Communities of sound: Examining meaningful engagement with generative music making and virtual ensembles

This paper uses a workshop format to demonstrate an emerging theoretical model for observing meaningful engagement in community music making. Three case study examples involving the research and development of the jam2jam ‘family’ of generative software and hardware applications are examined to highlight the evaluation of social and musical outcomes. These case studies demonstrate how the meaningful engagement matrix model feeds back data which informs both software development and experience design for participants. Engagement has been shown to be a key factor in achieving social, health and learning outcomes from creative activities, and we demonstrate how the matrix assists in improving design to maximize these benefits. The presentation will include a demonstration of the software and audiovisual materials that show the projects in context. The paper is primarily about a means of measuring social and musical benefit through correlation with meaningful engagement and provides examples of inclusive ensembles and the specification of musical knowledge through algorithmic and educational experience design.