VART3510 - AkE Internship Journal Week 5

Working with the current research proposal below, I've been looking at developing the test design.

Observation and recording of brainwave activity changes in response to a range of musical and soundscape compositions in order to examine whether a conventional musical framework is a significant component in the neural response to composed sonic stimuli. Participants will be played pieces of atonal music, noise music, soundscape & stochastic music in contrast to more conventional musical compositions such as pop, rock, jazz & classical. Responses to the stimuli will be measured via EEG.

Test design:

• Participants are seated and given in ear monitors that will not obstruct the electrodes of the EEG device.

• A 30 second baseline EEG response is taken in between audio stimuli.

• EEG response is observed and recorded while participant is played audio stimuli.

• Participant is given a survey at the conclusion of the test where experiential biases and qualitative emotional responses are recorded.

Musical choice considerations:

With such a broad range of stylistic material the challenge has been to make the stimuli feel related in order to control the response.

Temporal, Timbral and Spectral content are real considerations. The "energy" and tempo of the music should be as similar as possible in order to control for brainwave response.

I've outlined some potential candidates for music selection to fulfil the criteria outlined in the research proposal:

Classical: Mozart - Symphony No. 9 in C Major

Energetic and Dynamic.

Atonal: Dane Rudhyar - Granites (1929)

Energetic and unusually dynamic for an atonal piece. Similar length.

           Jazz: Duke Ellington - The Clothed Woman (1947)
Actually considered an atonal piece, this piece could control for the energy level of the previous piece.
Dynamic, movement resembles the classic piece. Moments of energy.

       

          Noise music: Edgard Varese - Ionisation (1929 - 1931)

Composition modelled on noise, closer to timbral quality of previous pieces

 

Stochastic Music: Xenakis - Pithoprakta (1955/1956)

 Matches similar timbre and dynamics of previous pieces. Similar length.

          Musique Concrete: Bernard Parmegiani - Violostries (1969)

          Hard to find a musique concrete piece that matches the timbre and energy -
but this Parmegiani piece feels musical and dynamic.

          Rock: Amon Düül II - Between The Eyes (1972)

Very difficult to select a "rock" track that is within the timbral, spectral and dynamic energetic levels of the rest of the selected pieces,
but I think this piece by Amon Düül II best fits the criteria.

       

          Pop: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)

Very difficult to control for bias, tone, length and energy levels. Pop is a very broad and culture bound genre.
Selected this based on its changing dynamics, timbral qualities and similar time period to the rest of the material.

VART3510 - AkE Internship Journal Week 4

I've taken the time to look into some of the other literature in AkE lab that Darrin suggested:

Daniel Levitin - This Is Your Brain On Music

David Huron - Sweet Anticipation (Music and the Psychology of Expectation)

Lerdahl, Jackendoff - Generative Theory of Tonal Music

The content explored in these books is brilliant! Many topics I wanted to explore in the coursework of my program are contained within these books. Many of the theories explored in the discourse will be very beneficial when we eventually get to undertake the research. There is a wealth of information on the neuroscience of processing music, but far less on the topic of "sound art" - understanding the current literature that explores the neuroscience of music is vital when juxtaposing this with sound art in a research context.

I've ordered my own copies of these books, I've borrowed the Levitin title from the library to try and get through it while we're working on this.

I've also listed the primary research questions we're looking to pursue:

Research Questions:

1: Is there a remarkable difference in the neural oscillatory response to contemporary sonic compositional works when compared to traditional musically structured composition?

2:Does the brain interpret these stimuli independently?

3:Does experiential bias affect these measurable responses? If so, how?

4:Does the neural oscillatory (and psychophysical) response to non musical sonic compositional works match the pattern of the neural oscillatory response to environmental audio stimuli?

VART3459 - Production Strategies Journal 6

Binary Euclidean sequencer idea/sketches:

VART3510 - AkE Internship Journal Week 3 :: New Research Proposal

Great meeting with Dr Eva Cheng last week. She is quite helpful and keen to assist us with our research. We discussed the scope of the research falling within the scope of a LIEF grant and have avenues to pursue the research in house with Antonio Paolini (Prof. Psych at Bundoora campus) or with Adrian Dyer.

