Narrative music: towards an understanding of musical narrative functions in multimedia

As the computer screen is replacing the book as the dominant medium for communication (Kress, 2003), questions about how meaning is constituted by the multimodal interaction of different media (including music) is becoming increasingly important in contemporary research of pedagogy, sociology and media studies. The overall aim with this licentiate thesis is to explore musical narrative functions as they appear in multimedia such as film and computer games. The thesis is based on three publications. Publication 1 proposes a classification of musical narrative functions, with 6 narrative classes(the Emotive, Informative, Descriptive, Guiding, Temporal and Rhetorical classes) and 11 categories. The relational interplay of music with contextual factors is emphasized. Publication 2 describes the design of a software tool, REMUPP (Relations Between Musical Parameters and Perceived Properties), to be used for experimental studies of musical expression. REMUPP is used for real time alteration of musical expression, by the manipulation of musical parameters such as tempo, harmony, rhythm, articulation, etc. Publication 3 describes a quasi-experiment using REMUPP, where a group of young participants (12-13 years old) were given the task of adapting musical expression – by manipulating 7 parameters – to make it fit 3 visual scenes shown on a computer screen. They also answered a questionnaire asking about their musical backgrounds and habits of listening to music, watching movies and playing computer games. Numerical data from the manipulations were analyzed statistically with regards to the preferred values of the musical parameters in relation to the different visual scenes. The results indicated awareness and knowledge about codes and conventions of musical narrative functions, and were to some degree affected by the participants’ gender, musical backgrounds and media habits

WSAmacd handbook 2012-13 PDF edition

The story, syllabus and course information handbook for the MA in Communication Design at Winchester School of Art. www.facebook.com/WSAmac

Communication Management

Communication Management is an edited volume of chapters written by scholars researching various areas of marketing and management sciences. It presents several issues of marketing management within the limits of marketing communication. Starting from the issue of communication channels and basic sensory apparatus for processing information and stimuli, the book continues with a description of the issue of social media in the time of accelerated digitization. The last chapter introduces the reader to the issue of marketing communication in a sharply non-standard environment. The topic itself creates the opportunity to seek qualitative knowledge for future in-depth research into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both national and transnational economies

Project Half Double: Preliminary Results for Phase 1, June 2016

Project Half Double has a clear mission to succeed in finding a project methodology that can increase the success rate of our projects while increasing the speed at which we generate new ideas and develop new products and services. Chaos and complexity should be seen as a basic condition and as an opportunity rather than a threat and a risk. We are convinced that by doing so, we can strengthen Denmark’s competitiveness and play an important role in the battle for jobs and future welfare. The overall goal is to deliver “projects in half the time with double the impact”, where projects in half the time should be understood as half the time to impact (benefit realisation, effect is achieved) and not as half the time for project execution.The purpose of Project Half Double is to improve Danish industrial competitiveness by radically increasing the pace and impact of the development and innovation activities carried out within the framework of the projects.The formal part of Project Half Double was initiated in June 2015. We started out by developing, refining and testing the Half Double methodology on seven pilot projects in the first phase of the project, which will end June 2016.The current status of responding to the above overall Project Half Double goal for the seven pilot projects can be summarised as follows:- The Lantmännen Unibake pilot project was able to launch the first stores after 5 months, which is considerably shorter lead time than comparable reference projects, which have had a lead time of 10 months or more. This is in line with the overall goal of Project Half Double of delivering impact faster.- Four pilot projects have the potential to deliver impact faster, but it is too early to evaluate. Some results might be evaluated in the second half of 2016, while other results take longer to evaluate (Coloplast, Novo Nordisk, GN Audio and VELUX).- Two pilot projects will probably not be able to deliver impact faster, although it is too early to evaluate them. The evaluation of these pilot projects takes place over a longer period of time as it will take years before many of the key performance indicators associated with them can be evaluated (Grundfos and Siemens Wind Power).In addition to the current status of delivering impact faster for the seven pilot projects, it is important to highlight that Project Half Double phase 1 has planted many seeds in the pilot organisations concerning project methodology and beyond. The many learning points from each pilot project show that Project Half Double has left its clear footprint in the pilot organisations, and that the Half Double methodology has evolved and developed very much during Project Half Double phase 1

Video Collaboration: Copresence and Performance

The purpose of this qualitative narrative theory study on video collaboration platform use is to explain how an individual\u27s on-screen performance and their interpersonal verbal and nonverbal communication contributes to engagement and copresence with their audience. The literature review analyzes critical interpersonal communication theories to explain how this affects engagement and copresence levels in mediated virtual environments. The research was conducted through interviews with thirty professional businesspeople about their video collaboration experiences during the COVID-19 2020 shutdown. The interview respondents told the stories of business communication successes and failures that correspond to the scholarly theories in the literature review. The respondents discussed how verbal and nonverbal communication was used successfully and unsuccessfully. They also discussed why their companies found it challenging to communicate virtually during the COVID-19 shutdown with video collaboration. A final discussion analyzes how communication theory and practical experience combined to explain how verbal and nonverbal communication impact mediated virtual communications when using video collaboration. This study offers a model to help explain how interpersonal communication, engagement, and copresence exist in a cyclical motion. This model can be helpful to business people and scholars to communicate in a mediated virtual environment using video collaboration platforms

Understanding and Enhancing Customer-Agent-Computer Interaction in Customer Service Settings

Providing good customer service is crucial to many commercial organizations. There are different means through which the service can be provided, such as Ecommerce, call centres or face-to-face. Although some service is provided through electronic or telephone-based interaction, it is common that the service is provided through human agents. In addition, many customer service interactions also involve a computer, for example, an information system where a travel agent finds suitable flights. This thesis seeks to understand the three channels of customer service interactions between the agent, customer and computer: Customer-Agent-Computer Interaction (CACI). A set of ethnographic studies were conducted at call centres to gain an initial understanding of CACI and to investigate the customer-computer channel. The findings revealed that CACI is more complicated than traditional CHI, because there is a second person, the customer, involved in the interaction. For example, the agent provides a lot of feedback about the computer to the customer, such as, “I am waiting for the computer” Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the customer-computer channel by adding non-verbal auditory feedback about the computer directly to the customers. The findings showed only a small insignificant difference in task completion time and subjective satisfaction. There were indications that there was an improvement in flow of communication. Experiments were conducted to investigate how the two humans interact over two different communication modes: face-to-face and telephone. Findings showed that there was a significantly shorter task completion time via telephone. There was also a difference in style of communication, with face-to-face having more single activities, such as, talking only, while in the telephone condition there were more dual activities, for instance talking while also searching. There was only a small difference in subjective satisfaction. To investigate if the findings from the laboratory experiment also held in a real situation and to identify potential improvement areas, a series of studies were conducted: observations and interviews at multiple travel agencies, one focus group and a proof of concept study at one travel agency. The findings confirmed the results from the laboratory experiments. A number of potential interface improvements were also identified, such as, a history mechanism and sharing part of the computer screen with the customer at the agent's discretion. The results from the work in this thesis suggest that telephone interaction, although containing fewer cues, is not necessarily an impoverished mode of communication. Telephone interaction is less time consuming and more task-focused. Further, adding non-verbal auditory feedback did not enhance the interaction. The findings also suggest that customer service CACI is inherently different in nature and that there are additional complications with traditional CHI issues