Musical Instruments, Body Movement, Space, and Motion Data: Music as an Emergent Multimodal Choreography

Abstract
Music is a complex multimodal medium experienced not only via sounds but also through body movement. Musical instruments can be seen as technological objects coupled with a repertoire of gestures. We present technical and conceptual issues related to the digital representation and mediation of body movement in musical performance. The paper reports on a case study of a musical performance where motion sensor technologies tracked the movements of the musicians while they played their instruments. Motion data were used to control the electronic elements of the piece in real time. It is suggested that computable motion descriptors and machine learning techniques are useful tools for interpreting motion data in a meaningful manner. However, qualitative insights regarding how human body movement is understood and experienced are necessary to inform further development of motion-capture technologies for expressive purposes. Thus, musical performances provide an effective test bed for new modalities of human–computer interaction.
Main Authors
Format
Articles Journal article
Published
2017
Series
Subjects
Publisher
University of Jyväskylä, Agora Center
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201705272518Use this for linking
DOI
https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.201705272518
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1795-6889
Language
English
Published in
Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments
Citation
  • Visi, F., Coorevits, E., Schramm, R., & Miranda, E. R. (2017). Musical Instruments, Body Movement, Space, and Motion Data: Music as an Emergent Multimodal Choreography. Human Technology, 13 (1), 58-81. doi:10.17011/ht/urn.201705272518
License
CC BY-NC 4.0Open Access
Copyright© the Authors & the Agora Center, University of Jyväskylä, 2017. This is an open access article distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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