Proceedings of the 17th Sound and Music Computing Conference, Torino, June 24th – 26th 2020 399 Rapid Composition for a Multi-Device Networked Music Platform Oliver Bown Interactive Media Lab, UNSW o.bown@unsw.edu.au Angelo Fraietta Interactive Media Lab, UNSW a.fraietta@unsw.edu.au Sam Ferguson Creativity and Cognition Studios Faculty of Engineering & IT University of Technology Sydney samuel.ferguson@uts.edu.au Deborah Turnbull Tillman Creative Robotics Lab, UNSW d.turnbull.tillman@unsw.edu.au ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss the results of a workshop study for the HappyBrackets system – a development framework for creatively coding multi-device musical performances, sound installations and interactive media artworks – in which new users using the system are invited to create new multi- device music compositions in a rapid creative and collab- orative hacking session. We consider the types of works made, the problems encountered and the methods used, including how some of the new features we have added to the system support exploratory creative search. We de- velop our observations into design principles that we spec- ulate will better support more rapid creative exploration of multi-device creative musical compositions. 1. INTRODUCTION In this paper we discuss the results of a workshop study for the HappyBrackets system – a development framework for creatively coding multi-device musical performances, sound installations and interactive media artworks – in which new users using the system are invited to create new multi- device music compositions in a rapid creative and collabo- rative hacking session. Our research interest lies in how creative coding tools, in this complex domain of multiple-networked devices, in- ﬂuence and support the production of creative work, given how laborious and slow it can often be to conﬁgure and code multiple devices in many different bespoke conﬁg- urations. This is an area that has received recent atten- tion through concepts such as the hackability of digital musical instruments (e.g., [1]) and the Internet of Musical Things [2], and more generally through networked music creation (e.g., [3]). Participants with little or no previous experience of Hap- pyBrackets, and varying levels of coding skill, were invited Copyright: c  2020 Oliver Bown et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. to prototype original works on a 25 device system in a col- laborative and open workshop. We used this workshop as an opportunity to study what kinds of works the partici- pants conceived of, how their design ideas were inﬂuenced by their effort to implement the design, what problems they encountered, how they went about solving problems, and how their time was divided up between different kinds of problem-solving and creative tasks. This study seeds a new direction in our research focused on adding a new API layer to HappyBrackets which will support conceptualis- ing and hacking works for multiple devices, taking into ac- count issues like spatial relationships, synchronisation of system state and communication. This paper begins by giving an overview of the Happy- Brackets system and the design considerations involved in some of the recent features we’ve added, which are focused on addressing creative productivity and ﬂexibility. We then describe our workshop study, report results, and consider new principles arising from our observations. Figure 1. The 25 device DIAD system in its original setup at the Powerhouse Museum. Devices are wired for power but communication takes place via WiFi. 2. HAPPYBRACKETS HappyBrackets is a system that allows the live deployment of compiled programs from an integrated development en- vironment (IDE) to multiple remote, networked client de- vices, which we refer to as distributed interactive audio de- vices (DIADs). Each remote client includes a system run- time that contains a real-time audio DSP framework, sim- pliﬁed network communication functionality, and a mech- anism for synchronising all the devices through a virtual clock over the network. The associated plugin for the In-