Framed by Xenakis and the media circulating the UPIC as a design for all people, the system would supposedly be the great equalizer of creative musical expression. It was a software and hardware hybrid system that would democratize musical practice, liberate the user’s creative impulse, and, ultimately, liberate the user’s musical creativity through drawing. It was the drawing board, however, that was the signature symbol of the UPIC system and represented the central message that Xenakis proselytized through the dissemination of the UPIC. ![]() In Xenakis’s words, the UPIC is “sort of musical drawing board, which through the digitization of drawing, enables one to draw music, teach acoustics, engage in musical pedagogy at any age.” 3 The UPIC consisted of many different components: a computer screen, custom-made hardware, an electromagnetic pen, a digital to analog converter, and an electrostatic drawing board. Invented in 1977 by Xenakis, the Unite Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu (UPIC) was the first musical communication and computation system in the form of a graphic tablet that was intended for use by the public. ![]() Photo of Iannis Xenakis showing children the UPIC in the Paris Tribune, 1977, July 30, 17. We can trace the discourse of the revolutionary power of the touchscreen and its cultural meaning back to somebody who is known as a composer but less represented in histories of computing: Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), a musician, architect, philosopher, and civil engineer who blended culturally elite sensibilities with populist social ambitions.įig. 2 The transformational wish of social change projected onto the touchscreen has a history. Disability theorist Meryl Alper notes that journalists ascribe a paternalistic “discourse of technology as an equalizer of opportunity and access” to smartphones and tablets as empowering people with disabilities. The intuitive encounter between the user and the touchscreen-what supposedly enables this opportunity and access to the broader population-is presented as an undeniable given, as naturalized as the touchscreen itself. Suddenly users could navigate their phones with a few swipes of the finger.” 1 In the cultural moment of the smartphone and tablet, the allure of the touchscreen is that its ease of use and tactile affordances broadens the conditions of participation. ![]() Looking back on how the iPhone’s usability “changed our lives,” a journalist from CNN remarked: “It helped bring a slice of computing to a whole new audience, including technophobes, kids, senior citizens and people with visual or hearing impairments.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |