Corporeality, Actions and Perceptions in Gestural Performance of Digital Music

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From the Body Image to the Body Schema, From the Proximal to the Distal

A recent paradigm shift in music research has allowed scholars to examine the macro- and micro-processes taking place within musical performance and underlying cognitive processes. Tying in with phenomenological theories of embodied perception and cognition, this paper focuses on bodily musical activity relevant to the acquisition of instrumental musical skills – the process of learning music. Dynamic interaction with musical instruments, accompanied by the interplay of action and passion, involves body image and body schema, whose status oscillates in different phases of the acquisition of instrumental musical skills; this interaction allows humans to direct attention from their bodily states – the proximal – to the quality of musical sounds and a unity of musical experience – the distal. It is thus argued that shaping music by means of playing a musical instrument can be conceived of as an embodied process, of understanding the forms of one’s own experience as related to the musical world that is created by one’s bodily activity.Peer Reviewe

Improvisation Pedagogy: An Epistemological Perspective of the 4‘E’ Model within Digital Musical Instruments

Recent years have witnessed the appearance of many new digital musical instruments (DMIs) and other interfaces for musical expression (NIME). This paper highlights a well-established music educational background theory that we believe may help DMI developers and users better understand DMIs in the context of music cognition and education. From an epistemological perspective, we present the paradigm of enactive music cognition related to improvisation in the context of the skills and needs of 21st century music learners. We hope this can lead to a deeper insertion of DMIs into music education, as well as to new DMIs to be ideated, prototyped and developed within these concepts and theories in mind. We specifically address the theory generally known as the 4E model of cognition (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive) within DMIs. The concept of autopoiesis is also described. Finally, we present some concrete cases of DMIs and NIMEs, and we describe how the experience of musical improvisation with them may be seen through the prism of such theories

From haptic perception to movement: a phenomenological study on sound and technological mediation in dance pedagogy

Abstract:It is well known that, interactive media have become a major issue in both academic research and artistic practice. During the last years, motion sensing technologies have been proven to be a useful mean for movement’s analysis in relation to dance and music performances. Different domaines ranging from artistic creative process to pedagogical applications have been involved. Within this context, many scholars pointed out the crucial importance of sound agency in developing sensorimotor awareness. A phenomenological approach seem to be taking an increasingly prominent position in informing such theoretical framework. Multimodality and embodiment have been revealed to be the main features in order to understand the relation between movement, sound and mediation technologies. The case study presented is part of a research project that involves dance pedagogy and new technologies at Nice University. This paper focus on description of an interactive experience based on motion sensing/bio-signals technologies allowing dance students to explore the sense of touch in connection to objets’ manipulation and sound production. The goal of the experience was to analyze how multimodal connection between haptic and auditive feedbacks can be incorporated trough gesture and how, this relation affects perceptual organization of movement. As it emerges from this study, sound feedbacks seem to facilitate the transition from manipulation gestures to dance movements. Moreover, the arise of a “sonorous presence” enhances both proprioceptive awareness and corporeal imagination thereby affecting the movement composition process.Keywords: Interactive Technologies. Dance Pedagogy. Sound Feedback. Multimodality. Embodiment. DA PERCEPÇÃO HAPTICA AO MOVIMENTO: UM ESTUDO FENOMENOLÓGICO SOBRE A MEDIAÇÃO SONORA E TECNOLÓGICA NA PEDAGOGIA DA DANÇAResumo:Como é sabido, a mídia interativa tornou-se um problema importante tanto na pesquisa acadêmica quanto na prática artística. Nos últimos anos, as tecnologias de detecção de movimento provaram ser um meio útil para a análise do movimento em relação à dança e as performances musicais. São envolvidos diferentes domínios que vão do processo criativo artístico às aplicações pedagógicas. Nesse contexto, muitos estudiosos apontaram a importância crucial da agência de som no desenvolvimento de conscientização sensório-motora. A abordagem fenomenológica parece assumir uma posição cada vez mais proeminente na informação desse quadro teórico. A multimodalidade e a corporificação1 são reveladas como as principais características para entender a relação entre movimento, som e mediação tecnológica. O estudo de caso apresentado faz parte de um projeto de pesquisa envolvendo pedagogia da dança e novas tecnologias na Universidade de Nice. Este artigo concentra-se na descrição de uma experiência interativa baseada em detecção de movimento e tecnologias bio-eletrônicas que permitem aos estudantes de dança explorar o senso de toque em conexão com a manipulação de objetos e a produção de som. O objetivo da experiência foi analisar como a conexão multimodal entre feedbacks hápticos e auditivos pode ser incorporados por meio de gesto e como essa relação afeta a organização perceptiva do movimento. Como resulta deste estudo, os áudio feedbacks parecem facilitar a transição de gestos de manipulação para movimentos de dança. Além disso, o surgimento de uma “presença sonora” aumenta a consciência proprioceptiva e a imaginação corporal, afetando assim o processo de composição do movimento.Palavras-chave: Tecnologia Interativa. Pedagogia de Dança. Retroalomentação Sonora. Multimodalidade. Corporificação

Embodied gestures

This is a book about musical gestures: multiple ways to design instruments, compose musical performances, analyze sound objects and represent sonic ideas through the central notion of ‘gesture’. The writers share knowledge on major research projects, musical compositions and methodological tools developed among different disciplines, such as sound art, embodied music cognition, human-computer interaction, performative studies and artificial intelligence. They visualize how similar and compatible are the notions of embodied music cognition and the artistic discourses proposed by musicians working with ‘gesture’ as their compositional material. The authors and editors hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion around creative technologies and music, expressive musical interface design, the debate around the use of AI technology in music practice, as well as presenting a new way of thinking about musical instruments, composing and performing with them

