Study 1: serendipity shuffle
Aim
To explore the experience of serendipity arising from digital music listening, with a particular focus on shuffle listening
Objectives
To carry out an empirical study to:
- survey the various experiences arising from digital music listneing (sequential and shuffle)
- establish the various elements of digital music listening that may inlfuence the listening experience
- explicate how the various elements inter-play during shuffle listening to give birth to serendipitous experiencies
Approach
Lurking online as a means of data gathering
Status
completed
Study 2: randomness
Aim
To understand how randomness play a role during shuffle listening to influence/encourage serendipitous encounters
Objectives
To carry out an empirical study to:
- ascertain how listeners make sense of their encounters with randomness during shuffle listening
- understand how random presentation of music tracks colours listeners' perception of the track
- explicate how serendipity may arise during such encounters with random presentation of music tracks when listening in shuffle
Approach
Focussed field-study to investigate and study digital music listening in-situ within the contexts of everyday life. This study involved 12 participants over 12 weeks whereby each participant:
- kept detailed daily diary entries of their music listening practice and experience
- were interviewed prior and after the study about their listening practice and experiences
- were given various dice-led activities to further obtain insights into their experiences with randomness during digital music listening
Status
completed
study 3: inscription & defamiliarisation
Aim
To understand how the defamiliarisation of inscribed content can encourage serendipitous experiences during shuffle listening
Objectives
- establish an understanding of how music tracks can be inscribed with personal memories and associations and meaning
- to investigate how these inscriptions is evoked during listening, and,
- to gain an insight into how random presentation of music tracks can defamiliarise the evocation of such inscribed content
Approach
Focussed field-study to investigate and study digital music listening in-situ within the contexts of everyday life. This study involved 12 participants over 12 weeks whereby each participant:
- were given 'unfamiliar' music that are mixed into their own personal music library for listening
- kept detailed daily diary entries of their music listening practice and experience
- were interviewed prior and after the study about their listening practice and experiences
Status
completed
study 4: random presentation of personal digital photographs
Aim
To generalise the understanding gained from studying serendipitous encounters with digital music by studying people's experiences of randomly presented personal digital photographs
Objectives
- to determine if serendipitous encounters can arise when people abdicate choice to a system that presents their personal photographs in a random manner
- to ascertain if the defamiliarisation of inscriptions borne by photographs can encourage serendipitous experiences when shuffling photographs
- to investigate how defamiliarisation may work with another digital media type such as photographs
Approach
- Building a photo display system with a dice-led input device and deploying it in 3 different homes
- Apart from randomly presenting photographs, the system also presents people's photographs that have been 'altered'. For instance, original colour digital photographs are presented as either black & white, sepia, or blurred. This is an attempt to defamiliarise the photographs.
- Deploying the system for 2-3 weeks
- Letting participants generate data (their thoughts and experiences) through the use of a digital voice recorder
- Interviewing participants prior to the study and at the end
Status
completed
