Feeling at one: Socio-affective distribution, vibe, and dance-music consciousness

In this chapter, the embodied consciousness of clubbing and raving is considered through the theory of extended mind, according to which the mind is a distributed system where brain, body, and environment play equal parts. Building on the idea of music as affective atmosphere, a case is made for considering the vibe of a dance party as cognitively, socially, and affectively distributed. The chapter suggests that participating in the vibe affords primary musical consciousness—a kind of pre-reflexive state characterized by affective and bodily knowledge—and speculates about the neural correlates of clubbing and raving by means of an analogy with brain research on psychedelic states

Comment on Solberg and Jensenius: The Temporal Dynamics of Embodied Pleasure in Music

In the paper 'Pleasurable and Intersubjective Embodied Experiences of Electronic Dance Music', Ragnhild Torvanger Solberg and Alexander Refsum Jensenius report on a study in which the movements and self-reported affective responses of a group of dancing participants were recorded and related to structural properties of Electronic Dance Music. They observed that, compared with tracks that had a relatively flat dynamic development, tracks which included a 'break-down', 'build-up' and 'drop' of textural layers were associated with greater changes in movement amount and higher ratings of pleasure. Here I comment on their results and methodological approach and use the opportunity to address the continuous pleasure that was treated as a control in this experiment, discussing some reasons why affective responses to music with more evenly distributed dynamic progressions are so often ignored

Rhythmic entrainment, syncopation and pleasantness

Although several authors have speculated that rhythmic entrainment induces positive affect (e.g. Juslin & Vastfjäll, 2008; Clayton et al. 2004), so far there is no direct experimental evidence to support this claim. Therefore, the experiment hereby reported aimed to test the hypothesis that moving in time with music induces pleasantness and that this effect interacts with the level of syncopation of the music. Six short rhythmic musical stimuli with three levels of syncopation (low, medium, high), were presented to 77 participants, who were divided into two groups: one was asked to move along with the pulse of the music (by tapping with one foot), and the other was asked to listen without moving. The changes in the participants’ affective state were measured by using two techniques: self-report scales of pleasantness and arousal, and an indirect technique consisting of asking participants to evaluate the level of pleasantness expressed by emotionally ambiguous facial expressions –The perceived pleasantness works as an indicator of the observer’s own affective state (Niedenthal et al., 2000)-. It was predicted that: 1) intermediate levels of syncopation would be associated with the most pleasantness, and that 2) these effects would be larger in the ”˜tapping’ condition. The results revealed that even though the data from the indirect technique showed a trend in the predicted direction, there was a great amount of within-subjects variability which made these results unreliable. The data from self-reports supported the first prediction –participants experienced slightly higher levels of positive affect when tapping along to stimuli with a medium level of syncopation-; but not the second prediction –participants in the ”˜tapping’ condition did not experience more pleasantness nor unpleasantness than the participants in the ”˜stationary’ condition. No significant differences were found in any of the measures of arousal. These findings suggest that the effect of musical entrainment on the induction of pleasantness is primarily the result of the expectations aroused by syncopated rhythms, not by the movements made by the listener.References Clayton, M., Sager, R., & Will, U. (2004). In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology. ESEM CounterPoint, 1, 1–45.Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: the need to consider underlying mechanisms. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 559–75; discussion 575–621. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08005293Niedenthal, P. M., Halberstadt, J. B., & Margolin, J. (2000). Emotional state and the detection of change in facial expression of emotion. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(May 1999), 211–223

Meaning-making and creativity in musical entrainment

In this paper we suggest that basic forms of musical entrainment may be considered as intrinsically creative, enabling further creative behaviors which may flourish at different levels and timescales. Rooted in an agent's capacity to form meaningful couplings with their sonic, social, and cultural environment, musical entrainment favors processes of adaptation and exploration, where innovative and functional aspects are cultivated via active, bodily experience. We explore these insights through a theoretical lens that integrates findings from enactive cognitive science and creative cognition research. We center our examination on the realms of groove experience and the communicative and emotional dimensions of music, aiming to present a novel preliminary perspective on musical entrainment, rooted in the fundamental concepts of meaning-making and creativity. To do so, we draw from a suite of approaches that place particular emphasis on the role of situated experience and review a range of recent empirical work on entrainment (in musical and non-musical settings), emphasizing the latter's biological and cognitive foundations. We conclude that musical entrainment may be regarded as a building block for different musical creativities that shape one's musical development, offering a concrete example for how this theory could be empirically tested in the future

Measurement and Interpretation of Fermion-Pair Production at LEP energies above the Z Resonance

