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Arts & Communication

ARTICLE
Speculative ubimus design: Probing the

potential for expansion of second-wave
ubiquitous music frameworks

2
1,2
Damián Keller *, Ivan Simurra , Luzilei Aliel , and Rongge Zheng 3
1,2
1 Federal University of Acre, Brazil
2 Amazon Center for Music Research (NAP), Rio Branco, Brazil
3 Maynooth University, Ireland

Abstract

This contribution engages with the relationships between field deployments and
conceptual underpinnings of ubiquitous music (ubimus) research, to establish a dialog
with speculative design. Three cases serve as triggers for a conceptual exercise that points
to common threads among ubimus endeavors within three active areas of second-wave
ubimus investigations: Emugel, a tool for lite-coding; Ouija, an ecomprovisational
artwork; and InMesh, a multimodal installation inspired in the cultural frictions of current
Amazonian reality. Lite coding is proposed as a sonic-oriented practice that incorporates
simplified semantic strategies to foster knowledge sharing in iterative individual and
group-based creative activities. Ouija is an ecomprovisational artwork deployable on the
musical internet that highlights the dynamic relationships between fixed and volatile
resources in music making. The processes leading to the realization of InMesh furnish
*Corresponding author:
Damián Keller an opportunity to probe the limits of repurposed telematic tools for sharing implicit
(dkeller@ccrma.stanford.edu) knowledge and hint at potential limitations of multimodal artistic frameworks.
Citation: Keller D, Simurra I,
Aliel L, et al., 2023, Speculative
ubimus design: Probing the Keywords: Second-wave ubiquitous music; Speculative design; Post-2020 music-making
potential for expansion of
second-wave ubiquitous music
frameworks. Arts & Communication,
1(2): 1597.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1597 1. Second-wave ubimus research
Received: August 15, 2023 First-wave ubiquitous music (ubimus) proposals focused on the development of
[1]
Accepted: October 7, 2023 infrastructure for musical practices involving emergent technologies . They also engaged
with creative proposals that did not fit within mainstream musical interaction (a field
Published Online: November 9, 2023 that has entangled itself with acoustic-instrumental views). Some approaches involve
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). the application of ad hoc strategies, labeled adaptive opportunistic designs (as opposed
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the to the maladaptive opportunism that characterizes many corporate policies). As a
Creative Commons Attribution result, first-wave ubimus provides a rich and dense body of knowledge, not restrictive
License, permitting distribution, or biased toward any particular musical style or genre. Simultaneously – and because of
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is their avoidance of culturally biased methods, ontologies and infrastructures – first-wave
properly cited. ubimus practices may be characterized as exploratory or “patchy.” Common targets of
Publisher’s Note: AccScience first-wave ubimus research threads include: (i) support strategies for diverse stakeholders,
Publishing remains neutral with with a particular emphasis on non-musicians; and (ii) exploration of venues that were
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional previously deemed unworthy for artistic practice, such as transitional, domestic, and
affiliations. work settings, with an intensive usage of networked and mobile resources [2,3] .

Volume 1 Issue 2 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1597