Novel Methods in Facilitating Audience and Performer Interaction Using the Mood Conductor Framework

While listeners’ emotional response to music is the subject of numerous studies, less attention is paid to the dynamic emotion variations due to the interaction between artists and audiences in live improvised music performances. By opening a direct communication channel from audience members to performers, the Mood Conductor system provides an experimental framework to study this phenomenon. Mood Conductor facilitates interactive performances and thus also has an inherent entertainment value. The framework allows audience members to send emotional directions using their mobile devices in order to “conduct” improvised performances. Emotion coordinates indicted by the audience in the arousal-valence space are aggregated and clustered to create a video projection. This is used by the musicians as guidance, and provides visual feedback to the audience. Three different systems were developed and tested within our framework so far. These systems were trialled in several public performances with different ensembles. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations demonstrated that musicians and audiences were highly engaged with the system, and raised new insights enabling future improvements of the framework

Infant massage and quality of early mother-infant interactions: Are there associations with maternal psychological wellbeing, marital quality, and social support?

Infant massage programs have proved to be effective in enhancing post-natal development of highly risk infants, such as preterm newborns and drug or HIV exposed children. Less studies have focused on the role of infant massage in supporting the co-construction of early adult–child relationships. In line with this lack of literature, the present paper reports on a pilot study aimed at investigating longitudinally the quality of mother–child interactions, with specific reference to emotional availability (EA), in a group of mother–child pairs involved in infant massage classes. Moreover, associations between mother–child EA, maternal wellbeing, marital adjustment, and social support were also investigated, with the hypothesis to find a link between low maternal distress, high couple satisfaction and high perceived support and interactions of better quality in the dyads. The study involved 20 mothers and their children, aged between 2 and 7 months, who participated to infant massage classes. The assessment took place at three stages: at the beginning of massage course, at the end of it and at 1-month follow-up. At the first stage of assessment self-report questionnaires were administered to examine the presence of maternal psychiatric symptoms (SCL-90-R), perceived social support (MSPSS), and marital adjustment (Dyadic Adjustment Scale); dyadic interactions were observed and rated with the Emotional Availability Scales (Biringen, 2008) at each stage of data collection. The results showed a significant improvement in the quality of mother–child interactions, between the first and the last evaluation, parallel to the unfolding of the massage program, highlighting a general increase in maternal and child’s EA. The presence of maternal psychological distress resulted associated with less optimal mother–child emotional exchanges, while the hypothesis regarding couple satisfaction and social support influence were not confirmed. These preliminary results, if replicated, seem to sustain the usefulness of infant massage and the importance of focusing on early mother–infant interactions

The relationship of the transformational leadership process and group mood among musicians and their effects on artistic quality within the American orchestral organization

The desire to understand the American classical music experience and its relationship to transformational leadership is the foundational reason for this study. The experience of listening to the same orchestra under the direction of nine different conductors throughout the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera’s conductor search, led to an interest in further understanding the processes involved in the classical musical experience. There is minimal research focused on the American symphony orchestra and an acute lack of research on leadership processes within the American symphony orchestra. Examination and study of the leadership process between conductor and musician, musician group mood, and artistic quality are all considerations in understanding the classical musical experience. The research design for this study was a quantitative design using simple correlation analysis. The intent of this study was to understand how the independent and dependent variables covary, and therefore a non-experimental, associational approach was used (Gliner, Morgan, & Leech, 2009). Given the two independent variables within this study, the conductor’s transformational leadership and musician group mood, associational inferential statistics was used to analyze the data collected (Gliner et al., 2009). The Pearson correlation coefficient, ANOVA, and the t-test, were used to accept or reject each hypothesis. The CSO musicians served as the population for this study. The 135-item research questionnaire used in the Boerner and Von Streit (2007) study was used to examine the relationship between the variables of transformational leadership, artistic quality, and musician group mood. The data analysis did not show a relationship of significance between the conductor’s transformational leadership and perception of artistic quality or between the conductor’s transformational leadership and musician group mood. The data analysis did show a significant relationship between musicians’ positive group mood and artistic quality. Symphonic music and group mood are collaborative, collective, and social in nature (Becker, 1974). Data from this study show that a harmonized group mood of the musicians has a positive relationship to the perception of artistic quality

Music conducting pedagogy and technology : a document analysis on best practices

This document analysis was designed to investigate pedagogical practices of music conducting teachers in conjunction with research of technologists on the use of various technologies as teaching tools. I sought to discern how conducting teachers and pedagogues are applying recent technological advancements into their teaching strategies. I also sought to understand what paths research is taking about the use of software, hardware, and computer systems applied to the teaching of music conducting technique. This dissertation was guided by four main research questions: (1) How has technology been used to aid in the teaching of conducting? (2) What is the role of technology in the context of conducting pedagogy? (3) Given that conducting is a performative act, how can it be developed through technological means? (4) What technological possibilities exist in the teaching of music conducting technique? Data were collected through music conducting syllabi, conducting textbooks, and research articles. Documents were selected through purposive sampling procedures. Analysis of documents through the constant comparative approach identified emerging themes and differences across the three types of documents. Based on a synthesis of information, I discussed implications for conducting pedagogy and made suggestions for conducting educators.Includes bibliographical references

Observations on Experience and Flow in Movement-Based Interaction

Movement-based interfaces assume that their users move. Users have to perform exercises, they have to dance, they have to golf or football, or they want to train particular bodily skills. Many examples of those interfaces exist, sometimes asking for subtle interaction between user and interface and sometimes asking for ‘brute force’ interaction between user and interface. Often these interfaces mediate between players of a game. Obviously, one of the players may be a virtual human. We embed this interface research in ambient intelligence and entertainment computing research, and the interfaces we consider are not only mediating, but they also ‘add’ intelligence to the interaction. Intelligent movement-based interfaces, being able to know and learn about their users, should also be able to provide means to keep their users engaged in the interaction. Issues that will be discussed in this chapter are ‘flow’ and ‘immersion’ for movement-based interfaces and we look at the possible role of interaction synchrony to measure and support engagement

MyHealthFrame - design and evaluation of a minimally invasive communication platform for telemedicine services aimed at older adults

MyHealthFrame is a communication platform that telemedicine (and well-being) services can leverage to deliver motivational messages and notifications to their end-users. Instead of being a telemedicine service in itself, MyHealthFrame is a channel through which external services can reach their users to provide reminders or deliver simple information such as number of steps. To its end-users, MyHealthFrame is a tablet device which is designed to be perceived as a photoframe and can be immersed in the users’ living environment. In this paper, we describe the design and the preliminary assessment of the platform. The results of the feasibility study with five older adults (65+) are promising

Influence of Tempo and Rhythmic Unit in Musical Emotion Regulation

This article is based on the assumption of musical power to change the listener's mood. The paper studies the outcome of two experiments on the regulation of emotional states in a series of participants who listen to different auditions. The present research focuses on note value, an important musical cue related to rhythm. The influence of two concepts linked to note value is analyzed separately and discussed together. The two musical cues under investigation are tempo and rhythmic unit. The participants are asked to label music fragments by using opposite meaningful words belonging to four semantic scales, namely “Tension” (ranging from Relaxing to Stressing), “Expressiveness” (Expressionless to Expressive), “Amusement” (Boring to Amusing) and “Attractiveness” (Pleasant to Unpleasant). The participants also have to indicate how much they feel certain basic emotions while listening to each music excerpt. The rated emotions are “Happiness,” “Surprise,” and “Sadness.” This study makes it possible to draw some interesting conclusions about the associations between note value and emotions