JUST TYPED ALONG WITH THE SESSION SO EVERYTHING IS STILL PRETTY MESSY, NO LINKS INCLUDED AND POSSIBLE FAULTS ARE MY OWN RATHER THAN THE SPEAKERS,…
- What exactly is musical expression? It really depends on your point of view. As a classical musician you’d think about great artists. What do great artists do that is directly communicative? To express emotions. It has all to do with emotion (and also personality, but more emotion).
- Depending on the conductor a piece can be difficult or easy to play: it has to do with gestures and emotional expression, even on the face. Some conductors have a particular magic that can lift up the orchestra. This idea is the core of musical expression. It is about shaping the expression.
- The other aspect about musical expression and emotion is about being able to connect with an emotion that is inside of you. You’ve got to have something to express. (example of how after 9/11 her father started singing 7 days a week instead of 2)
- Music as a form of communication. Start with Claude Shannon’s ” A mathematical theory of communication” (1948) –> information source, transmitter, signal, noise source, received signal, receiver, message, destination. Source as a carries wave and the transmitter as a modulation to think of this in a musical model.
- Theories of emotion and music: Plato and Aristotle, Leonard Meyer, Leonard Bernstein, Marvin Minsky, Manfred Clynes, David Huron, Daniel Levitin.
- Promising Quantitative Methods: used to verify our theories. Analysis f Herbert von Karajan’s pulse rate while conducting and while piloting a jet aircraft. Heartbeat seems to be connected to emotional arousal.
- Dan Machover’s Brain Opera (with Paradiso) –> the digital baton
- Then built the device called the “Conductor Jacket” (1997 – 2000) with R. Picard (het dissertation about this is available online)
- Research collaboration with Levitin and McAdams with the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a follow-up to the conductor’s jacket.
- Also analysis of vertical position of conducting gestures
- development of a conducting system for education applications (Conducting Jacket)
- Application for entertainment: Boston Children’s music exhibition: “You are the Conductor”
- Nintendo Wii Orchestra: promotional video shows the face of the players and video’s of the system in use shows only the program and a moving hand.
- The digital orchestra League: www.digitalorchestraleague.com. Turing test for the orchestra machine. David Smith: “We are 5% there… does Moore’s Law apply to digital orchestras”
- Future Goals: Research on emotional contagion and microexpression (Ekman and Condon). Also more collaborations with orchestras and classical musicians
