Action-based effects on music perception

The classical, disembodied approach to music cognition conceptualizes action and perception as separate, peripheral processes. In contrast, embodied accounts of music cognition emphasize the central role of the close coupling of action and perception. It is a commonly established fact that perception spurs action tendencies. We present a theoretical framework that captures the ways in which the human motor system and its actions can reciprocally influence the perception of music. The cornerstone of this framework is the common coding theory, postulating a representational overlap in the brain between the planning, the execution, and the perception of movement. The integration of action and perception in so-called internal models is explained as a result of associative learning processes. Characteristic of internal models is that they allow intended or perceived sensory states to be transferred into corresponding motor commands (inverse modeling), and vice versa, to predict the sensory outcomes of planned actions (forward modeling). Embodied accounts typically refer to inverse modeling to explain action effects on music perception (Leman, 2007). We extend this account by pinpointing forward modeling as an alternative mechanism by which action can modulate perception. We provide an extensive overview of recent empirical evidence in support of this idea. Additionally, we demonstrate that motor dysfunctions can cause perceptual disabilities, supporting the main idea of the paper that the human motor system plays a functional role in auditory perception. The finding that music perception is shaped by the human motor system and its actions suggests that the musical mind is highly embodied. However, we advocate for a more radical approach to embodied (music) cognition in the sense that it needs to be considered as a dynamical process, in which aspects of action, perception, introspection, and social interaction are of crucial importance

FM radio: family interplay with sonic mementos

Digital mementos are increasingly problematic, as people acquire large amounts of digital belongings that are hard to access and often forgotten. Based on fieldwork with 10 families, we designed a new type of embodied digital memento, the FM Radio. It allows families to access and play sonic mementos of their previous holidays. We describe our underlying design motivation where recordings are presented as a series of channels on an old fashioned radio. User feedback suggests that the device met our design goals: being playful and intriguing, easy to use and social. It facilitated family interaction, and allowed ready access to mementos, thus sharing many of the properties of physical mementos that we intended to trigger

Smart radio and audio apps: the politics and paradoxes of listening to (anti-) social media

The recent crop of vocal social media applications tends to appeal to users in terms of getting their voices heard loud and clear. Indeed, it is striking how often verbs like ‘shout’ and ‘boast’ and ‘brag’ are associated with microcasting platforms with such noisy names as Shoutcast, Audioboom, Hubbub, Yappie, Boast and ShoutOmatic. In other words, these audio social media are often promoted in rather unsociable terms, appealing less to the promise of a new communicative exchange than to the fantasy that we will each can be at the centre of attention of an infinite audience. Meanwhile, many of the new forms of online radio sell their services to listeners as offering ‘bespoke’ or ‘responsive’ programming (or ‘audiofeeds’), building up a personal listening experience that meets their individual needs and predilictions. The role of listening in this new media ecology is characterised, then, by similarly contradictory trends. Listening is increasingly personalised, privatised, masterable and measurable, but also newly shareable, networked and, potentially, public. The promotional framing of these new media suggests a key contradiction at play in these new forms of radio and audio, speaking to a neo-liberal desire for a decentralization of broadcasting to the point where every individual has a voice, but where the idea of the audience is invoked as a mass network of anonymous and yet thoroughly privatised listeners. Focusing on the promotion and affordances of these various new radio- and radio-like applications for sharing speech online, this article seeks to interrogate what is at stake in these contradictions in terms of the ongoing politics, experience and ethics of listening in a mediated world

Musical Worlds and the Extended Mind

“4E” approaches in cognitive science see mind as embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. They observe that we routinely “offload” part of our thinking onto body and world. Recently, 4E theorists have turned to music cognition: from work on music perception and musical emotions, to improvisation and music education. I continue this trend. I argue that music — like other tools and technologies — is a beyond-the-head resource that affords offloading. And via this offloading, music can (at least potentially) scaffold various forms of thought, experience, and behavior. To develop this idea, I consider the “material” and “worldmaking” character of music, and I apply these considerations to two cases studies: music as a tool for religious worship, and music as a weapon for torture

