Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction

Spartan Daily, September 16, 2014

Volume 143, Issue 8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1507/thumbnail.jp

Lessons from the Workshop: A Guide to Best Practices in Performing Arts Education

Developed by the Workshop's Associate Artistic Director, Anne-E Wood, the Best Practices Guide is a hands-on tool for school administrators, teachers, artists, parents or arts organizations facilitating an artist residency program. The guide explains arts education within the framework of educational policy and practice in California, but the model can be adapted for many communities. In this guide, you will learn about the residency model, the history of Performing Arts Workshop's residency model and what 40 years of experience has shown to be the best practices for artists and teachers

Local Culture-Based Music Game Model for Early Childhood Education

Many music experts and educators have researched to see the positive effects of several types of music. Music turns out to be able to affect the intellectual development of children as well as make children wise to socialize. Many facts were revealed from this research. Among them, there is an exciting relationship between music and human intelligence. This study uses a qualitative methodology, with the research object being PIAUD IAIMNU Metro Lampung students. The results of this study indicate that playing music can increase a child's intelligence level because it includes sensitivity to mastery of rhythm, tone patterns, rhythms, tempos, instruments, and musical expressions to be able to sing a song or play it. Learning or playing in early childhood has several advantages, including being able to hone memory because children will recognize and try to memorize the tones of the music

The Daily Texan

Texas Student Medi

A Model for the Development of a Popular Music Listening Curriculum

Secondary schools in Texas typically only offer performance-based ensembles to students as their music options. These classes require public performances, extracurricular time commitments, and financial obligations. Because of these and other issues, many students select non-music classes to fulfill their fine arts graduation requirements. Although it can be passive in nature, listening is how most people interact with music. Unfortunately, listening-based curricula are rarely available to secondary students. Where music appreciation classes are offered, the music studied is often outdated and unfamiliar to students. This qualitative study identified the pedagogical components present in an existing classical music listening curricula. These components were used as a model for the development of a lesson framework, allowing music educators to incorporate popular music into any secondary music class. Secondary music educators were given sample popular music listening lessons based on the framework developed and later interviewed to record their reactions