Defining an open source CAD workflow for experimental music and media arts

The practice of designing and building instruments, interfaces and hardware in general, became a crucial part of contemporary audio and media arts productions. This task could benefit from the high performance tools offered by state of the art Open source Computer Aided Design (CAD). Although these applications have reached a good level of maturity, their use in the artistic field is still not so widespread, due to an initial barrier probably caused by a lack of accessible documentation and best practices. This article aims to analyse and experiment a variety of open source Computer Aided Design (CAD) applications with the goal of further spread the use of open source CAD software among media artists, designers,and researchers in the field of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) applications[17]. Following a research through design approach, we will provide up date guidelines regarding how to design every aspect of an electronic music interface using exclusively open source software. To represent the various topics of our research we defined a hypothetical electronic device, and the workflow will be illustrated by describing and analysing all the steps that is necessary to cover in order to to bring such object from a breadboard overloaded with wires and components to a more stable and reliable prototype. Open source software can play an important role in terms of democratization and long term sustainability of many initiatives [7], and this article aims to help a vast number of workers and researchers in the field of sound and media art to embrace those virtuous software in their artistic practices.