NNIMIPA  

Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics

August 20, 2010: The three-way interview video which appears below as part one of the "Video Suite - in Three Movements" was posted on "NNIMIPA media online" at http://www.fourms.uio.no/blog/sensing/2010/nnimipa.html on August 19, 2010 in a version re-edited by Alexander Refsum Jensenius. In the re-edited version, some anachronous material announcing the NNIMIPA/NordPlus Master's Course "Music, Meaning and Gesture" held March 22-26, 2010 in Odense as upcoming was removed and some video footage of empirical work undertaken February 18-19, 2010 in Oslo was inserted. The video viewer embedded in http://www.fourms.uio.no/blog/sensing/2010/nnimipa.html streams the re-edited video in Quicktime format; the video may be streamed in Window Media Player .wmv-format from

http://www.fourms.uio.no/blog/sensing/2010/Westney-teaser-478.wmv. - Cynthia M. Grund

Video Suite -

in Three Movements:

Jensenius-Westney-Grund on motion-capture, music and meaning.

To the left we see concert pianist Willliam Westney in his normal métier, performing in a concert hall. He is here photographed during a concert at the Academy of Music and Music Communication (VMK/SMKS) in  Esbjerg, Denmark  on November 21, 2008.

To the right  we see William Westney playing in a markedly different milieu - and costume - in Oslo, Norway on February 18, 2010.

He is not suited up for skiing; this is a motion-capture suit in which William Westney is performing at the FourM's Lab (http://www.fourms.uio.no/) at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo.

To find out why, please watch the following

Video Suite - In Three Movements

1. A three-way interview video

(http://folk.uio.no/alexanje/div/westney/teaser.wmv)

• http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html, the interactive walking person

• http://www.fourms.uio.no/?vrtx=tags&tag=motion%20capture, FourM's own motion.capture site.

Mention is made in the interview video of the Un-Master Class, an alternative to the traditional sort of master class that otherwise has been a feature of performance education for musicians for generations. ALT: Aabenraa Lokal TV, made a television documentary about the Un-Master Class with William Westney filmed at Alsion Concert Hall, Sønderborg, Denmark November 24, 2009 and broadcast during the month of February 2010 (http://www.aabenraa-lokal-tv.dk/wp/2010/02/08/3242/).  It is of interest with regard to the ongoing work on gesture presented here, since it has been under development for nearly 20 years and represents William Westney's empirical findings as a performer and pedagogue regarding the manner in which the appropriate coupling of gestural response to music as well as musical response to gesture can help students and performers to more readily articulate their own musical intentions and to subesquently realize them. William Westney, Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Piano and Browning Artist-in-ResidenceSchool of Music, Texas Tech University is currently a Hans Christian Andersen Guest Professor at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) at Odense  For more information about William Westney's work, please see www.http://www.soundmusicresearch.org/HCA_Prof.html and www.williamwestney.com.

The discussion of music and meaning has deep roots within philosophy and aesthetics, but it is increasingly a matter for cross-disciplinary research. The international  peer-reviewed jounal JMM:The Journal of Music and Meaning www.musicandmeaning.net, based at the Institute of Philosophy, Education and Religion (IFPR) at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) at Odense, of which Cynthia M. Grund is Editor-in-Chief  is devoted to investigation of music and meaning from cross-discliplinary and multi-modal perspectives. Founded in 2003 and supported by The Danish Research Council for the Humanities, JMM now (April 2010) has an average readership per day of nearly 500 readers in 125 countries.JMM is one of the many research initiatives which has its roots in NTSMB: The Network for Cross-Disciplinary Studies of Music and Meaning (Netværk for Tværvidenskabelige Studier af Musik og Betydning), established in 2001 with a two-year initiative-taking grant from The Danish Research Council for the Humanities. The  SDU (research program The Aesthetics of Music and Sound– www.soundmusicresearch.org - Cross-Disciplinary Interplay between the Humanities, Technology and Musical Practice, led by Grund, also has its roots in NTSMB, whose current activities may be found on www.ntsmb.dk, and NNIMIPA itself is a product of the cooperative efforts which have been established through NTSMB.

The pioneering research represented by this project is representative of the kind of integrative work and cross-disclipinary cooperation which provides the basis for the course material presented at the Master's courses conducted under the aegis of Nordplus-sponsored (http://www.nordplusonline.org/) NNIMIPA: Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics, where research-based teaching is the order of the day. For information about the other exciting projects which have provided the content for the 2010 course Music, Meaning and Gesture in Odense, Denmark and for the 2009 course Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics in Esbjerg, Denmark, please see  www.nnimipa.org/MMG.html and www.nnimipa.org/IMIPA.html.

Alexander Refsum Jensenius, UiO NNIMIPA-Coordinator and UiO-representative  to NNIMIPA; Kristian Nymoen, UiO-representative to NNIMIPA; Cynthia M.Grund, Network Coordinator, NNIMIPA; and SDU-representative to NNIMIPA; William Westney, SDU-representative to NNIMPA; Ståle A. Skogstad, UiO-representative to NNIMPA.

Correct citation of this page:

Jensenius, Alexander Refsum; Kristian Nymoen; Cynthia M. Grund; William Westney; Ståle A. Skogstad (2010). "Video Suite -  in Three Movements: Jensenius-Westney-Grund on Motion-capture, Music and Meaning." Multimodal webpage presentation of original motion-capture video with accompanying audio, including original documentary-and-interview video-and-audio about the motion-capture labwork. Webpage: http://www.nnimipa.org/JWG.html, finalized on April 25, 2010, on the website for NNIMIPA: Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics, a network funded under The Nordic Council of Ministers' NordPlus Program. NNIMIPA Webmaster and Network Coordinator: C.M. Grund.

Network Coordinator,

NNIMIPA; 

Editor and Webmaster for

www.nnimipa.org:

Cynthia M. Grund

cmgrund@ifpr.sdu.dk

News 

May 14, 2010: SUM symposium, Thursday May, 20, 2010 10:00-16:00 – Planeten, Huset i Magstræde, Rådhusstræde 11, Copenhagen K. The Nordic SUM - Structured Understanding of Music - research project aims to develop tools and procedures that facilitate the use of emotion as a systematic parameter in the creation, analysis and performance of music in its widest sense. The workshop will present a range of concepts and tools for managing musical emotion, both in analysis and synthesis. Among these are the SUM sensor device which is a performance and measurement tool in development. See here for details.

May 14, 2010: Details now available herefor both the May 28 piano recital in Reykjavik with William Westney at Salurinn, Kopavogur Concert Hall here, and the May 29 research seminar Music, Meaning and Method at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik.  For benefit concert with William Westney in London on May 22, see here for details.

May 13, 2010: Announcing a Lunchtime Concert on Monday, May 17 at 12:00 noon with William Westney at The University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Cafeteria 4. See announcement on Kultunaut here.

News Archive

Here.