Enchanted Machines? How Fairy Tales Can Illuminate the Reception of Accessible DMIs

As a designer of new musical instruments and a one-handed musician for two and three decades respectively, I have multifaceted experience of both music and disability. Over the past 25 years, organisations such as Drake Music and the OHMI Trust have significantly improved support for disabled musicians, and numerous accessible digital musical instruments (ADMIs) have been developed. Despite these developments, the reception of ADMIs in performance remains significantly underexplored. Consider the following discrepancy. The mainstream bands Def Leppard and Black Sabbath both feature instrumental musicians with physical impairments. If apathy and indifference signals acceptance, it is notable that these impairments are seldom highlighted in popular or academic coverage of these bands’ activities and outputs. In contrast, discussions of musicians playing ADMIs still typically focus on performer biography or technological innovation, rather than on musical qualities or the experience of a live performance. Indeed, Masu et al. (2023) have observed that the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) conference, a key platform for ADMIs, often emphasises technological novelty at the expense of other factors, but the consequences of this bias remain poorly understood.

Fairy tales offer some clues to why these different receptions are experienced (and thus when they might be expected). Let’s return to the example of Def Leopard drummer Rick Allen for a moment, through the lens of "narrative prosthesis" developed by Mitchell and Snyder (2000). Using the Victorian fairy tale The Little Lame Prince to illustrate their point, Mitchell and Snyder contend that stories featuring disability often depict the disability as problem to be "fixed" by cure, death, or removal: only then can the narrative be closed out. As such, there is obvious crossover with the medical model of disability (Retief and Letšosa, 2018), but the Little Lame Prince has a markedly dark resolution. The use of crutches restores the mobility and independence of the titular prince (Mulock, 1875, pp. 159-160), and he becomes a popular King. However, the crutches ultimately prove inadequate to fully restore his status and resolve the narrative, and he eventually abdicates in favour of a non-disabled cousin.
In contrast, the Rick Allen (Def Leopard drummer) narrative can be seen as full resolved in that he is able to continue with the band, effectively as before. This restoration has been enabled by the use of technological prostheses (specialised electronic pedals) that enable the left foot to take over drum elements previously played with the left arm. Why, we might ask, are these prostheses deemed acceptable but, like the prince’s crutches, ADMI use is still often seen as problematic or untrustworthy?

Drawing on ideas around performance reception from Cascone (2002) and Ryan’s (1992) notion of effortful expression, I argue that this relates to the drum prostheses keeping causality of sound intact, in a way that is palpably physical but also largely familiar. Many ADMIs, by contrast, minimise the scale of interaction to increase accessibility, for instance for players with limited movement. Simultaneously, design freedoms far beyond those of the acoustic domain enable novel kinds of relationship (mapping) between performer input and sound output to be created. Thus, Cascone’s (2002) comment that "antagonism arises when a performer generates music by a process unknown to the audience" helps to explain the different reception for disabled musicians playing ADMIs. Additionally, ADMIs are often presented in traditional performance settings (where codes were assumed to be largely fixed and unchanging). Thus, the audience—unable to establish sonic causality and unsettled by the mixture of old and new—feels uncomfortable and the narrative of restoration stubbornly resists easy resolution.

References

Cascone, K. (2002) 'Laptop Music – Counterfeiting Aura in the Age of Infinite Reproduction', Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine, 107, pp. 52-58.

Masu, R., Morreale, F. & Jensenius, A.R. (2023) ‘The O in NIME: Reflecting on the Importance of Reusing and Repurposing Old Musical Instruments’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME’23).

Mitchell, D.T. & Snyder, S.L. (2000) Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. University of Michigan Press.

Mulock, D. M. (1875) The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling Cloak: a Parable for Young and Old. Craik. Victorian Women Writers Project. Available at: https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/vwwp/view?docId=VAB7135&chunk.id=d1e2624&toc.id=&brand=vwwp;query=#docView

Retief, M. & Letšosa, R. (2018) 'Models of disability: A brief overview', HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 74(1), a4738. doi: 10.4102/hts.v74i1.4738.

Ryan, J. (1992) 'Effort and Expression: Some Notes on Instrument Design at STEIM', in Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference, San Francisco: Computer Music Association.