Effects of pitch and musical sounds on body-representations when moving with sound

The effects of music on bodily movement and feelings, such as when people are dancing or engaged in physical activity, are well-documented¿people may move in response to the sound cues, feel powerful, less tired. How sounds and bodily movements relate to create such effects? Here we deconstruct the problem and investigate how different auditory features affect people's body-representation and feelings even when paired with the same movement. In three experiments, participants executed a simple arm raise synchronised with changing pitch in simple tones (Experiment 1), rich musical sounds (Experiment 2) and within different frequency ranges (Experiment 3), while we recorded indirect and direct measures on their movement, body-representations and feelings. Changes in pitch influenced people's general emotional state as well as the various bodily dimensions investigated¿movement, proprioceptive awareness and feelings about one's body and movement. Adding harmonic content amplified the differences between ascending and descending sounds, while shifting the absolute frequency range had a general effect on movement amplitude, bodily feelings and emotional state. These results provide new insights in the role of auditory and musical features in dance and exercise, and have implications for the design of sound-based applications supporting movement expression, physical activity, or rehabilitation.We acknowledge funding by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (PID2019-105579RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Research Council Grant (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101002711). JL is funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitivity of Spain (doctoral training Grant BES-2017-080471). OD is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (Co-Sense grant). FB is partially funded by the ELEMENT project (ANR-18-CE33-0002)

Effects of pitch and musical sounds on body-representations when moving with sound

The effects of music on bodily movement and feelings, such as when people are dancing or engaged in physical activity, are well-documented—people may move in response to the sound cues, feel powerful, less tired. How sounds and bodily movements relate to create such effects? Here we deconstruct the problem and investigate how different auditory features affect people’s body-representation and feelings even when paired with the same movement. In three experiments, participants executed a simple arm raise synchronised with changing pitch in simple tones (Experiment 1), rich musical sounds (Experiment 2) and within different frequency ranges (Experiment 3), while we recorded indirect and direct measures on their movement, body-representations and feelings. Changes in pitch influenced people’s general emotional state as well as the various bodily dimensions investigated—movement, proprioceptive awareness and feelings about one’s body and movement. Adding harmonic content amplified the differences between ascending and descending sounds, while shifting the absolute frequency range had a general effect on movement amplitude, bodily feelings and emotional state. These results provide new insights in the role of auditory and musical features in dance and exercise, and have implications for the design of sound-based applications supporting movement expression, physical activity, or rehabilitation

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Energy efficiency for reducing carbon footprint in historic buildings: Comparing case in the UK and Malaysia

Climate changes seem to be one of the controversial conflicts for people in today's world and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which are one of the main reasons for climate changes, will be an appropriate solution for this alien. Buildings are one of the main resources for producing carbon dioxide emissions. For instance, around 40 percent of all carbon dioxide emission in the UK comes from buildings and so buildings especially heritage buildings need to improve their performance to contribute carbon reduction. The main aim of this research is to identify some acceptable and convenient ways for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in heritage buildings for controlling climate changes to some extent. In this paper, a desktop study was conducted to review the techniques and technologies to help us for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in heritage buildings. In this paper, the importance of heritage buildings and their elements such as wall, roof, window, door, floor has discussed and the main reasons for increasing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions have mentioned. In continuing, principles, risks, materials, methods, techniques and technologies for controlling energy loss of historic building elements have expressed. The results indicate that manufactured and transport of building materials will produce a large amount of carbon emissions and so the continued use of historic and heritage buildings can be an accommodative solution for this issue. For instance, in England in 2000 these processes accounted for more than 10 percent of the UK carbon dioxide emissions. It proves that conservation of heritage buildings is important not only for significant value of these buildings, but also for reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. All the methods, techniques and technologies which have discussed in this paper are correspondent solution for the goal of reduction carbon dioxide emissions that produce through the life-cycle of historic buildings

Post-revolutionary Tunisia: The Islamist Construction of ‘Woman’ on Facebook

This thesis examines the construction of Tunisian woman on post-revolutionary Islamist Facebook pages. Much research on the digital politics of ‘the Arab Spring’ has been conducted. It has significantly emphasised the libratory function of social media, especially in regard to the mobilisation of people into street rebellion. Yet, there has been scant research into the more subtle discursive power of online communication in shifting normative cultural understandings. In this project, and after discussing the political history of Islamism in Tunisia and then outlining the way Facebook became a crucial location for political persuasion, utilised by groups of Islamists, I assess a significant number of Islamist Facebook pages. I ask: ‘How do Islamists construe women, what strategies are used to enable Islamist ideas on women to become culturally acceptable? In order to address these questions I carefully selected representative posts dealing with the particular aspects of women’s dress code, moral conduct, and feminist activists, which I identified in my critical study of the political history of Islamism. I deploy critical discourse analysis to offer a small-scale, detailed analysis of the re-inscription of women into the Islamist discourse. My analysis unveils that the post-revolutionary Islamist discourse about women still draws widely on the pre-revolutionary Islamist agenda. Woman is still essentialised in, and conceptualised through, the mega religious, cultural, and political discourse of resistance. She is, consequently, strictly polarized into the veiled versus the unveiled, the pious versus the fallen, and the Arab Muslim versus the Westernised francophone. I assert that this deconstructive exposure not only contributes to underdeveloped scholarship on North African and post ‘Arab Spring’ studies in relation to women, politicised religious discourses, and social media, but also offers tools with which to challenge Islamist ideas