We propose the organization of a Working Group on Interactive Systems and Instrument Design within the ICMA in collaboration with EMF.

• Our ultimate goal is to enhance and extend possibilities for human creativity in music and the arts.

• Our immediate goal is to create a knowledge base and to formulate a body of generally accepted principles and theories relating to the potential issues in designing and performing with interactive systems and new musical and multimedia instruments based in electronics.

• An inital core group of researchers, scientists, and artists will coordinate and maintain lines of communication between those people working on relevant projects, encourage collaboration, and create opportunities for dissemination of the results of contributory work.

• The initial startup group consists of Joel Chadabe (EMF), Cort Lippe (State U Buffalo), Joseph Butch Rovan (Univ. NorthTexas),  Marcelo M. Wanderley, Nicola Orio and  Norbert Schnell (IRCAM, France), Ross Kirk and Andy Hunt (University of York, UK). Marcelo M. Wanderley will serve as coordinating chair of this group.

• We foresee this group growing, with sub-groups led by different researchers created in specific areas.

• Identify, evaluate, document, and create links to applicable work already done in interaction and performance, sensors and actuators, interface design, systems analysis, and software design. The specific result of this task will be a general bibliography and references to on-line resources available through an website maintained by EMF.

• Create communication links between individuals and groups currently doing work in relevant areas, including research performed within parallel non-artistic societies. The primary goal of this task is to coordinate and document studies and artistic experiments by scientists, scholars and artists throughout the world in human/computer interaction in the context of computer music performance. The specific result of this task will be the creation of email lists and websites that will serve as normal lines of communication between participants and groups of participants in the project.

• Define specific projects that will serve as artistic experiments.

• Formulate reports, encourage the writing of articles and papers, and organize conferences and meetings to share and evaluate the results of work done. Presentations will be made at special sessions of the annual ICMC.