Super Size Me: Interface Size, Identity and Embodiment in Digital Musical Instrument Design

Digital interfaces are shrinking, driven by pressures of mass production and consumer culture, and often accompanied by a discourse of control, precision or convenience. Meanwhile, human bodies remain the same size, and the changing size of interfaces has implications for the formation of user identities. Drawing on embodied cognition, effort and entanglement theories of HCI, we explored the impact of interface size on the co-constitution of humans and technology. We designed an oversized digital musical instrument and invited musicians to use the instrument to create original performances. We found that both the performances and the musicians’ self-perception were influenced by the large size of the instrument, shining new light on the ways in which designing technology is designing humans and in turn culture.