In the futuristic universe of Star Trek there are a lot of musical instruments, and many of them
using far-future technology. The designers of these instruments never intended them to actually
work, and were therefore led by their imaginations and not by the limitations of earthly
technology – the opposite of the instrument design process today, where the design process
tends to be heavily influenced by the affordances of the technology we have to hand.
In this talk music technology researcher and theorist Astrid Bin explains how she explored this
imagination-first process of instrument design by recreating an instrument, as faithfully as
possible, from the show. Through the process – from discovering the instrument, to getting input
from the show's original production designer, to figuring out how to make the instrument's
behaviour true to the original intentions (but using primitive 21st century embedded sensors and
computers) – she describes what she learned about designing real digital musical instruments
through trying to recreate an imaginary one.
IF YOU ARE ATTENDING ONLINE, ALL TALK SESSIONS CAN BE ACCESSED FROM THE MAIN LOBBY:
https://conference.audio.dev
