Saving Technologies that are not Used to Save Lives

A hundred years ago in July, thanks to the advancement of medical technology, the first human received the vaccine Bacille Calmette-Guérin—or BCG—to prevent tuberculosis (TB), a disease that killed at least 20% of the European population during the 19th century. Since then, hundreds of millions of lives have been saved by BCG, as well as other vaccinations for dangerous diseases. However, although TB is quite preventable and curable, it remains the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent in the world. It is an example of how humans can invent technologies to improve and save lives but fail to do so because of unevenly distributed resources, lack of media coverage, and other economic, political, and sociological realities that determine the uses and targets of technologies.

What Matters More in Open Access Journal Publishing: Scientific Rigor or Financial Vigor?

Academics and librarians around the world are raising concern about the current state of scholarly journal publishing in that the majority of journals are under the control of five multinational commercial journal publishing companies. Some are advocating for scholars to take back control of scholarly communication, particularly because it is the academics who are supplying and managing most of the content for journals. Open access publishing is one option, but the question of sustainability in funding streams raises concerns. Also the roles of scholarly societies, academic association, and universities in looking for stability in nonprofit journal publishing are discussed.

Appropriating Biosensors as Embodied Control Structures in Interactive Music Systems

We present a scoping review of biosensors appropriation as control structures in interactive music systems (IMSs). Technical and artistic dimensions promoted by transdisciplinary approaches, ranging from biomedicine to musical performance and interaction design fields, support a taxonomy for biosensor-driven IMSs. A broad catalog of 70 biosensor-driven IMSs, ranging in publication dates from 1965 to 2019, was compiled and categorized according to the proposed taxonomy. From the catalog data, we extrapolated representative historical trends, notably to critically verify our working hypothesis that biosensing technologies are expanding the array of control structures within IMSs. Observed data show that our hypothesis is consistent with the historical evolution of the biosensor-driven IMSs. From our findings, we advance future challenges for novel means of control across humans and machines that should ultimately transform the agents involved in interactive music creation to form new corporalities in extended performative settings.

Mobile Money and the Impact of Mobile Phone Regulatory Enforcement Among the Urban Poor in Tanzania

Mobile money provides a tool for survival, particularly in urban conditions shaped by city regulations that make microvending difficult for the poor. An analysis of 165 interviews conducted in two low-income neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over 8 years demonstrates how interlocked layers of technology and interaction make mobile money services semiformal. I introduce two mobile money-enabled survival strategies: intrahousehold transfers for day-to-day survival (transfers within the same city) and resource safeguarding through kin remittances of start-up capital (home-based subsistence business capital stored for kin access in emergencies). The recent tightening of mobile phone regulations in the global South has disrupted users’ multilevel and formal/informal-hybrid infrastructures of money movement in these communities. Such tougher regulations could result in a new digital divide that hinders rather than facilitates the financial inclusion of the poor.

Novel and Experimental Music Technology Use in the Music Classroom: Learning Performance, Experience, and Concentrated Behavior

In recent years, music technology in the classroom has relied on general devices such as the iPad. In the current study, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine the learning performance, learning experience, and behavior of two class groups of primary school music students (N = 42), using established music technology (i.e., the iPad with the Keyboard Touch Instrument app) and novel music technology (KAiKU Music Glove). Results show a significant difference of change in test scores during learning (p = <.01) and a medium effect-size is found (d = .75), indicating use of the iPad and Keyboard Touch Instrument app contributed to increased learning when compared to the KAiKU Music Glove. Perceived ease of use ratings of both technologies and observable levels of concentration exhibited by the students are also discussed in the paper. Implications provide insights into the usage and development of embodied music technology in the music classroom.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Music as Embodied Experience

Technology has impacted music’s role in contemporary society in extraordinary ways. In addition to how people use music for professional and artistic pursuits, technology has opened a wide variety of new avenues for research and application, particularly as a reliable therapeutic and salutogenic tool. Recently, a useful framework for studying this shifting perspective surrounding musical experience has emerged: embodied music cognition, which conceptualizes the body as being at the center of music experiences. The papers in this thematic issue highlight how music technologies have matured to the point where they affect the way music is created, performed, enjoyed, and researched.

See how it feels to move: Relationships between movement characteristics and perception of emotions in dance

Music makes humans move in ways found to relate to, for instance, musical characteristics, personality, or emotional content of the music. In this study, we investigated associations between embodiments of musical emotions and the perception thereof. After collecting motion capture data of dancers moving to emotionally distinct musical stimuli, silent stick-figure animations were rated by a set of observers regarding perceived discrete emotions, while 10 movement features were computationally extracted from the motion capture data. Results indicate kinematic profiles—emotion-specific sets of movement characteristics—that furthermore conform with dimensional models of valence and arousal, suggesting that observers rated the emotions consistently according to distinct movement features prevalent in the animations. Outcomes show commonalities and differences to a previous study that linked these movement features to auditory perception of musical emotion, providing insights into how emotional expression of music-induced movement could be conveyed and understood through auditory and visual channels, respectively.

The communication of melancholy, grief, and fear in dance with and without music

Professional dancers were video recorded dancing with the intention of expressing melancholy, grief, or fear. We used these recordings as stimuli in two studies designed to investigate the perception and sociality of melancholy, grief, and fear expressions during unimodal (dancing in silence) and multimodal (dancing to music) conditions. In Study 1, viewers rated their perceptions of social connection among the dancers in these videos. In Study 2, the same videos were coded for the amount of time that dancers spent in physical contact. Results revealed that dancers expressing grief and fear exhibited more social interactions than dancers expressing melancholy. Combined with the findings of Warrenburg (2020b, 2020c), results support the idea that—in an artistic context—grief and fear are expressed with overt emotional displays, whereas melancholy is expressed with covert emotional displays.

Music, Vibrotactile Mediation and Bodily Sensations in Anorexia Nervosa: "It's Like I can Really Feel My Heart Beating"

This article presents the theoretical, scientific, and methodological foundations for the design and implementation of an innovative technological and clinical platform that combined sound, music, and vibrotactile mediation used in a therapeutic setting by adolescents suffering from anorexia nervosa. In 2019, we carried out a pilot experiment with a group of 8 adolescent patients hospitalized in the Eating Disorders Unit of the Department of Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry of the Institut Mutualiste Montsouris in Paris. Within this clinical framework, we aimed to create conditions suitable for patients to reinvest in their “disaffected” bodily zones and internal experiences through reflecting on the sensations, emotions, and ideas generated by the sensory experiences created when sound and musical stimuli are transmitted through vibrations. The findings demonstrate the ways in which adolescent patients made use of the platform’s audiovibrotactile mediating objects to express a personal associative process through speech during their exchanges with clinical psychologists.

Communicating through ancillary gestures: Exploring effects on coperformers and audiences

Musicians make elaborate movements while performing, often using gestures that might seem extraneous. To explore these movements, we motion-captured and audio-recorded different pairings of clarinetists and pianists performing Brahms’ Clarinet Sonata No. 1 with two manipulations: (a) allowing the performers full vs. no visual feedback, and (b) allowing the performers full vs. partial auditory feedback (i.e., the clarinetist could not hear the pianist). We found that observer ratings of audio–visual point-light renditions discriminated between manipulations and refined this insight through subsequent audio-alone and visual-alone experiments, providing an understanding of each modality’s contribution. This novel approach of evaluating point-light displays of performances under systematically manipulated conditions provides new perspective on the ways in which ancillary gestures contribute to both performer communication and audience reception of live performances.