New MOOC: Music Moves

Together with several colleagues, and with great practical and economic support from the University of Oslo, I am happy to announce that we will soon kick off our first free online course (a so-called MOOC) called Music Moves. Music Moves: Why Does Music Make You Move? Learn about the psychology of music and movement, and how researchers study music-related movements, with this free online course. [Go to course – starts 1 Feb](https://www....

January 24, 2016 · 2 min · 345 words · ARJ

New paper: Test–retest reliability of computer-based video analysis of general movements in healthy term-born infants

I have for several years been collaborating with researchers at NTNU in Trondheim on developing video analysis tools for studying the movement patterns of infants. This has resulted in several papers, international testing (and a TV documentary). Now there is a new paper out, with some very successful data testing the reliability of the video analysis method: Reference: Valle, Susanne Collier, Ragnhild Støen, Rannei Sæther, Alexander Refsum Jensenius, and Lars Adde....

August 3, 2015 · 1 min · 126 words · ARJ

New paper: MuMYO - Evaluating and Exploring the MYO Armband for Musical Interaction

Yesterday, I presented my microinteraction paper here at the NIME conference (New Interfaces for Musical Expression), organised at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. Today I am presenting a poster based on a paper written together with two of my colleagues at UiO. Title MuMYO - Evaluating and Exploring the MYO Armband for Musical Interaction Authors Kristian Nymoen, Mari Romarheim Haugen, Alexander Refsum Jensenius **Abstract **The MYO armband from Thalmic Labs is a complete and wireless motion and muscle sensing platform....

June 2, 2015 · 2 min · 244 words · ARJ

New publication: To Gesture or Not (NIME 2014)

This week I am participating at the NIME conference, organised at Goldsmiths, University of London. I am doing some administrative work as chair of the NIME steering committee, and I am also happy to present a paper tomorrow: Title To Gesture or Not? An Analysis of Terminology in NIME Proceedings 2001–2013 Links Paper (PDF) Presentation (HTML) Spreadsheet with summary of data (ODS) OSX shell script used for analysis Abstract The term ‘gesture’ has represented a buzzword in the NIME community since the beginning of its conference series....

June 30, 2014 · 2 min · 297 words · ARJ

Analyzing correspondence between sound objects and body motion

New publication: **Title ** Analyzing correspondence between sound objects and body motion Authors Kristian Nymoen, Rolf Inge Godøy, Alexander Refsum Jensenius and Jim Tørresen has now been published in ACM Transactions on Applied Perception. Abstract Links between music and body motion can be studied through experiments called sound-tracing. One of the main challenges in such research is to develop robust analysis techniques that are able to deal with the multidimensional data that musical sound and body motion present....

June 3, 2013 · 2 min · 235 words · ARJ

New PhD Thesis: Kristian Nymoen

I am happy to announce that fourMs researcher Kristian Nymoen has successfully defended his PhD dissertation, and that the dissertation is now available in the DUO archive. I have had the pleasure of co-supervising Kristian’s project, and also to work closely with him on several of the papers included in the dissertation (and a few others). Reference K. Nymoen. Methods and Technologies for Analysing Links Between Musical Sound and Body Motion....

February 20, 2013 · 5 min · 917 words · ARJ

New publication: Some video abstraction techniques for displaying body movement in analysis and performance

Today the MIT Press journal Leonardo has published my paper entitled “Some video abstraction techniques for displaying body movement in analysis and performance”. The paper is a summary of my work on different types of visualisation techniques of music-related body motion. Most of these techniques were developed during my PhD, but have been refined over the course of my post-doc fellowship. The paper is available from the Leonardo web page (or MUSE), and will also be posted in the digital archive at UiO after the 6 month embargo period....

January 14, 2013 · 2 min · 231 words · ARJ

Definitions: Motion, Action, Gesture

I have been discussing definitions of the terms motion/movement, action and gesture several times before on this blog (for example here and here). Here is a summary of my current take on these three concepts: Motion: displacement of an object in space over time. This object could be a hand, a foot, a mobile phone, a rod, whatever. Motion is an objective entity, and can be recorded with a motion capture system....

November 1, 2012 · 3 min · 567 words · ARJ

Hi-speed guitar recording

I was in Hamburg last week, teaching at the International Summer Shool in Systematic Musicology (ISSSM). While there, I was able to test a newly acquired high-speed video camera (Phantom V711) at the Department of Musicology. [caption id=“attachment_1988” align=“alignnone” width=“300”] The beautiful building of the Department of Musicology in Hamburg[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_1987” align=“alignnone” width=“300”] They have some really cool drawings in the ceiling at the entrance of the Department of Musicology in Hamburg....

August 13, 2012 · 3 min · 614 words · ARJ

Motionlessness

Yesterday Miles Phillips{.url} suggested that the word “motionlessness” may be what I am after when it comes to describing the act of standing still. He further pointed me to a web site with a list of the world records for motionlessness. The rules to compete in motionlessness is as follows: The record is for continuously standing motionless. You must stand: sitting is not allowed. No facial movements are allowed other then the involuntary blinking of the eye....

November 10, 2011 · 2 min · 379 words · ARJ