Research

Earlier today I went to the release seminar of a new book on creativity and idea development called Slagkraft - Håndbok i idéutvikling by Erik Lerdahl. In his introduction, Erik Lerdahl stressed the importance of creativity not being something that happens by random, but rather that it is a “muscle” that can be trained. Nice metaphor. What I found most interesting during the seminar was the talk by Ragnar Johansen, the marketing director from Stabburet, a Norwegian food producer....

The new Doepfer USB64 Info looks very interesting with its 64 analog (or digital) inputs and €125 price tag. I am not so excited about the MIDI plug, and wonder whether they intend to communicate some higher resolution data through the USB plug. {width=“602” height=“162”}

I have been preparing for Forskningstorget, an annual science fair in the city centre of Oslo, the last couple of days. Last year we made a Music Troll, and this year we are making a giant music ball for people to play with. The ball is built from a huge boat buoy, 120 cm in diameter, made for tank boats and stormy weather. This makes it just perfect for a music installation which is supposed to survive some thousand children over the next couple of days…...

I have been sitting through a number of presentations the last days (and many more will follow…), and came to think about some keypoints from the Cognitive Load Theory: Working memory is only limited when you’re learning new information. Once information is in long-term memory, it can be brought back to working memory in very large amounts. In a classroom situation, only limited material is going to be retained, unless notes are taken or handed out....

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.

I am slowly adjusting to normal life after finishing my dissertation in July. Needless to say, completing a dissertation is a long physical and psychological experience. In the coming weeks I will write up some of the thoughts I have had during the final lap of the project. Looking at my blog activity over the course of the project, it is interesting to note that it can also serve as a “measure” for my research activity....

Musikkteknologidagene 2007, a Norwegian contact meeting for people working in the field(s) of music technology, will be organised at the Norwegian Academy of Music 10 and 11 October. I initiated the first of these meetings back in 2005, and am happy that we manage to keep the concept alive. Both research on, and use of, music technology is growing rapidly in Norway as everywhere else. However, while many of us working in the field have large international networks in our special branches of the music technology world, we often seem to know little about what is happening in our own country....

There is a new music journal out titled Journal of interdisciplinary music studies, and which seems to be freely available online. I was particularly pleased to read Richard Parncutt’s opening paper on the history and future of systematic musicology. While it has been overshadowed (and to some extent suppressed) by historical musicology for the last decade, there seems to be a growing interest for systematic musicology today. However, as Parncutt argues, much of this research is carried out under other names and in other departments, e....

I recently became aware of Skim, a PDF Reader and note-taker for OS X made by the team behind BibDesk. Skim is designed to help reading and annotating scientific papers in PDF, or what they say: “Stop printing and start skimming”. While v0.2 of Skim didn’t contain much more functionality than what’s already available in Preview, v0.3 starts to become interesting. Particularly the possibilities to save and print the notes taken separately....

Students in musicology, music cognition and technology should consider ISSSM 2007: Following on the success of the first international summer school in systematic musicology (ISSSM 2006), the summer school will be held for the second time at IPEM, the research centre of the Department of Musicology of Ghent University (Belgium). This year courses will focus on current topics in the research field such as embodied music cognition, music information retrieval and music and interactive media....