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Transatlantic Transdisciplinary Project Brings Together Researchers from Texas Tech University and The University of Southern Denmark:
Technological and Aesthetic Investigations of the Physical Movements of Pianists
 Musical Movements and Meanings
Video and explanatory text published on YouTube on 31/07/2012 by TTUAcademicsResearch.
This project integrates the fields of artistic performance, pedagogy, advanced technology and philosophy. It focuses specifically on pianists playing classical music. The pilot study seeks to discover whether or not, and to what extent, certain teaching approaches that have seemed like "best practices" in the music studio can now be verified as such scientifically, by measuring changes in body movement and gesture.
Research team (in order of appearance on video): William Westney, Michael O'Boyle, Jinzhou (James) Yang (Texas Tech University), Cynthia M. Grund (University of Southern Denmark). Musical selections from "Lyric Pieces" by Edvard Grieg.
The TTU project follows on prior studies by Godøy and Jensenius at the "FourM's" laboratory at the University of Oslo (Norway), and coordinates with related projects of the Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics (http://www.nnimipa.org/), sponsored by Nordforsk.
For additional background and links, please see the article "Movement and Musical Meaning" in Texas Tech's Discoveries research magazine: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/vpr/discoveries/
Spring-2011/westney.php
Meet the Team
The research project Technological and Aesthetic Investigations of the Physical Movements of Pianists is part of the inaugural class of The Transdisciplinary Research Academy (TRA) at Texas Tech University. The TRA is designed to bring people with diverse interests together to explore questions that have a global impact and intersect with the strategic research themes established by the university. For more information on the Transdisciplinary Research Academy at Texas Tech, please see here.
Since the inception of the project, Cynthia M. Grund - Institute for the Study of Culture - Philosophy, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), and the only external team member in the project - has been working with the resident team based at TTU by means of videoconferencing. During October 2012 she will be visiting TTU and working on-site together with the research team.
Pictured below, left-to-right, are the resident team members from Texas Tech University Michael O'Boyle, College of Human Sciences, TTU; William Westney, College of Visual & Performing Arts, TTU; and James Yang, Whitacre College of Engineering, TTU. For coverage of 2012 resident Academy Team Members and Project Areas, please see here.
During the 2009-2010 academic year William Westney was a Hans Christian Andersen Guest Professorial Fellow at the University of Southern Denmark, affiliated with The Aesthetics of Music and Sound. For more information regarding Prof. Westney's continuing affiliation with The Aesthetics of Music and Sound, please see under the menu tab HCA Visiting Prof. Fellow William Westney above and throughout this site. Additional information regarding aspects of Westney's continuing research work together with Grund and other Danish and Nordic partners is available on www.nnimipa.org and www.williamwestney.com.
Our First Week of Lab Sessions (requires Flash-enabled browser)
During week 42 2012, October 15-21, while the fall break was being observed at Danish universities, research connected with The Aesthetics of Music and Sound was being carried out across the Atlantic at Texas Tech University (TTU), Lubbock Texas. Continuing an investigatory process that began in February 2010 at the fourMs Laboratory at the University of Oslo, Cynthia M. Grund and William Westney have established a collaboration with a new research team for a motion capture pilot study at TTU. Here is a photo essay that documents the research activities that took place at TTU October 13-18, 2012.
Tip: To view the essay in full-screen mode, just click on the circled arrow in the middle of the picture and then click on the screen icon in the lower left-hand corner. To control the speed with which the slides progress, move the cursor to the lower right-hand corner when in full-screen mode. A row of five arrows appears; the slowest setting is activated when only the leftmost arrow alone is highlighted; the fastest setting is activated when all five arrows are highlighted.
For more background, on the origins of this work in the context of a meeting of NNIMIPA: Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics in Oslo, Norge, February 2010, please see http://www.nnimipa.org/JWG.html. For more background on the project Technological and Aesthetic Investigations of the Physical Movements of Pianists, please see http://www.soundmusicresearch.org/TRA.html.
May 2013 Update
We continued our lab work in May 2013, only this time we had entered the phase of the investigation in which fMRI technology was to be employed. This was reported upon in the May issue of the newsletter for the Insitute for The Study of Culture at The University of Southern Denmark. Please see page 2 HERE. Even if you don't understand Danish very well, you will most likely find that the pictures are interesting!
July 2013 Update
A slide-and-video lecture prepared by Grund and Westney chroncling the work produced by the team and its supervisees as of July was presented by Grund in London (accompanied by Westney on Skype) at the NNIMIPA - Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics - meeting on July 18, which was part of the pre-conference activities for the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group. Please see HERE for details and presentation abstract.
September 2013 Update
Much work has been done at TTU during the summer of 2013 supervised by Yang and O'Boyle, and interesting results are beginniing to emerge! The whole team - Grund, O'Boyle, Westney and Yang will be taking off for Marseille to present and discuss findings during a special satellite workshop day on October 14, 2013 in conjunction with The 10th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR) themed Sound, Music and Motion, October 15-18, 2013. Please see http://www.nnimipa.org/marseille2013.html and http://www.cmmr2013.cnrs-mrs.fr/ for more details about the content of the TRA-presentations and tutorials, as well as the content of the exciting CMMR conference as a whole.
October 2013 Update: TRA goes to France
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NNIMIPA: Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics, a NordForsk network, held a satellite session - Music, Movement and the Brain - on October 14, 2013 in conjunction with The 10th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR) October 15-18, 2013. themed Sound, Music and Motion. Please see http://www.nnimipa.org for details.
IF YOUR BROWSER DOES NOT SUPPORT EMBEDDING IN THE SPACE BELOW, PLEASE VIEW THE VIDEO AT http://youtu.be/U9DYVvyDA0k.
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Cross-Disciplinary Interplay between the
Humanities, Technology and Musical Practice
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Department for the
Study of Culture
Research Director for
The Performances of
Everyday Living
Coordinator for
The Aesthetics of
Music and Sound
and
Editor and Webmaster for
www.soundmusicresearch.org:
Cynthia M. Grund
cmgrund@sdu.dk
Updates
PLEASE NOTE: During the month of March 2015 and possibly extending into April/May 2015, heavy construction will be taking place on this website behind the scenes as it "migrates" to new editing software. Please be patient with us during this period if occasionally some pages take on a strange appearance, or if updating seems to be a bit erratic. All efforts will be made to maintain the integrity of the page with the schedule for the seminar series Topics in the Aesthetics of Music and Sound: Mostly Metal here, but it will nevertheless be a good idea also to keep an eye on our Facebook group here and the regularly occurring announcements of events on it during this period. Thank you for your patience!
During March-May 2015 we will also continue to develop our new
channel, which we encourage you to visit here.
Archive
for ""Updates" and "News":
Click HERE.
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