of embodied knowledge has been articulated and documented in music performance practice literature. However, this documentation is usually aimed at instrument performers, and not packaged in such a way that it can be extensible to designers of computational Interactive Performance Systems (IPS). We extract meaningful dimensions from literature relating to instrument-specific kinematics, and describe the sonic and felt dimensions of specific technique. To aid a bottom-up design process, we provide a graphical representation of this articulated embodied knowledge in the form of a novel dimension space. In addition, we discuss possible solutions for how we can access and extend this embodied knowledge computationally. The resulting dimension space seeks to provide a clear understanding of what exactly we might extend through design. This research lays a foundation for future design work of IPS such as co-creative systems, interactive music systems, musical agents, and augmented instruments. In particular, this paper documents the ideation phase of our emerging IPS design for a professional violist. As such, this paper serves as an example of how we can extract and organise embodied knowledge from music performance, towards inscribing computational designs with embodied knowledge of music performance