Earlier this summer, Katherine Stephen and Marianne Wilson were encouraged by Hazel Hall to think of a potential idea for the regular Creative Informatics grant call, which offers small grants for short-term projects. Marianne’s background in history, my background in music and our shared interest in technology meant we had some daft ideas (“Participants submit songs from their childhood and an AI guesses their birthday”, “Gen X explain to children the reason that albums are 12 songs long”) and then landed on an interesting thread of ideas – information intermediaries and mixtapes. Who has the authority and the knowhow to recommend songs these days? So we set about designing a study, and brought on board JP Vargheese, whose experience adds a quantitative element to our work. We’re now recruiting pairs of friends for this study, in which participants will listen to recommendations from various sources and let us know their thoughts. Participants will receive a £10 voucher for a local record shop or bookshop as a thank you for their time. If you’d like to take part, please find a friend or partner to team up with, and fill out our initial survey here (or copy and paste this link https://forms.office.com/r/t5cB26VNXu).
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