SonicDraw: a web-based tool for sketching sounds and drawings

We present SonicDraw, a web browser tool that lies in between a drawing and a sound design interface. Through this ambiguity we aim to explore new kinds of user interactions as the creative process can be led either by sound or visual feedback loops. We performed a user evaluation to assess how users negotiated the affordances of the system and how it supported their creativity. We measured the System Usability Scale (SUS), the Creativity Support Index (CSI) and conducted an inductive thematic analysis of qualitative feedback. Results indicate that users find SonicDraw a very easy and intuitive tool which fosters the exploration for new unexpected combinations of sounds and drawings. However, the tool seems to fail in engaging high-skilled musicians or drawers wanting to create more complex pieces. To infer knowledge about user interaction, we also propose a quantitative analysis of drawing dynamics. Two contrasting modes of interaction are likely occurring, one where sketches act as direct controls of sonic attributes (sound focus), and the other where sketches feature semantic content (e.g. a house) that indirectly controls sound (visual focus)

Music jamming as a participatory design method. A case study with disabled musicians

We propose a method that uses music jamming as a tool for the design of musical instruments. Both designers and musicians collaborate in the music making process for the subsequent development of individual “music performer’s profiles” which account for four dimensions: (i) movements and embodiment, (ii) musical preferences, (iii) difficulties, and (iv) capabilities. These profiles converge into proposed prototypes that transform into final designs after experts and performers' examination and feedback. We ground this method in the context of physically disabled musicians, and we show that the method provides a decolonial view to disability, as its purpose moves from the classical view of technology as an aid for allowing disabled communities to access well-established instruments, towards a new paradigm where technologies are used for the augmentation of expressive capabilities, the strengthening of social engagement, and the empowerment of music makers

The Sabotaging Piano: key-to-pitch remapping as a source of new techniques in piano improvisation

In this paper we present the Sabotaging Piano, a prepared electronic piano that alters key-to-pitch correspondence by reassigning adjacent pitches (i.e. one semi-tone higher or lower) to each key. Performers can control how many keys to remap through an expression pedal. If the pedal is not pressed the Sabotaging Piano works as a normal piano. When fully pressed, each key is remapped one semi-tone up or down with equal probability. Each new performance (i.e. when the piano is turned on) triggers a new and unknown remapping pattern, but the specific pattern remains fixed throughout the whole performance. This aims to provide a balance of uncertain but still explorable and learnable behaviour. We invited three professional piano improvisers to rehearse with our piano in order to prepare a final improvisation concert. We aimed to explore how much can be rehearsed or prepared with a piano that will behave somewhat differently for each new performance. We asked pianists to document their rehearsal processes to witness the appearing of strategies or techniques with the Sabotaging Piano. Through analysis of the rehearsals reports and the MIDI data collected in the final concert, here we show that the three pianists not only developed different techniques with the Sabotaging Piano, but they also leveraged the particularities of it to use them as creative resources

Self-Sabotage Workshop: a starting point to unravel sabotaging of instruments as a design practice

Within the music improvisation and jazz scenes, playing a wrong note may be seen as a source of creativity and novelty, where an initially undesired factor (the mistaken note) invites the musician to leverage their skills to transform it into new musical material. How does this idea, however, translate into more experimental scenes like NIME, where control and virtuosity are not necessarily the performance's aim? Moreover, within NIME communities the addition of randomness or constraints to musical instruments is often an intended aesthetic decision rather than a source of mistakes. To explore this contrast, we invited four NIME practitioners to participate in the Self-Sabotage Workshop, where each practitioner had to build their own sabotaging elements for their musical instruments and to give a short demonstration with them. We gathered participants' impressions of self-sabotating in a focus group, inquiring about control and musicality, and also the strategies they developed for coping with the self-sabotaged instruments. We discuss the emergent ideas of planned and unplanned sabotaging, and we propose a starting point towards the idea of self-sabotaging as a continuous design and musical process where designers/musicians try to overcome barriers that they impose upon themselves

