Exploring participant interaction with interpersonal touch musical interfaces Glen Walton Deakin University glwalton@deakin.edu.au Stefan Greuter Deakin University stefan.greuter@deakin.edu.au Rea Dennis Deakin University rea.dennis@deakin.edu.au ABSTRACT There is growing research on the benefts of interpersonal touch as part of our social lives. Interpersonal touch musical interfaces (IT- MIs) are devices that turn a participant’s skin into a touch sensitive interface to control music. These devices could have a huge im- pact on normalizing interpersonal touch interactions as we emerge from restrictions brought on by COVID 19. There is little research that outlines the design of these devices or ofers a framework for their implementation. This research hopes to encourage interper- sonal touch by examining how participants interact with each other when wearing an ITMI device. It will do this by considering the experiences of a group of participants engaging with a novel body- worn ITMI. This design framework will illuminate the efect of these devices and be useful to interaction designers and researchers who are examining new ways to encourage interpersonal touch in performance and public art contexts. CCS CONCEPTS · Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); KEYWORDS Interpersonal touch, interaction design, participant studies ACM Reference Format: Glen Walton, Stefan Greuter, and Rea Dennis. 2022. Exploring participant interaction with interpersonal touch musical interfaces. In Designing Inter- active Systems Conference (DIS ’22 Companion), June 13–17, 2022, Virtual Event, Australia. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3532107.3532878 1 INTRODUCTION Interpersonal touch is widely acknowledged as having fundamental importance to the human experience [1-6]. At a time when COVID has complicated the act of interpersonal touch [4] we may fnd ways of re-normalising it through interactive arts experiences. In- terpersonal touch musical interfaces (ITMIs) are devices that turn a persons’ skin into control surfaces for controlling music. For exam- ple a participant could control pitch by the amount of skin contact with another participant. Predominately this is done through the control of computer systems. All Interpersonal Touch Musical Inter- faces can trace their lineage to creations by early electronic music Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). DIS ’22 Companion, June 13–17, 2022, Virtual Event, Australia © 2022 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9359-1/22/06. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532107.3532878 pioneers of the early 20 th century such as the Theremin invented by Leon Theremin in 1920 [7]. The Theremin used the bodies capac- itance to control musical notes, the device created for this research project will use capacitive touch sensors and microcomputers to control musical notes (as well as musical efects such as reverb, delay and tone control). Devices specifcally created for interper- sonal touch interaction often exist in the realm of experimental music, this may be due to the lack of musical control these de- vices ofer. The devices are also found as part of art installations, commercial products such as the Ningen Gakki or Touch Me and research [8-10]. These examples demonstrate that ITMI devices encourage signifcant interpersonal touch between participants. These devices show that they are uniquely suited to the goal of creating interpersonal connections between participants. The ma- jority of examples of ITMI devices present one-of experiments and presentations, observations are limited to small sample groups or user data is kept as proprietary commercial research. Due to the size of the studies to date, in-depth analysis of multiple instances of participant interaction has not been extensively explored. To free up participants for a wider range of interactions it will be important to allow for free movement by the participants. Of the devices developed to date that allow for interpersonal touch musical interaction, few have allowed the participant to have free movement. Exceptions include The Mediated Body [11] which in- volved a performer wearing a device that could be activated by a participant. Skintemacy [10] could also be used by participants with a simple cable connected to the participants skin. No example has been found of a device that is worn on the participants body as an all-in-one unit. Such a device could allow for interactions in a wide range of settings, from public transport to aged care homes. Further research could be conducted into how specifc groups (participants with dementia for example) engage with these devices and how they could be designed specifcally for these groups. This practice-based research PhD asks, how can a body-worn device encourage inter-participant interaction modes and how do they difer between individuals? To answer this question, I will develop a body-worn interpersonal touch musical interface that will allow multiple participants to make music collectively and test this device with users. This device will undergo an iterative design process that begins with a prototype of the device and is informed by the results of the user study that provide insights about the patterns, themes, and common behaviors of users within the participant group. This PhD will progress knowledge through three iterations in small groups of 16 participants consisting of staf and students from Deakin University. I will be using an amended version of Jourard’s Body-Accessibility Questionnaire created for one of the seminal studies into interpersonal touch [12] as the basis of my approach to discovering interpersonal touch zones favoured by 28