Movement and Dance

I was involved in the development of NOR-CAM (Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix) a couple of years ago (see former blog post). If you want a quick introduction, here is a short video I have recorded to introduce the main concepts: Here is the illustration of the matrix in the NOR-CAM report: Formatting my own CV In the report, we emphasized that the main point is the concept, and the details need to be worked out. But how would that work in practice? To do as I preach, I have now attempted formatting my own CV according to the NOR-CAM principles. To make it browseable, I have used collapsible menus for each of the six main categories: ...

At RITMO, we have several different disciplines working together. The three core disciplines at RITMO are musicology, psychology, and informatics. In addition, we have people working in philosophy, physics, computer science, biology, dance studies, and so on. This also means that we have several different publication cultures. In this blog post, I will reflect on the differences between them. The Paper Proceedings Culture My professorship is in music technology. I don’t know if music technology should be considered a discipline; it might be better described as a community of communities. Music technologists have different types of backgrounds and work in many different institutions. RITMO has music technologists from musicology (the Faculty of Humanities) and informatics (the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences). The latter builds on what I call a paper proceedings publication culture. Informatics, computer science, and various types of engineering are fast-moving fields that often publish in what is called “conference proceedings”. ...

Today marks the 100th day of my annual #StillStanding project. In this blog post, I summarize some of my experiences so far. Endurance Some people questioned whether I would be able to stand still every single day for an entire year. But, hey, it is only ten minutes (out of 1440) per day, and even though my life as a centre director is busy, it is always possible to find time for a standstill sometime during the day. ...

One of the conclusions in my book Sound Actions is that the future of music technologies lie in musicking technologies. The term “music technology” is typically used to describe tools, instruments, and systems used to create, produce, record, and distribute music. This includes everything from microphones, digital audio workstations (DAWs), and synthesizers to streaming services and analysis tools. I think of “musicking technology” as a wider term than music technology. It builds on Christopher Small’s concept of “musicking” as the act of taking part in music-making of any kind. It also focuses on music as an active process, not a thing. ...

For my annual Still Standing project, I am recording sensor data from my mobile phone while standing still for 10 minutes at a time. This is a highly curiosity-driven and data-based project, and part of the exploration is to figure out what I can get out of the sensors. I have started sharing graphs of the linear acceleration of my sessions with the tag #StillStanding on Mastodon. However, I wondered if this is the sensor data that best represents the motion. Since my still standing is, well, quite still, I have conducted a short test with some more movement. ...

I am happy to announce that my book Sound Actions - Conceptualizing Musical Instruments is now published! I am also thrilled that this is an open access book, meaning that is free to download and read. You are, of course, also welcome to pick up a paper copy! Here is a quick video summary of the book’s content: In the book, I combine perspectives from embodied music cognition and interactive music technology. The approach is what I call “embodied music technology”. ...

The Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM) is a toolbox for recognition and rewards in academic careers that was launched by Universities Norway in May 2021. I was part of the working group developing the toolbox and have blogged about this experience previously. There has been much interest in NOR-CAM and I have held numerous presentations about it since it was launched. Most of these presentations have been held live (and often on Zoom). Now I was asked if I could record a presentation to be shown during a conference, and this was an opportunity to make a more concise presentation to make available online: ...

Last year, I wrote about video-based motion analysis of kayaking. Those videos were recorded with a GoPro Hero 8 and I tested some of the video visualization methods of the Musical Gestures Toolbox for Python. This summer I am testing out some 360 cameras for my upcoming AMBIENT project. I thought I should take one of these, a GoPro Max, out for some kayaking in the Oslo fjord. Here are some impressions of the trip (and recording). ...

I wrote up the final report on the project MICRO - Human Bodily Micromotion in Music Perception and Interaction before Christmas. Now I finally got around to wrapping up the project pages. With the touch of a button, the project’s web page now says “completed”. But even though the project is formally over, its results will live on. Aims and objectives The MICRO project sought to investigate the close relationships between musical sound and human bodily micromotion. Micromotion is here used to describe the smallest motion that we can produce and experience, typically at a rate lower than 10 mm/s. ...

I participated in the closing event of the FAIRsFAIR project last week. For that, I was asked to share thoughts on the status of FAIR in higher education. This is a summary of the notes that I wrote for the event. What is FAIR? First of all, The FAIR principles state that data should be: Findable: The first step in (re)using data is to find them. Metadata and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers. Machine-readable metadata are essential for automatic discovery of datasets and services, so this is an essential component of the FAIRification process. Accessible: Once the user finds the required data, she/he/they need to know how they can be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorisation. Interoperable: The data usually need to be integrated with other data. In addition, the data need to interoperate with applications or workflows for analysis, storage, and processing. Reusable: The ultimate goal of FAIR is to optimise the reuse of data. To achieve this, metadata and data should be well-described so that they can be replicated and/or combined in different settings. This sounds all good, but the reality is that FAIRifying data is a non-trivial task. ...