This paper presents DELPHI measurements and interpretations of cross-sections, forward-backward asymmetries, and angular distributions, for the e+e- -> ffbar process for centre-of-mass energies above the Z resonance, from sqrt(s) ~ 130 - 207 GeV at the LEP collider. The measurements are consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model and are used to study a variety of models including the S-Matrix ansatz for e+e- -> ffbar scattering and several models which include physics beyond the Standard Model: the exchange of Z' bosons, contact interactions between fermions, the exchange of gravitons in large extra dimensions and the exchange of sneutrino in R-parity violating supersymmetry.Comment: 79 pages, 16 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

A Determination of the Centre-of-Mass Energy at LEP2 using Radiative 2-fermion Events

Using e+e- -> mu+mu-(gamma) and e+e- -> qqbar(gamma) events radiative to the Z pole, DELPHI has determined the centre-of-mass energy, sqrt{s}, using energy and momentum constraint methods. The results are expressed as deviations from the nominal LEP centre-of-mass energy, measured using other techniques. The results are found to be compatible with the LEP Energy Working Group estimates for a combination of the 1997 to 2000 data sets.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

Study of Inclusive J/psi Production in Two-Photon Collisions at LEP II with the DELPHI Detector

Inclusive J/psi production in photon-photon collisions has been observed at LEP II beam energies. A clear signal from the reaction gamma gamma -> J/psi+X is seen. The number of observed N(J/psi -> mu+mu-) events is 36 +/- 7 for an integrated luminosity of 617 pb^{-1}, yielding a cross-section of sigma(J/psi+X) = 45 +/- 9 (stat) +/- 17 (syst) pb. Based on a study of the event shapes of different types of gamma gamma processes in the PYTHIA program, we conclude that (74 +/- 22)% of the observed J/psi events are due to `resolved' photons, the dominant contribution of which is most probably due to the gluon content of the photon.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, Accepted by Phys. Lett.

Determination of the b quark mass at the M_Z scale with the DELPHI detector at LEP

An experimental study of the normalized three-jet rate of b quark events with respect to light quarks events (light= \ell \equiv u,d,s) has been performed using the CAMBRIDGE and DURHAM jet algorithms. The data used were collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP on the Z peak from 1994 to 2000. The results are found to agree with theoretical predictions treating mass corrections at next-to-leading order. Measurements of the b quark mass have also been performed for both the b pole mass: M_b and the b running mass: m_b(M_Z). Data are found to be better described when using the running mass. The measurement yields: m_b(M_Z) = 2.85 +/- 0.18 (stat) +/- 0.13 (exp) +/- 0.19 (had) +/- 0.12 (theo) GeV/c^2 for the CAMBRIDGE algorithm. This result is the most precise measurement of the b mass derived from a high energy process. When compared to other b mass determinations by experiments at lower energy scales, this value agrees with the prediction of Quantum Chromodynamics for the energy evolution of the running mass. The mass measurement is equivalent to a test of the flavour independence of the strong coupling constant with an accuracy of 7 permil.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

Study of Leading Hadrons in Gluon and Quark Fragmentation

The study of quark jets in e+e- reactions at LEP has demonstrated that the hadronisation process is reproduced well by the Lund string model. However, our understanding of gluon fragmentation is less complete. In this study enriched quark and gluon jet samples of different purities are selected in three-jet events from hadronic decays of the Z collected by the DELPHI experiment in the LEP runs during 1994 and 1995. The leading systems of the two kinds of jets are defined by requiring a rapidity gap and their sum of charges is studied. An excess of leading systems with total charge zero is found for gluon jets in all cases, when compared to Monte Carlo Simulations with JETSET (with and without Bose-Einstein correlations included) and ARIADNE. The corresponding leading systems of quark jets do not exhibit such an excess. The influence of the gap size and of the gluon purity on the effect is studied and a concentration of the excess of neutral leading systems at low invariant masses (<~ 2 GeV/c^2) is observed, indicating that gluon jets might have an additional hitherto undetected fragmentation mode via a two-gluon system. This could be an indication of a possible production of gluonic states as predicted by QCD.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by Phys. Lett.

Study of Tau-pair Production in Photon-Photon Collisions at LEP and Limits on the Anomalous Electromagnetic Moments of the Tau Lepton

Tau-pair production in the process e+e- -> e+e-tau+tau- was studied using data collected by the DELPHI experiment at LEP2 during the years 1997 - 2000. The corresponding integrated luminosity is 650 pb^{-1}. The values of the cross-section obtained are found to be in agreement with QED predictions. Limits on the anomalous magnetic and electric dipole moments of the tau lepton are deduced.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.