Hacking NIMEs

NIMEs typically focus on novelty but the cost of novelty is often to ignore other non-functional requirements and concerns such as usability or security. Digital security has probably not been a concern for performers due to the duration of their performances and lack of disrespectful hackers, known as crackers, in attendance carrying the appropriate equipment and software necessary to hack a performance. Yet many modern NIMEs could be hacked from smart-phones in the audience. The lack of security hardening makes NIMEs an easy target — but a question arises: if hacking can interrupt or modify a performance couldn’t hacking itself also be performance? Thus would music hacking, live-hacking, be similar to live-coding? In this paper we discuss how NIMEs are in danger of being hacked, and yet how hacking can be an act of performance too.