Design and testing of a co-rotating vibration excitation system

A vibration excitation system (VES) in a form of an active coupling is proposed, designed and manufactured. The system is equipped with a set of piezoelectric stack actuators uniformly distributed around the rotor axis and positioned parallel to each other. The actuator arrangement allows an axial displacement of the coupling halves as well as their rotation about any transverse axis. Through the application of the VES an aimed vibration excitation is realised in a co-rotating coordinate system, which enables a non-invasive and precise modal analysis of rotating components. As an example, the VES is applied for the characterisation of the structural dynamic behaviour of a generic steel rotor at different rotational speeds. The first results are promising for both stationary and rotating conditions

Neandertal introgression partitions the genetic landscape of neuropsychiatric disorders and associated behavioral phenotypes

Despite advances in identifying the genetic basis of psychiatric and neurological disorders, fundamental questions about their evolutionary origins remain elusive. Here, introgressed variants from archaic humans such as Neandertals can serve as an intriguing research paradigm. We compared the number of associations for Neandertal variants to the number of associations of frequency-matched non-archaic variants with regard to human CNS disorders (neurological and psychiatric), nervous system drug prescriptions (as a proxy for disease), and related, non-disease phenotypes in the UK biobank (UKBB). While no enrichment for Neandertal genetic variants were observed in the UKBB for psychiatric or neurological disease categories, we found significant associations with certain behavioral phenotypes including pain, chronotype/sleep, smoking and alcohol consumption. In some instances, the enrichment signal was driven by Neandertal variants that represented the strongest association genome-wide. SNPs within a Neandertal haplotype that was associated with smoking in the UKBB could be replicated in four independent genomics datasets

Bilateral myositis ossificans of the masseter muscle after chemoradiotherapy and critical illness neuropathy- report of a rare entity and review of literature

Myositis ossificans in the head and neck is a rare heterotropic bone formation within a muscle. Besides fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, traumatic and neurogenic forms are described in the literature

Measurement of the diffractive structure function in deep inelastic scattering at HERA

This paper presents an analysis of the inclusive properties of diffractive deep inelastic scattering events produced in $ep$ interactions at HERA. The events are characterised by a rapidity gap between the outgoing proton system and the remaining hadronic system. Inclusive distributions are presented and compared with Monte Carlo models for diffractive processes. The data are consistent with models where the pomeron structure function has a hard and a soft contribution. The diffractive structure function is measured as a function of \xpom, the momentum fraction lost by the proton, of $\beta$, the momentum fraction of the struck quark with respect to \xpom, and of $Q^2$. The \xpom dependence is consistent with the form \xpoma where $a~=~1.30~\pm~0.08~(stat)~^{+~0.08}_{-~0.14}~(sys)$ in all bins of $\beta$ and $Q^2$. In the measured $Q^2$ range, the diffractive structure function approximately scales with $Q^2$ at fixed $\beta$. In an Ingelman-Schlein type model, where commonly used pomeron flux factor normalisations are assumed, it is found that the quarks within the pomeron do not saturate the momentum sum rule.Comment: 36 pages, latex, 11 figures appended as uuencoded fil

Observation of hard scattering in photoproduction events with a large rapidity gap at HERA

Events with a large rapidity gap and total transverse energy greater than 5 GeV have been observed in quasi-real photoproduction at HERA with the ZEUS detector. The distribution of these events as a function of the $\gamma p$ centre of mass energy is consistent with diffractive scattering. For total transverse energies above 12 GeV, the hadronic final states show predominantly a two-jet structure with each jet having a transverse energy greater than 4 GeV. For the two-jet events, little energy flow is found outside the jets. This observation is consistent with the hard scattering of a quasi-real photon with a colourless object in the proton.Comment: 19 pages, latex, 4 figures appended as uuencoded fil