Oslo iPhone Ensemble performed at the opening of the University's new science library (Realfagsbiblioteket) today. Below is a video of parts of the performance, recorded on an -- iPhone.
Takk til alle som stilte opp i NM i stillstand! Årets norgesmester er Ole Kristian Wetten. Mer informasjon om NM finnes her, og resten av resultatlisten kan du se nedenfor.
We believe in the importance of passing on the interest for music technology to the coming generations. Kristian visited an elementary school to do so last month.
The pupils formed a laptop orchestra, and rehearsed the piece Clix by Ge Wang. Furthermore they explored sound interaction with the musical gestures toolbox and sensor interfaces like the "music snake".
Alexander Refsum Jensenius recently presented the paper “Motion-sound Interaction Using Sonification based on Motiongrams” at the ACHI 2012 conference in Valencia, Spain.
Abstract: The paper presents a method for sonification of human body motion based on motiongrams. Motiongrams show the spatiotemporal development of body motion by plotting average matrices of motion images over time. The resultant visual representation resembles spectrograms, and is treated as such by the new sonifyer module for Jamoma for Max, which turns motiongrams into sound by reading a part of the matrix and passing it on to an oscillator bank. The method is surprisingly simple, and has proven to be useful for analytical applications and in interactive music systems.
See below for the full paper and video examples.
Oslo iPhone Ensemble performed at the seminar Kultur og samfunn today. Here is a video of one of the performed pieces:
Kristian Nymoen and Alexander Refsum Jensenius had a short appearance on NRK Dagsrevyen today (Norwegian prime time news). The video is online here (starting at 27:00).
Visiting researcher Yago de Quay and fourMs PhD student Ståle Skogstad and Postdoc Alexander Refsum Jensenius have published a paper in Leonardo Music Journal:
ABSTRACT: The authors present an experimental musical performance called Dance Jockey, wherein sounds are controlled by sensors on the dancer's body. These sensors manipulate music in real time by acquiring data about body actions and transmitting the information to a control unit that makes decisions and gives instructions to audio software. The system triggers a broad range of music events and maps them to sound effects and musical parameters such as pitch, loudness and rhythm.
Postdoctoral researcher Alexander Refsum Jensenius has been interviewed by the Norwegian music magazine Ballade, in an article entitled Dr. Luftgitars laboratorium.
Rolf Inge Godøy has published the chapter "Sound-action chunks in music in the new Springer-Verlag book Musical Robots and Interactive Multimodal Systems edited by Kia Ng og Jorge Solis.
The electronic version of Roger Stein Grading's M.Sc. thesis is now available online:
Even Bekkedal, Yago de Quay, Ståle A. Skogstad, Kyrre Glette and Kristian Nymoen participated at Idefestivalen om digitalisering which was held at the University of Oslo main campus on September 17th.
Bjørnar Hegge's M.A. thesis is now available online (Norwegian only):
The electronic version of Øyvind Hauback's M.Sc. thesis is now available online:
Two new publications by Rolf Inge Godøy:
UiO iPhone ensemble, comprising a mixed group of fourMs students and researchers, performed at the opening of Ole Johan Dals Hus (the new informatics building) on 2 September 2011. This marked the official opening of the building where fourMs have new labs and office spaces on the fourth floor. It also coincided with the university's 200 year anniversary.
Ståle Skogstad and Kristian Nymoen presented two new publications at the Sound and Music Conference in Padova.
The publications are:
Skogstad, Nymoen and Høvin: Comparing Inertial and Optical MoCap Technologies for Synthesis Control
and
Nymoen and Jensenius: A Toolbox for Storing and Streaming Music-related Data
Kristian Nymoen and Ståle A. Skogstad were interviewed during the poster session at NIME 2011 on Tuesday:
http://nrkbeta.no/2011/06/01/morgendagens-musikkinstrumenter/#more-20461
Texas Tech Discoveries has published a story called "Movement and Musical Meaning" where they present Bill Westney's work and his participation in the NNIMIPA workshop in Oslo last year. During the workshop we made video recordings of a recital (including rehearsal) and motion capture recordings in the lab.
