Music Notation-to-Color Synesthesia and Early Stages of Music Education: A Grounded Theory Study

Problem Synesthesia is a neurological condition characterized by over-abundant neural connectivity between commonly highly specialized areas of the brain. The developmental form of the condition often results in automatic and consistent cross-sensory associations between perceived stimuli and commonly unrelated brain regions. This research contemplates the specific form of music notation-to-color synesthesia and its impact on early stages of music education. Synesthetes with this mode of the condition tend to involuntarily yet consistently associate music-notational concepts with colors, thus rendering their assimilation of these concepts unique and individualized. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent of these individualized experiences from original narratives. Method This study entails a grounded theory qualitative approach, through which 12 from participants were interviewed cross-culturally (7 featured nationalities). All participants were adults with music notation-to-color synesthesia who experienced music instruction in a Western cultural context. Data collection methodology involved a written survey, inperson (or live Zoom) interviews, and shared document analysis. Qualitative analytical methodology was used via coding strategies to discover surfacing themes, emerging issues, and commonalities among the narratives. Results Five overarching categories of commonalities were identified in this study. Firstly, participants shared generalities of synesthetic perceptions of music notation involving color, such as their awareness about their condition, the qualities of their experiences, the conceptual basis of their associations, among other characteristics. Interviewees also alluded to the mechanisms involved in the perception of music notation, such as the positive impact of their music notation-to-color synesthesia on memory as well as the negative implications of synesthetic incongruence. The spatial location of synesthetic perceptions varied among participants. Interviewees reported projecting on the page of music and associating in their mind\u27s eye —two common themes in the literature. Some participants, however, have also mentioned a middleground location that does not fit only one of these categories. Finally, this study analyzed themes relating to the implications of this form of synesthesia for music education, with attention to awareness on the part of educators, instructional intentionality, validation, reinforcement of student individuality, and conscious use of the condition. Moreover, other themes and future research possibilities were analyzed. -- Conclusion This study arrived at two grounded theory models. The first comprises a grounded theory of the experiences shared by participants. This theoretical model articulates the salient themes, such as positive and negative traits of notation-to-color perceptions and spatial location of perceptions. In special, this theory argues for a tendency for conceptually-based notation-to-color synesthesia among participants. The second grounded theory model advanced in this research entails an educational approach that would benefit awareness and intentionality in addressing students with music notation-to-color synesthesia. It discusses philosophical foundations, a theoretical framework, and methodological considerations that may transform how music notation-to-color students are accounted for in curricula. The study concludes by offering pedagogical suggestions derived from the methodological considerations. Firstly, it advances a linear process for identification, verification, and addressing of synesthesia. Secondly, it proposes the elimination of excessive notational information and gradual learning as initial strategies that could benefit music notation-to-color synesthetes in learning new notational elements

Rhythmic analysis of motion signals for music retrieval

viii, 108 leaves : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 29 cm.Includes abstract and appendix.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-108).This thesis presents a framework that queries a music database with rhythmic motion signals. Rather than the existing method to extract the motion signal's underlying rhythm by marking salient frames, this thesis proposes a novel approach, which converts the rhythmic motion signal to MIDI-format music and extracts its beat sequence as the rhythmic information of that motion. We extract "motion events" from the motion data based on characteristics such as movement directional change, root-y coordinate and angular-velocity. Those events are converted to music notes in order to generate an audio representation of the motion. Both this motion-generated music and the existing audio library are analyzed by a beat tracking algorithm. The music retrieval is completed based on the extracted beat sequences. We tried three approaches to retrieve music using motion queries, which are a mutual-information-based approach, two sample KS test and a rhythmic comparison algorithm. Feasibility of the framework is evaluated with pre-recorded music and motion recordings

Affect-based indexing and retrieval of multimedia data

Digital multimedia systems are creating many new opportunities for rapid access to content archives. In order to explore these collections using search, the content must be annotated with significant features. An important and often overlooked aspect o f human interpretation o f multimedia data is the affective dimension. The hypothesis o f this thesis is that affective labels o f content can be extracted automatically from within multimedia data streams, and that these can then be used for content-based retrieval and browsing. A novel system is presented for extracting affective features from video content and mapping it onto a set o f keywords with predetermined emotional interpretations. These labels are then used to demonstrate affect-based retrieval on a range o f feature films. Because o f the subjective nature o f the words people use to describe emotions, an approach towards an open vocabulary query system utilizing the electronic lexical database WordNet is also presented. This gives flexibility for search queries to be extended to include keywords without predetermined emotional interpretations using a word-similarity measure. The thesis presents the framework and design for the affectbased indexing and retrieval system along with experiments, analysis, and conclusions

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

SEPEC conference proceedings: Hypermedia and Information Reconstruction. Aerospace applications and research directions. Addendum

The papers presented at the conference on hypermedia and information reconstruction are compiled. The following subject areas are covered: hypertext, typographic man, and the notion of literacy; a knowledge base browser using hypermedia; Ai GERM - a logic programming front end for GERM; and HEAVENS system for software artifacts

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

Beauty and Esthetics. Meanings of an Idea and Concept of the Senses. An Introduction to an Esthetic Communication Concept Facing the Perspectives Of Its Theory, History, and Cultural Traditions of the Beautiful.

When we ask for the definitions and forms of esthetics from a post-modern perspective, we must take into account that the perspective today is a re-constructive one allowing us to trace back historically, but also allowing various forms of research such as empirical research, or quantitative and qualitative research. This book is devided into chapters. Each of them has a different approach towards esthetics according to the definition of esthetics as a theoretical field, esthetics as a phenomenon of beauty, and esthetics as a specific phenomenon in a certain cultural context. We will focus on the contemporary state of research regarding esthetics from branches of the humanities and natural sciences. Our interest here is to join the classical theoretical terminology of esthetics derived from the humanities with contemporary concepts of research also not related to the humanities