Gesture

I am happy to announce that Cagri Erdem and I have written a chapter titled “Gestures in ensemble performance” in the new book Together in Music: Coordination, Expression, Participation edited by Renee Timmers Freya Bailes, and Helena Daffern. Video Teaser For the book launch, Cagri and I recorded a short video teaser: Abstract The topic of gesture has received growing attention among music researchers over recent decades. Some of this research has been summarized in anthologies on “musical gestures”, such as those by Gritten and King (2006), Godøy and Leman (2010), and Gritten and King (2011). There have also been a couple of articles reviewing how the term gesture has been used in various music-related disciplines (and beyond), including those by Cadoz and Wanderley (2000) and Jensenius et al. (2010). Much empirical work has been performed since these reviews were written, aided by better motion capture technologies, new machine learning techniques, and a heightened awareness of the topic. Still there are a number of open questions as to the role of gestures in music performance in general, and in ensemble performance in particular. This chapter aims to clarify some of the basic terminology of music-related body motion, and draw up some perspectives of how one can think about gestures in ensemble performance. This is, obviously, only one way of looking at the very multifaceted concept of gesture, but it may lead to further interest in this exciting and complex research domain. ...

This week I am participating at the NIME conference, organised at Goldsmiths, University of London. I am doing some administrative work as chair of the NIME steering committee, and I am also happy to present a paper tomorrow: Title To Gesture or Not? An Analysis of Terminology in NIME Proceedings 2001–2013 Links Paper (PDF) Presentation (HTML) Spreadsheet with summary of data (ODS) OS X shell script used for analysis Abstract The term ‘gesture’ has represented a buzzword in the NIME community since the beginning of its conference series. But how often is it actually used, what is it used to describe, and how does its usage here differ from its usage in other fields of study? This paper presents a linguistic analysis of the motion-related terminology used in all of the papers published in the NIME conference proceedings to date (2001– 2013). The results show that ‘gesture’ is in fact used in 62 % of all NIME papers, which is a significantly higher percentage than in other music conferences (ICMC and SMC), and much more frequently than it is used in the HCI and biomechanics communities. The results from a collocation analysis support the claim that ‘gesture’ is used broadly in the NIME community, and indicate that it ranges from the description of concrete human motion and system control to quite metaphorical applications. ...

I have been discussing definitions of the terms motion/movement, action and gesture several times before on this blog (for example here and here). Here is a summary of my current take on these three concepts: Motion: displacement of an object in space over time. This object could be a hand, a foot, a mobile phone, a rod, whatever. Motion is an objective entity, and can be recorded with a motion capture system. A motion capture system could be anything from a simple slider (1-dimensional), to a mouse (2-dimensional), to a camera-based tracking system ((3-dimensional) or an inertial system (6-dimensional: 3D position and 3D orientation). I have previously also discussed the difference between motion and movement. Since motion is a continuous phenomenon, it does not make sense to talk about it in plural form: “motions”. Then it makes more sense to talk about one or more motion sequences, but most probably it makes even more sense to talk about individual actions. ...

Terminology is always challenging. I have previously written about definitions of actions and gesture several times (e.g. here, here, and here) and chapter 2 in the book Musical gestures: sound, movement, and meaning (Routledge, 2010). Movement and motion There are, however, two words/terms that I still find very challenging to define properly and to differentiate: movement and motion. In Norwegian, we only have one word (bevegelse) for describing movement/motion, which makes everything much simpler. But when writing in English, which word should be used? And what is the difference? ...

{.vrtx-introduction} IRCAM is proposing a workshop on GDIF & SpatDIF 20-21 May. The invitation e-mail sent to the GDIF mailing list is attached below. Interested people should contact Baptiste Caramiaux directly to show their interest. We propose to organize at IRCAM a meeting/workshop about the GDIF and SpatDIF projects. Such an event could be very interesting to make an update of the current issues and choices made by the different research groups, and possibly to decide on further collaborative actions. ...

Wired reports that Apple has filed around 200 patent applications related to multitouch and gesture control: Yet it appears that the company is not trying to patent the entire multitouch concept, but rather trying to protect certain uses of it – specifically the methods to interpret gestures, and in some cases, the gestures themselves. It is interesting to see that they mention the interpretation of a gesture. This means that they separate between gesture and action, i.e. gesture is the meaning of an action.

Ok, so I have been discussing the concepts of movement, action and gesture with various people since I posted this entry, and I have come to disagree with myself. Marcelo Wanderley pointed out that an action doesn’t necessarily have to involve a movement, as touch and other types of manipulation should also be considered an action. After all, holding down the keys on a piano after the attack results in no movement, but it is certainly an action. ...

Ever since I started my PhD project I have been struggling with the word gesture. Now as I am working on a theory chapter for my dissertation, I have had to really try and decide on some terminology, and this is my current approach: I use movement as the general term to describe the act of changing physical position of body parts related to music performance or perception. Action is used to denote goal-directed movements that form a separate unit. This involves perceptual chunking on either the performers and/or the perceiver’s side. ...

I have been struggling with the word gesture for a while. I, and many others in the music cognition/technology community, have been using it to denote music-related actions (i.e. physical body movement). Not only is the term confusing in the musicology community (e.g. the way Hatten writes about inner-musical qualities), but it is also a misleading term in behavioral and linguistics communities, where gesture usually denotes communicative hand movement or facial expressions. ...

An interesting quote from Robert Hatten’s 2004 book on musical gestures: Musical gesture is biologically and culturally grounded in communicative human movement. Gesture draws upon the close interaction (and intermodality) of a range of human perceptual and motor systems to synthesize the energetic shaping of motion through time into significant events with unique expressive force. The biological and cultural motivations of musical gesture are further negotiated within the conventions of a musical style, whose elements include both the discrete (pitch, rhythm, meter) and the analog (dynamics, articulation, temporal pacing). Musical gestures are emergent gestalts that convey affective motion, emotion, and agency by fusing otherwise separate elements into continuities of shape and force. ...