Gena Greher and Jesse Heines present Performamatics research at the ATMI 2009 Conference

Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Connecting Computer Science and Music Students to the Benefit of Both


Gena Greher--University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Jesse Heines--University of Massachusetts, Lowell

We present a hands-on, interdisciplinary project designed to help music education students think about how novices learn new symbol systems. The students design a musical instrument from a typical household object and create a musical composition for it. They then devise a notation system that others can understand well enough to perform their composition with little to no verbal or written direction. Given this notation system, computer science students create programs that implement it. The two groups of students interact during the "hand off" and when music students "try out" the programs developed by the computer science students. Both groups of students benefit from learning to communicate with others whose backgrounds differ significantly from their own and from understanding what it really takes to create a notation system and a computer program that can be used by people who don't share their perspective.