This summer I was offered the opportunity to be the Artist in Residence at a gallery and technology education space in Helsingor, Denmark. One of the things I'm focussing on is developing the artistic potential of the Mini Automat. I'v.e been doing this in two ways: one by working individually with non technical musicians and seeing how they interact with the machines, and one by teaching groups. As part of my residency I lectured a class of PhD students who have been studying a combination of curation and fine art and asked for their feedback on the music machines. 

The previous iteration of the machines have been used widely in installations all over the world. I'm a hacker, and making the product hackable is very important to me, but artists and musicians are our primary market. 

User testing is very important to us. There's no point having a beautiful object with amazing functionality if your users don't understand it! As a result, we have begun to test our products extensively with a wide range of people to make sure it is not only hackable and powerful but intuitive for non technical people to use.