Embodied gestures

This is a book about musical gestures: multiple ways to design instruments, compose musical performances, analyze sound objects and represent sonic ideas through the central notion of ‘gesture’. The writers share knowledge on major research projects, musical compositions and methodological tools developed among different disciplines, such as sound art, embodied music cognition, human-computer interaction, performative studies and artificial intelligence. They visualize how similar and compatible are the notions of embodied music cognition and the artistic discourses proposed by musicians working with ‘gesture’ as their compositional material. The authors and editors hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion around creative technologies and music, expressive musical interface design, the debate around the use of AI technology in music practice, as well as presenting a new way of thinking about musical instruments, composing and performing with them

The Sampling of Bodily Sound in Contemporary Composition: towards an embodied analysis

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The listener’s experience as an embodied subject is at the centre of this work. Embodied experience forms the basis for analyses of three contemporary compositions that sample bodily sound, in order to question how such works represent and mediate the body. The possible applications of this embodied methodology are illustrated through three case studies: Crackers by Christof Migone (2001), A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure by Matmos (2001) and Ground Techniques (2009) by Neil Luck. The findings of each analysis are placed within discussion of critical and theoretical concerns related to the (re)presentation, mediation and manipulation of the body both as materiality and as social construct, using, in particular, work by Hansen (2004) and Wegenstein (2006). The sampling practices of these works lead to the fragmentation of the represented bodies, in which margins between bodily interiors and exteriors are frequently crossed, bringing about a reconfiguration of the musical subject. Furthermore, the celebration of the bodily origins of these works complicates notions of recorded sound as disembodied. The analytical methodology developed in this thesis derives from a consideration of approaches in a number of fields: feminist musicology, music psychology, embodied cognition, phenomenology, music and gesture and new media theory. The sensations and affective responses of the listening body are discussed alongside an examination of how listening is shaped by processes of technological mediation. This thesis attends to both the body that is listening and the body that is listened to. I argue that it is not adequate to understand the works studied as merely representing the body, but suggest it would be more appropriate to understand the relationship between work and body as multi-faceted, conceptualising the body and recorded sound as mutually framing. This uncovers not only technology as mediation, but also the body as mediation. Finally, the case studies are used to reflect upon the limits of the embodied analysis methodology and its potential for wider application.This study was part-financed with the aid of a studentship from University College Falmouth and a grant from The Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust

Mixed Reality Re-assembled: Software Assemblages at the Edge of Control

In certain paradigms from commercial and engineering practice, migrated to media art, Mixed Reality (MR) is often encountered as augments viewed through a screen display. Understood as both informatic and digital, augments are supplementary content that enhance a human experience of 'reality'. My project cultivates a contrasting view of augments as emergent via human and nonhuman processes that entangle digital as well as physical spaces. Through a practice-based approach located in media art, this research contributes an artistic formulation – the software assemblage – supported by a suite of techniques and methods that attempt to re-assemble MR as an expanded practice that occurs both on and off screen. The software assemblages produced in this research, draw upon Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s machinic assemblage, a relational ecology of material elements organized by movement, as well as Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism, where nonhuman matter enacts situated modes of agency. Thinking with Donna Haraway, the software assemblage takes a diffractive approach, exploring patterns of interference in MR spaces. An analysis of selected media art practices operates in tandem with this trajectory, investigating influential work by Golan Levin and collaborators, OpenEndedGroup, Yvonne Rainer, Miya Masaoka, Adam Nash and Stefan Greuter, as well as Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. Developing a re-figured version of MR, augments become performative as they co-emerge with my body, in media environments that assemble living plants, hardware devices, and computational networks. Augments will be apprehended not only as screen objects, but also as a mode of materiality. Emerging from this research, are techniques and methods that investigate: the performative potential of augments outside of the informatic; the Leap Motion gestural controller as a performative interface; the generation of augmented audio from the bio-electrical signals of plants; and, the extended senses of embodiment that embroil the performer. Here, signals, augments, and bodies are manifest as relational forces that diffract and modulate through the software assemblage. An alternative MR emerges that ripples through physical as well as digital space. And that's when augments exceed the informatic

F@ust vers. 3.0: A (Hi)story of Theatre and Media

The article illuminates Goethe’s Faust (1 and 2) by tracing the theoretical conceptualization of an intermedial approach to theatre and performance, and argues for a historical dimension to the medial constitution of perception. While Goethe used the Faust-legend in his play to highlight two competitive orders of knowledge and media by presenting, on the one hand, the romantic, electric, and Mephistotelian ways of seeing and, on the other hand, the classic, literal and scientific order of knowledge; the Catalan theatre group Fura dels Baus transfer this conflict to the digital age in their remediation of the Faustlegend on the contemporary stage.Este artículo propone una relectura del Fausto (1 y 2) de Goethe a través de una conceptualización teórica intermedial del teatro y la representación que defiende la dimensión histórica de la constitución intermediada de la percepción. Mientras que Goethe utiliza la leyenda fáustica para subrayar dos órdenes de conocimiento en competencia, por un lado, las maneras románticas, eléctricas y mefistofélicas de observar, y por otro, el orden clásico, literal y científico del conocimiento, el grupo catalán de teatro La Fura dels Baus traslada el conflicto a la era digital en su transducción de la leyenda fáustica a la escena contemporánea