Doctoral Colloquium (Music) | Travis West

The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.

Doctoral Colloquium: Travis West, PhD Candidate in Music Technology

Title: “Sygaldry: Maintainable Reusable Digital Musical Instrument Software Components”

Biography: Travis West is a multidisciplinary programmer, composer-performer, and musical instrument designer. He is currently pursuing a Ph. D. in cotutelle with McGill and the University of Lille on the subject of Music Technology and Computer Science, under the supervision of Dr. Marcelo M. Wanderley and Dr. Stephane Huot.

Abstract: Digital musical instruments (DMIs) developed in research environments tend to be one-off prototypes that are not maintained or reused much after the initial research contributions of the design have been explored. While reasonable in many respects, this approach to DMI development results in significant repeated effort, reinventing of the wheel, and missed opportunity for long-term sustainable collaborative development. Sygaldry is a C++ library that aims to address this challenge in DMI development by provided a framework for developing highly-reusable software components for use in DMI firmware. By focusing on components, making use of code reflection language features introduced in C++20, and emphasising the importance of documentation through use of literate programming practices, the project provides benefits for the long term maintenance of DMIs and rapid prototyping of DMIs for research, and aims to explore the characteristics necessary to build a foundation upon which sustainable collaborative development can take place in the DMI design and interaction research context.