Motion

The concept of “mapping” is frequently used in the computer music community these days, and has also been used over the last couple of days during the Jamoma workshop. This reminded me about the distinction between mapping and conditioning, as frequently pointed out by Marcelo Wanderley: Conditioning: filtering, scaling and normalizing signals in a 1-to-1 mapping Mapping: creating couplings between multidimensional data sets, e.g. MxN. For clarity’s sake it is probably useful to separate between the two....

Working on a book chapter, I am trying to clarify some terminology. Right now I am thinking about the differences between “musical” and “music-related” movements/actions/gestures. What is the difference? I find that it makes sense to think about whether the action is direct or indirect. In other words: Musical actions: actions involved in music making, e.g. performing an instrument (i.e. sound-producing actions). Music-related actions: actions that are the result of, or influenced by, music, e....

{#p501 .imagelink}Yamaha has announced a product called Bodibeat, a music player which will adjust the tempo of the music to follow your walking or running. It is based on an accelerometer and, I guess, an algorithm detecting peaks in the continuous movement signal. This gives the pace of the walker or runner which again can be used to control the playback speed of a music file. Apparently, the technology is based on research by BMAT, which is a spinoff from UPF....

Talking about music-related movements:

Came across Sumotori Dreams, a sumo wrestling game based on physical models. The movements of the wrestlers seem to be based on some kind of physical modelling, and their presence is astonishingly real and far-fetched at the same time. Great fun!

Yesterday I chaired a panel session at the International Computer Music Conference in Copenhagen entitled: “The Need of Formats for Streaming and Storing Music-Related Movement and Gesture Data”. Participants of the panel were: Alexander R. Jensenius (Oslo) Benjamin Knapp [Antonio Camurri] (SARC / Genova) Nicolas Castagné (Acroe, Grenoble) Esteban Maestre (Pompeu Fabra) Joseph Malloch (McGill) Stuart Pullinger [Douglas McGilvray] (Glasgow) Diemo Schwarz (IRCAM) Matthew Wright (UC Berkeley / Stanford) The discussion was lively and the conclusion was to work towards more collaborative efforts when it comes to establishing standards and formats in the community....

On Friday I appeared in an interview in Aftenposten, one of the larger newspapers in Norway. The interview describes a recently started collaboration between the Musical Gestures group and Terje Sagvolden’s group working on ADHD. More precisely, they are interested in using my Musical Gestures Toolbox and motiongrams for studying the movements of rats and children with ADHD.

My panel proposal for ICMC 2007 in Copenhagen has been accepted. The title of the panel is The Need of Formats for Streaming and Storing Music-Related Movement and Gesture Data, and that more or less sums up what we are going to discuss. The other participants in the panel will be Antonio Camurri (Genova), Nicolas Castagne (ACROE, Grenoble), Esteban Maestre (Pompeu Fabra), Joseph Malloch (McGill), Douglas McGilvray (Glasgow), Diemo Schwarz (IRCAM) and Matthew Wright (UC Berkeley / Stanford)....

{#image457}The MTG group at Pompeu Fabra reports that Björk will use the Reactable in her upcoming tour: With her first tour concert at the Coachella Festival in California, the Icelandic singer Björk introduced the reactable for the first time to a mainstream audience. Our instrument will form a key element of the artist’s current world tour “Volta” which will appear at numerous music festivals during the next 18 months....

Came across a great website with lots of references to the work of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830 - 1904), a pioneer in early photography. I particularly like his chronophotographies. {#image442 width=“500”}