The CHIME EPSRC Network on Music and Human Computer Interaction held a one-day event on Music Interaction and Physical Disability https://www.chime.ac.uk/music-interaction-and-disability at Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh, on May 19th 2023, in collaboration with Drake Music Scotland. Drake Music Scotland provides music making opportunities for people with disabilities, and is the leading national arts organisation playing this role. Some twenty contributors were present, including PhD students, established researchers, performers, composers, and representatives from charities including the Amber Trust and Drake Music Scotland itself. The centrepiece of the event was an extended presentation in person by Sound and Music New Voices 2022 Scottish composer & performer Chris Jacqin on of his work and the challenges of making music with cerebral palsy, during which Chris introduced the video premier of his performance of Ștefan Niculescu’s “Echoes II” with violinist, Gordon Bragg. Specific conditions which were explored in presentations by researchers included dementia, Batten’s disease, cerebral palsy, visual and hearing impairment, and profound physical disability. There were contributions from SMEs Playable Tech (demonstrating Music Bricks) and Digit Music (showing their CMPSR hardware and software). Researchers presented demonstrations of their research systems and prototypes including Strummi (Jacob Harrison), the no-string guitar (Eeve Zayas Garin) the MAMI Tool Kit (Asha Ward) and the Haptic Bracelets and Harmony Space (both presented by Simon Holland and Nicholas Canny). The final plenary discussion suggested that charities, musicians teachers, helpers schools and other organisations typically valued highly the prototypes and systems created by researchers (generally as part of their PhD work) but the absence of the relatively small amounts of funding that would be necessary for dissemination, archiving and maintenance created a chasm preventing much of this work being more widely. Thus it would be highly valuable to create a collective resource that would ensure that research projects in this area are made available for artists, charities and other organisations to be able to engage with, perform with, learn from, and build on. Specific opportunities for collaboration between SMEs researchers and practitioners were identified, and this and other strategic gaps in policy and funding were identified for subsequent follow up. Videos of the presentations can be found here on the CHIME YouTube channel.
