What an honour! Seb and Darren
I was struck by the kindness of the talks from these two honours students. They are both focused on giving to other people, and contributing to the experience of their fellow humans, in two very different ways.
Seb. Out of the milkcrate and into his honours project, where he is targeting the DIY home handyperson who possesses more enthusiasm than money or engineering skill.
This year Seb is considering "physical interfaces" that map events in the physical world to musical parameters. He has surveyed products now available and is developing (or has already developed?) a DIY alternative that can be assembled for one tenth of the currently available cheapest alternative. 1
Seb explained in his talk and again during question time how one of his parameters was accessibility - the assembly would be manageable for normal folk. He is also considering accessibility of parts for the present and future. More generally, the device is about accessibility - allowing folk to access the music of their physical world. 1
Seb spoke of another dimension of accessibility - he plans to develop an online home world with instructions, suggestions, patches, scoring system, applications and so on. 1
Given the largely impecunious life of the experimental music technologist, I salute Seb's generosity and think he will find a grateful following.
Darren Curtis.
Confession Time. Darren used a lot of big words. Which was frankly spectacular, but meant I'm not one hundred per cent sure what the talk was about. I really wanted to know, because the bits I could glean sounded mind blowing! In the focused study of one area, perhaps it's necessary to acquire specific, contextual language and it must become difficult to talk about that field in layperson terms. On the other hand, "dumbing down" terminology is a useful skill for a public speaker. (But perhaps my bar of understanding is a particularly low one and hard to cater for? Oh well!)
What did I understand?
Darren is undertaking preliminary research within the field of music therapy which he hopes to expand upon with further study in subsequent years.
Historically, the field of music therapy has been results based - practitioners have found that music works as a therapeutic tool without necessarily understanding why in any physical sense. More recently, the science behind music therapy has emerged as a field of research. Darren mentioned some of the different frontiers of research in this field, and then moved to his own area of interest: Binaural Beats. 2
This seems to involve sending different frequencies via headphones to each ear, which causes the brain to create its own beating, which (if I got this right) moves between the hemispheres. The frequencies used determine the hertz of the beatings, and can be used to generate beating at the same rates of relaxed, meditative and sleeping brain waves. 2
Darren directed us to wwww.hemi-sync.com, the website of Interstate Industries and the Monroe Institute who have commodified Binaural Beats.
Christian raised an interesting guestion - if frequencies produce demonstrable, predictable responses, can they be used for evil? Tragically the answer was yes.
What a fascinating field. It is profoundly important. The emotional power of music is universally experienced and it's exciting to know it can be studied and harnessed for an increasingly broad range of applications.
I suspect the question of why music moves us, is something people have pondered for a long time but technological advances have enabled exploration of this.
In 1956, Leonard Meyer, Professor Emeritius of Music at the University of Pennsylvania published Emotion and Meaning in Music. 3 He discussed at length the problems of measuring the emotional impact of music. Fifty years ago, Meyer said "In the light of present knowledge it seems clear that though physiological adjustments are probably necessary adjuncts of affective responses... (they have) been able to throw very little light upon the relationship between affective responses and the stimuli which produce them." 3 Wouldn't it be lovely for Meyer if he knew what Darren was up to now.
1. Seb Tomczak. Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 11 May 2006.
2. Darren Curtis "Frequency Medicine" Lecture presented at University of Adeliaide, 11 May 2006
3. Meyer, L. Emotion and Meaning in Music. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1956
Seb. Out of the milkcrate and into his honours project, where he is targeting the DIY home handyperson who possesses more enthusiasm than money or engineering skill.
This year Seb is considering "physical interfaces" that map events in the physical world to musical parameters. He has surveyed products now available and is developing (or has already developed?) a DIY alternative that can be assembled for one tenth of the currently available cheapest alternative. 1
Seb explained in his talk and again during question time how one of his parameters was accessibility - the assembly would be manageable for normal folk. He is also considering accessibility of parts for the present and future. More generally, the device is about accessibility - allowing folk to access the music of their physical world. 1
Seb spoke of another dimension of accessibility - he plans to develop an online home world with instructions, suggestions, patches, scoring system, applications and so on. 1
Given the largely impecunious life of the experimental music technologist, I salute Seb's generosity and think he will find a grateful following.
Darren Curtis.
Confession Time. Darren used a lot of big words. Which was frankly spectacular, but meant I'm not one hundred per cent sure what the talk was about. I really wanted to know, because the bits I could glean sounded mind blowing! In the focused study of one area, perhaps it's necessary to acquire specific, contextual language and it must become difficult to talk about that field in layperson terms. On the other hand, "dumbing down" terminology is a useful skill for a public speaker. (But perhaps my bar of understanding is a particularly low one and hard to cater for? Oh well!)
What did I understand?
Darren is undertaking preliminary research within the field of music therapy which he hopes to expand upon with further study in subsequent years.
Historically, the field of music therapy has been results based - practitioners have found that music works as a therapeutic tool without necessarily understanding why in any physical sense. More recently, the science behind music therapy has emerged as a field of research. Darren mentioned some of the different frontiers of research in this field, and then moved to his own area of interest: Binaural Beats. 2
This seems to involve sending different frequencies via headphones to each ear, which causes the brain to create its own beating, which (if I got this right) moves between the hemispheres. The frequencies used determine the hertz of the beatings, and can be used to generate beating at the same rates of relaxed, meditative and sleeping brain waves. 2
Darren directed us to wwww.hemi-sync.com, the website of Interstate Industries and the Monroe Institute who have commodified Binaural Beats.
Christian raised an interesting guestion - if frequencies produce demonstrable, predictable responses, can they be used for evil? Tragically the answer was yes.
What a fascinating field. It is profoundly important. The emotional power of music is universally experienced and it's exciting to know it can be studied and harnessed for an increasingly broad range of applications.
I suspect the question of why music moves us, is something people have pondered for a long time but technological advances have enabled exploration of this.
In 1956, Leonard Meyer, Professor Emeritius of Music at the University of Pennsylvania published Emotion and Meaning in Music. 3 He discussed at length the problems of measuring the emotional impact of music. Fifty years ago, Meyer said "In the light of present knowledge it seems clear that though physiological adjustments are probably necessary adjuncts of affective responses... (they have) been able to throw very little light upon the relationship between affective responses and the stimuli which produce them." 3 Wouldn't it be lovely for Meyer if he knew what Darren was up to now.
1. Seb Tomczak. Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 11 May 2006.
2. Darren Curtis "Frequency Medicine" Lecture presented at University of Adeliaide, 11 May 2006
3. Meyer, L. Emotion and Meaning in Music. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1956
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