Music, skill and artifact: The Pursuit of physical opportunities

Abstract

As a musician being faced with the option to create music on a primarily digital and intangible level, I found this new digital experience to be problematic when compared to the experience of playing a physical instrument. This thesis explores this idea on a macro scale extending it to examine our everyday lives and the effects technology in the digital age have had upon us specifically in the United States. We live in a country where our jobs primarily involve sitting at a desk and working on a computer. Having once worked on farms or made a living as a craftsperson, we now find ourselves confined to cubicles or offices. Because of these shifts in both our work and home environments, we have now have fewer physical opportunities, that is, specifically the opportunities to discover, practice and use skill in a physical manner.

Seeing how the advent of digitization has threatened to remove physical opportunities from our lives, including the physical experience of playing music, this thesis explores the possibility that these experiences can be brought back by incorporating them into furniture. I define criteria from my experience as a musician and apply that criteria to furniture, creating seating that incorporates physical skill as part of the experience.