It is somewhat embarrassing that I did not “discover” it before, but I only recently realized a striking parallel between the terms dancing and musicking. Music as a verb (“to music”) is only used by a small subset of music researchers, while “to dance” is universally accepted. Why? Musicking Christopher Small introduced the term musicking in the 1990s as a framework for understanding music as a social activity, using music as a verb (“to music”) rather than a noun (“music”)....
One of my MUS2640 students asked which AI tool I had used to create the illustration on top of the textbook I have been developing for the course. The fact is, it isn’t AI-generated; it is a photo! I took the photo holding a 360-degree camera on my head while visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) a couple of years ago. I was standing inside Olafur Eliasson’s One-way colour tunnel, located on a bridge inside the gallery....
While writing the blog post on AI-realistic photos, I wanted to include one of my 360-degree photos. In the past, I have done this by embedding code snippets from commercial services. However, those tend to disappear or move, so I wanted to check (again) if I can do it natively on my own server instead. And, lo and behold, now, in 2025, it is finally possible to do this easily with regular web tools!...
Many students conflate research design, protocol, and methods. This post aims to clarify these foundational concepts. Research Design A research design is the overarching blueprint for a scientific study. It outlines how you will collect, measure, and analyze data to answer your research question. Common designs include: Experimental Designs: Researchers manipulate variables to observe effects. For example, randomly assigning participants to listen to different genres of music and measuring their mood or cognitive performance....
I am teaching the course MUS2640 – Sensing Sound and Music again this semester. It is the second time I’ve run the course, and I can build on the experience I gained last year. One of the course’s aims is to encourage students to listen attentively and develop the capacity to discuss what they hear systematically. Last year, it worked very well to have students record a (any!) soundscape and reflect on the experience....
A couple of days ago, I attended the introduction workshop for new AI centres in Norway to present MishMash and discuss potential collaboration opportunities with the other centres. As expected, the different centres are much more focused on creating software solutions that can be used in the industry than us. We will also explore various use cases in MishMash, but we take a much more creative and exploratory approach. As part of the discussions, the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) was mentioned....
Over the past few weeks, I have read several newspaper articles and seen numerous social media postings from researchers expressing skepticism about using AI in research. It is fine that some people prefer not to use new tools, but I don’t see why that should hinder the rest of us from exploring the possibilities that are out there. Many researchers do use AI tools, which I think is perfectly fine. The problem is that not many people talk about how they use the tools and reflect more on how they work....
Yesterday, I wrote about how my kinesphere looked different from the ideals of Vitruvius, iconized through the drawing Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci. In particular, my legs and arms do not fit within a circle like in Leonardo’s painting. My kinesphere looks different from Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The Wikipedia page lists a quite extensive description of the ideal measurements of a man: … the measurements of man are in nature distributed in this manner, that is 4 fingers make a palm, 4 palms make a foot, 6 palms make a cubit, 4 cubits make a man, 4 cubits make a footstep, 24 palms make a man and these measures are in his buildings....
This summer, I am working on completing my Still Standing book. One of the concepts I use is kinesphere. As far as I know, this term was coined by dancer–choreographer–researcher Rudolf Laban, and refers to the personal space surrounding an individual. It is an imaginary sphere that extends as far as a person can reach with their limbs, encompassing the area they can move in while remaining stationary. The kinesphere is central to Laban Movement Analysis, where it helps dancers understand spatial possibilities, boundaries, and the relationship between the body and its environment....
Back in 2022, I sat down with my good colleague, Cagri Erdem, to explore two commercially available new interfaces for musical expression: the Seaboard Grand and the ContinuuMini. I have written about my experiences with both of these devices in my book, Sound Actions: Conceptualizing Musical Instruments. In short, they are both super exciting to play with, particularly because unlike many other electronic instruments, they allow for continuous control of pitch and timbre....