From this week's reading, I'd like to respond to Artful Design Principle 7.6, which says 'Value Participation (and Design for It).' This principle draws from the ethos of Thomas Turino who highly values interactivity (especially as it relates to sound and performance).

I resonate with this concept, and I have my own experience with it as a performer. I started my path in music by playing classical piano when I was little. As such, much of my upbringing in music is informed from a classical tradition. That said, I began playing jazz in high school and immediately took to it. It was looser, more flexible, more spontaneous, and I think I needed that freedom at that point on my musical journey. As I got more into it, I began to go to more jazz shows and concerts, and I started to notice something; the audience at these shows was MUCH louder than the classical concerts I had been to. Where 'whoop'ing at a passage during a symphony would be grounds for removal, it was frequent (and encouraged) at these shows. This definitely threw me off at first, but as I began to perform more myself, I realized how powerful that interaction was. Not only do you get real-time feedback on how the audience is receiving your playing, but you get to feel like you're a part of an bigger experience, not a spectacle to be observed.

As I further formalized my thoughts on this matter, I ended up doing a performance project during my freshman year that centered these notions. Before playing, I encouraged the audience to proceed with their life as they wished—talk with their neighbors, doodle on paper, react to the music, listen in anyway they wished (including not listening at all). Perhaps this was too far in the other direction, but I intended to reinforce the notion of music as a social activity that serves to enhance all the participants. I think that one shouldn't feel like they need to fully censor or suppress their life's musings to engage in such an activity.

To relate this back to design, I again resonate with the idea of valuing participation, but even further, I value design that lets people be themselves. I value design that doesn't demand a certain version of me or design that meets me where I am. To an extent, I think leaf trombone accomplishes this in the nature of it giving the player autonomy to choose their role (composer, performer, observer). Within the observer/judging role, there is realtime/interactive feedback. This is similar to a performance medium that is gaining popularity (especially during the pandemic): livestreaming. I follow many musicians that have continued to do livestreamed concerts after the pandemic and they have a similar level of interactivity that jazz concerts I've been to have had, but there's also this component of anonymity that exists (which relates back to principle 7.7). I think that fostering meaningful, yet anonymous interaction is one of the biggest strengths that the Internet (and modern technology generally) has and should be taken advantage of in design.