4.1. Results
Sharing Knurl with others, either by playing, teaching or listening was a great approach to perceive the importance of certain features, the identity of the object, its special qualities but also its challenges and imperfections. Sharing the instrument practice in performances also helped me to perceive the whole cycle of production and raised my awareness to the need to maintain the instrument, to repair it, and to continue to improve on it from a design perspective. Learning to listen to the feedback from others, especially when working with such a large amount of people, forced me to learn how to be flexible, as I frequently needed to adapt my ideas to attain realistic goals.
4.2.1. Project outcomes
Even though this has been a very personal project, I believe my research with developing Knurl has touched on many themes relevant to today’s world. It is my belief that Knurl, in many ways, responds to current economic and environmental themes. For instance, Knurl offers a new relationship between people and musical practice, principally by facilitating the production of electroacoustic performances, by offering systems (machine listening assistance, sound energy harvest, reprogrammable interface) and features (such as sensors, buttons, sliders, acoplated speakers) that can enhance and facilitate the production of music. Like in This isn’t solo, Idalina andthe artworks of the album super organism, I had the possibility to apply certain features that brought me in contact with a new relationship with music .
In this sense, when an object / product reflects so many aspects of its own reality, its values, traditions and practices, its audience isn't only engaged by its final result, but also during its concept and process of materialization, allowing a natural engagement with the process of the project and its music development. In a broader perspective, we (public and performer) would be sharing the same issues and inspiration together. This relationship is a gradual construction that became part of the experience developing the albums "Chasing breath" or "Super organism", when there has been a community around a specific topic or discussion that I was representing in these artworks.
By grounding a connection from the beginning with its audience and future users, has taught me as well to see the imperfections of Knurl as a blessing, since it was by the mistake or the inconvenience of a certain feature that I found inspiration and possibly a solution for enhancing artistic expression and content, solving Knurl’s applications and performability. This exchange of feedback happened also in performance and lectures (such as Morphine records, Chigiana Festival, Artistic residency in Budapest in 2021).
Developing all these research projects shared at the chapter 2 (Designing) around Knurl’s development helped me to visualize different applications and strategies of music making, but also a way to find the strongest routes that Knurl needs to be developed. The design research projects (Machine listening, Web platform, Music and sustainability or interface of diverse voice control) finally have reinvented the dynamic between cultural heritage by testing new formats of relationship between audiences and music makers. While in the music research projects (Concept, physical format, mapping systems, composing structure and building as performance), it became a personal search for an identity into my music practice, craftsmanship and production.
4.2.2. Personal Findings
Knowing this great amount of practical outcomes, at the end of my master I took some time to reflect about the main learning goals from this entire experience. Building my own instrument became also a process of self-discovery and an empowering experience for me as a musician. The further I developed artworks, its performances and Knurl, the more able I was to connect creativity to my daily musical and artistic practice. For example, I was able to integrate values that seemed far or disconnected from my actions, such as the stimulation of sustainable choices, and open source movement or discussions about audience engagement. Besides that, I was finally able to connect the joy of making music as part of a performance by itself, one where I learned to integrate live and automated systems but also to overcome “errors” and general uncertainty as a musician.
I am confident to say that Iterative testing became one of the main discoveries of this project by realizing it as a prefered method or craftsmanship connected to my practice as a composer and creative maker. After many testing cycles, I discovered the natural bond between instrument building and music composition by understanding that my practice was very influenced by the process of iterative design, whereby improvements to each version of an artwork were realized by my own musical practice. It became so fluent for me to find and organize sounds by playing and improvising with the material on my instrument for a long time. As an example, in Idalina, I spent months until I found a format, a rule and a meaning for each sound. Knowing also that each process and experience is different, I became more patient toward the process and started to deliberate excessive control over all the details and tasks that often characterize music creation.
Discovering what was important for my musical practice was also a reflection about the needs and interests extending from my current network of collaborators. This was evident in my dealings with people who practice live coding, because I share similar concerns to these artists about using music as a tool, or platform, that promotes representation, communication and integration. In this context, representation refers to a sound and its vision that can become a message, concept or statement. communication, where sound can become understandable and learningfulno matter its language and style, or Integration, when a single need is also applied into all the possible actions that the product can offer. Composing or playing new sounds became therefore, more the act of framing a cultural perspective than innovating it. These cycles allowed me to understand the importance of simplicity and understanding in any design work, whereas not much has to be said in order to understand a product or artwork, besides its own existence.
4.2.3. Future development
In the coming years I hope to continue with more professional activities related to this project by disseminating Knurl’s application and message with other communities around the world by hosting workshops, participating in artistic residences, and going to conferences to talk about my work. Taking this direction will help me to evaluate the possible creative applications and approaches used by a diverse amount of people, that I can then apply to developing or refining Knurl further. In the next phase of this research — during the course of the coming 2 years — I will develop a multimedia performance with Knurl and select collaborators. We will produce artworks from some of the projects discussed in this research, such as “sound energy harvest” (with Adam Pultz) that will explore renewable energy with musical instruments. Secondly, I will also explore automation systems in music making, therefore expanding on work I did with Timo Holland (see the piece “the machine is learning” ). This production will be also supported during a whole year residency by the Gaudeamus festival in 2022-2023, where we will invite cellists and composers to try and experiment Knurl into an electric cello quartet format.
Fortunately, this isn’t a real conclusion. There is still a lot of work to be done for this project. Knurl feels like a lifetime project, very connected to my artistic identity and vision, and I hope to reach my coming goals together with it, by making great new music that is connected to an engaged audience. I hope by sharing this story, its insights and projects resonates and inspires other musicians to search how music making can become their own language. I am still in search of mine.