Complexity as Process: Complexity Inspired Approaches to Composition

This article examines the use of Complexity Theory as an inspiration for the creation of new musical works, and highlights problems and possible solutions associated with its application as a compositional tool. In particular it explores how the philosophy behind Complexity Theory affects notions of process-based composition, indeterminacy in music and the performer/listener/environment relationship, culminating in providing a basis for the understanding of music creation as an active process within a context. The author presents one of his own sound installations, Cross-Pollination, as an example of a composition inspired and best understood from the philosophical position as described in Complexity Theory

Sonic autoethnographies: personal listening as compositional context

This article discusses a range of self-reflexive tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, and explores examples of sonic practices and works in which the personal listening experiences of the composer are a key contextual and compositional element. As broad areas for discussion, particular attention is given to soundscape composition as self-narrative (exploring the representation of the recordist in soundscape works) and to producing the hyperreal and the liminal (considering spatial characteristics of contemporary auditory experience and their consequences for sonic practice). The discussion then focuses on the specific application of autoethnographic research methods to the practice and the understanding of soundscape composition. Compositional strategies employed in two recent pieces by the author are considered in detail. The aim of this discussion is to link autoethnography to specific ideas about sound and listening, and to some tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, while also providing context for the discussion of the author’s own practice and works. In drawing together this range of ideas, methods and work, sonic autoethnography is aligned with an emerging discourse around reflexive, embodied sound work

Music as Affective Scaffolding

For 4E cognitive science, minds are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Proponents observe that we regularly ‘offload’ our thinking onto body and world: we use gestures and calculators to augment mathematical reasoning, and smartphones and search engines as memory aids. I argue that music is a beyond-the-head resource that affords offloading. Via this offloading, music scaffolds access to new forms of thought, experience, and behaviour. I focus on music’s capacity to scaffold emotional consciousness, including the self-regulative processes constitutive of emotional consciousness. In developing this idea, I consider the ‘material’ and ‘worldmaking’ character music, and I apply these considerations to two case studies: music as a tool for religious worship, and music as a weapon for torture

Dalcroze meets technology : integrating music, movement and visuals with the Music Paint Machine

peer reviewedNew interactive music educational technologies are often seen as a ‘force of change’, introducing new approaches that address the shortcomings (e.g. score-based, teacher-centred and disembodied) of the so-called traditional teaching approaches. And yet, despite the growing belief in their educational potential, these new technologies have been problematised with regard to their design, reception, implementation and evaluation. A possible way to optimise the realisation of the educational potential of interactive music educational technologies is to connect their use to music educational approaches that stood the test of time and as such may inspire technologies to become a bridge between tradition and innovation. This article describes an educational technology (the Music Paint Machine) that integrates the creative use of movement and visualisation to support instrumental music teaching and learning. Next, it connects this application to such an established music educational method, the Dalcroze approach. Through the lens of a set of interconnected aspects, it is shown how the Music Paint Machine’s conceptual design aligns to the underlying principles of this approach. In this way, it is argued that integrating Dalcroze-inspired practices is a plausible way of realising the didactic potential of the system. An appendix with example exercises is provided

The coupling of action and perception in musical meaning formation

The embodied perspective on music cognition has stressed the central role of the body and body move- ments in musical meaning formation processes. In the present study, we investigate by means of a behavioral experiment how free body movements in response to music (i.e., action) can be linked to specific linguistic, metaphorical descriptions people use to describe the expressive qualities they perceive in the music (i.e., per- ception). We introduce a dimensional model based on the Effort/Shape theory of Laban in order to target musical expressivity from an embodied perspective. Also, we investigate whether a coupling between action and perception is dependent on the musical background of the participants (i.e., trained versus untrained). The results show that the physical appearance of the free body movements that participants perform in response to music are reliably linked to the linguistic descriptions of musical expressiveness in terms of the underlying quality. Moreover, this result is found to be independent of the participants’ musical background