The Slider Box

The slider box was devised to permit the listener to rate the music on a hypothetical one-dimensional scale, such as "new/familiar". This is done by moving a slider in a hand-held box, with a label which denotes the scale and identifies the extremes of the slider's movement with either end of this scale.

In the event, two different scales were chosen, and half the slider boxes were devoted to each one.

There are 128 slider boxes, half black and half beige. The black boxes have one sort of label; the beige the other. They are numbered (on the side where the cable comes out) 1 to 128. The black boxes have odd numbers, and the beige boxes even numbers. There are a few unnumbered spares of each color. The numbers correspond to their physical placement in the auditorium.

The labels are 3 x 12 cm sticky labels printed on a laser printer. The labels for the original 2001 experiment are in french, and will be replaced by english ones for the 2002 experiment. The labels are of lightweight paper, with the strength of the adhesive exceeding the inner cohesion of the paper. They are thus difficult to remove completely. It would probably be best to stick the new labels directly on top of the old ones. Given the slightly translucent nature of the original labels, the new ones should therefore be printed on a heaver, more opaque stock.