Giving Context to Sounds through Mediation of Physical Objects

Abstract We describe the concept of and approach for combining conceptual information produced by humans and data that convey situations of the real world without any modification or interpretation, which can be thought of as a method for bridging the Web and the real world. We conducted an experiment to validate our concept by making associations between everyday topics or situations and their characteristic sounds. We discuss the preliminary results obtained in the experiment

Sonic presence and spectral technology

We describe a series of experiments in artistic research, each investigating and illustrating aspects of presence phenomena. In each, we utilise digital technologies to invert the prevailing academic approach to presence, with the intention not to teleport a person to another place but to draw attention to unseen phenomena in physical spaces, specifically through the use of sound. Our work is grounded in theories of experience, mediation and context, and we follow a methodology merging artistic strategies with computational thinking. This paper serves to introduce aspects of presence theory into our existing conceptual model in order to develop it further, and to conversely contribute an alternative perspective to the presence research community

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Methodological considerations concerning manual annotation of musical audio in function of algorithm development

In research on musical audio-mining, annotated music databases are needed which allow the development of computational tools that extract from the musical audiostream the kind of high-level content that users can deal with in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) contexts. The notion of musical content, and therefore the notion of annotation, is ill-defined, however, both in the syntactic and semantic sense. As a consequence, annotation has been approached from a variety of perspectives (but mainly linguistic-symbolic oriented), and a general methodology is lacking. This paper is a step towards the definition of a general framework for manual annotation of musical audio in function of a computational approach to musical audio-mining that is based on algorithms that learn from annotated data. 1

Mimesis stories: composing new nature music for the shakuhachi

Nature is a widespread theme in much new music for the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). This article explores the significance of such music within the contemporary shakuhachi scene, as the instrument travels internationally and so becomes rooted in landscapes outside Japan, taking on the voices of new creatures and natural phenomena. The article tells the stories of five compositions and one arrangement by non-Japanese composers, first to credit composers’ varied and personal responses to this common concern and, second, to discern broad, culturally syncretic traditions of nature mimesis and other, more abstract, ideas about the naturalness of sounds and creative processes (which I call musical naturalism). Setting these personal stories and longer histories side by side reveals that composition creates composers (as much as the other way around). Thus it hints at much broader terrain: the refashioning of human nature at the confluence between cosmopolitan cultural circulations and contemporary encounters with the more-than-human world

The composer as technologist : an investigation into compositional process

This work presents an investigation into compositional process. This is undertaken where a study of musical gesture, certain areas of cognitive musicology, computer vision technologies and object-orientated programming, provide the basis for a composer (author) to assume the role of a technologist and acquire knowledge and skills to that end. In particular, it focuses on the application and development of a video gesture recognition heuristic to the compositional problems posed. The result is the creation of an interactive musical work with score for violin and electronics that supports the research findings. In addition, the investigative approach into developing technology to solve musical problems that explores practical composition and aesthetic challenges is detailed

The Social Brain

Editors\u27 Note: The economists\u27 traditional and convenient concept of human beings as rational actors who pursue self-interest has by now been thoroughly amended, if not debunked. But how the complicating factors, including gender, culture, emotion, and cognitive distortions, actually work in our brains has been elusive until more recently. Lately, however, neuroscience has begun to make inroads toward a better understanding of many of these factors. This chapter describes one large piece of the puzzle: the evolution of human beings\u27 brains as those of a highly interdependent, social species

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed