Sounds of Futures Passed: Media Archaeology and Design Fiction as NIME Methodologies

This paper provides a study of a workshop which invited composers, musicians, and sound designers to explore instruments from the history of electronic sound in Sweden. The workshop participants applied media archaeology methods towards analyzing one particular instrument from the past, the Dataton System 3000. They then applied design fiction methods towards imagining several speculative instruments of the future. Each stage of the workshop revealed very specific utopian ideas surrounding the design of sound instruments. After introducing the background and methods of the workshop, the authors present an overview and thematic analysis of the workshop's outcomes. The paper concludes with some reflections on the use of this method-in-progress for investigating the ethics and affordances of historical electronic sound instruments. It also suggests the significance of ethics and affordances for the design of contemporary instruments.