(Norsk nedenfor)
Every known culture has some form of dance, so it seems obvious that music and movement are closely connected with each other. But it's surprising how little we know about this connection. Why do certain tunes make us want to get up and dance, while others not so much? And when we do move, what compels us to do so one way and not another? What's more, when we watch others dance, why can we tell immediately if their gestures fit the music or not?
These are some of the questions we are interested in exploring, and in this experiment we will look at how participants interpret the music with their bodies. We will use motion capture technology to study movement to excerpts taken from real music in short, 20 minute sessions in our lab at the University of Oslo (ZEB building). The process is easy, fun, and comes with an interesting twist (but that's a surprise; we can't reveal everything up front, or our experiment won't go as planned).
You don't need to be an amazing dancer to participate. You don't even need to dance at all! In fact, we can't dance ourselves, but we've designed our study so that anyone can move to the music. And for your contribution to our research, as a small token of our appreciation you will receive a free cinema pass! The project will run April 4-14.
If you think you'd like to participate, please join our Facebook event or email Mariusz Kozak
Josué Moreno and Davis Ozolins from the Sibelius Academy are visiting fourMs this week through the collaboration in the Nordic Network for the Integration of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics (NNIMIPA). They are editing and cataloguing the video material collected during the February 2010 NNIMIPA workshop in Oslo, where American pianist William Westney who participated in various motion capture and analysis experiments.
Kari Anne Vadstensvik Bjerkestrand is a guest researcher at fourMs during the spring of 2011. She is working on the project Sverm together with Alexander Refsum Jensenius. See biography below for more information on Kari Anne.
Until February 16th, we're doing an experiment on how people synchronize with different rhythms, and are looking for participants.
The experiment lasts about 30 minutes, and is done in the old fourMs lab in Gaustadalleen 25, 4th floor
Everyone who participates gets a free movie ticket!
If you would like to participate, send an email to Kristian Nymoen or join this facebook event.
fourMs will be moving over the coming weeks. Two labs will be moved to the new informatics building, and one lab will be moved to the Department of Musicology. More information on where to find what, and when to come and visit will be announced when things are ready.
fourMs researchers have published two papers in connection to the Second Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Symposium organised at Høgskolen i Gjøvik, 22 November 2010.
Glette, K., Jensenius, A. R., and Godøy, R. I. (2010). Extracting action-sound features from a sound-tracing study. In Yildirim, S. and Kofod-Petersen, A., editors, Proceedings of Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Symposium, pages 63–66, Trondheim. Tapir Akademisk Forlag.
Abstract: The paper addresses possibilities of extracting information from music-related actions, in the particular case of what we call sound-tracings. These tracings are recordings from a graphics tablet of subjects' drawings associated with a set of short sounds. Although the subjects' associations to sounds are very subjective, and thus the resulting tracings are very different, an attempt is made at extracting some global features which can be used for comparison between tracings. These features are then analyzed and classified with an SVM classifier.
Jensenius, A. R. and Johnson, V. (2010). A video based analysis system for realtime control of concatenative sound synthesis and spatialisation. In Yildirim, S. and Kofod-Petersen, A., editors, Proceedings of Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Symposium, pages 85–88, Trondheim. Tapir Akademisk Forlag.
Abstract: We report on the development of a video based analysis system that controls concatenative sound synthesis and sound spatialisation in realtime in concert performances. The system has been used in several pieces, most recently Transformation for electric violin and live electronics, where the performer controls sound playback through motion on stage.
fourMs-researchers were heavily present at the annual VERDIKT conference yesterday. In addition to a lecture and poster presentations, we also contributed a performance with the iPhone ensemble and a motion capture performance. More info below.