Further correspondence between Eva and Darrin suggest that Eva is interested in incorporating the research into her 'Quality of Mulitmedia Experience' branch of research work which is exciting!

By suggestion from Darrin I read the following paper to explore the artistic scope of our research as we are approaching this from the School of Art.


Reedijk, S., Bolders, A. & and Hommel, B. (2013) The impact of binaural beats on creativity, Frontiers in Neuroscience




During the week Darrin and I decided to abandon Binaural beat brainwave entrainment as the basis of our research for the reason that due to the current literature there is a very small scope to explore the artistic/creative relevance of brainwave activity. By abandoning this we open ourselves up to the exploration of brainwave activity without consideration to the confounding literature exploring the legitimacy of the causal relationship between auditory cues and FFR EEG response.

We both agreed that an artistic foundation to the research would be most appropriate, with sound art as basis for investigation in a psychological context feeling the best way forward.

I altered our research proposal to accommodate a goal that explores whether musical compositional formatting is processed differently by the brain than compositions that would typically be considered "sound art."

Darrin and I both agree this feels like a more natural academic pursuit from the School of Art and opens up further research opportunities based on the findings we will go on to observe.

New Research Proposal:

Observation and recording of brainwave activity changes in response to a range of musical and soundscape compositions in order to examine whether a conventional musical framework is a significant component in the neural response to composed sonic stimuli. Participants will be played pieces of atonal music, noise music, soundscape & stochastic music in contrast to more conventional musical compositions such as pop, rock, jazz & classical. Responses to the stimuli will be measured via EEG.

ARCH1372 - Reading 3 :: The Perception, Evaluation and Creative Application of High Order Ambisonics In Contemporary Music Practice

The Perception, Evaluation and Creative Application of High Order Ambisonics In Contemporary Music Practice

Natasha Barrett

Ircam Composer in Research Report 2012

In her residency at IRCAM Barrett investigated the technical and artistic implementation of Higher Order Ambisonic techniques. In this paper Barrett investigated a range of Higher Order Ambisonics in two dimensional and three dimensional spatializations noting differences in perception of 4th and 7th order 3D decoding suggesting the 7th order decoding is the most optimal working in 3D giving the most ‘transparent’ and precise results - while in 2D, 12th order decodings were only marginally advantageous in complex scenes, suggesting that 7th order decodings were also the optimal format. Barrett also investigated Near Field Compensated Higher Order Ambisonics discovering that higher order encoding/decoding can result in more convincing NFC results albeit with a necessity to compensate some of the addition of low frequency content with high pass filtering which may remove some of the NFC effect. Barrett also noted when working with NFC that the loudspeaker distances in the decoding stage require consideration at the encoding stage, at 12th order noting a variance range of 50-200% for accurate translation. Barrett was also able to use an Eigenmike to capture scenes at a high resolution 4th order sound field and compared this with older lower resolution Soundfield microphone technology (SPS200 and ST250) noting a greater ‘openness’ and spatial accuracy with the Eigenmike. Barrett goes on to discuss some of the other considerations in composing for Higher Order Ambisonics such as monitoring issues, accuracy in translation and the compositional advantages of working at this level. I enjoyed this window into the artistic and technical application of HOA, Barrett’s work is certainly beneficial for those working with higher order ambisonics.

VART3459 - Production Strategies Journal 5

Possible alternative project

audiograffiti sonification RGB track from graf project last year. Use vocal samples to write rhythms and texture + melody.

http://youtu.be/oPG-VhU6Kiw

http://youtu.be/9FEgc2YQuMw

gating/enveloping for rhythms

ARCH1372 - Reading 2 :: An Ontology of Donald Schön’s Reflection in Designing

An Ontology of Donald Schön’s Reflection in Designing

John S Gero, Udo Kannengiesser

Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition University of Sydney 2006


Gero and Kannengiesser present an articulated model of the design process primarily informed by the work of Donald Schön, in particular his notion of “reflection in action” within the design process. Gero and Kannengiesser identify two branches of this design model, the “functional” and “mechanistic” modes of reflection, dividing the critical design elements of “Function” “Behavior” and “Structure” and exploring the interplay between these elements within the mind of the designer, in three phases of “External” “Interpreted” and “Expected” outcomes for the design to exist. It is my understanding that Gero and Kannengiesser’s primary distinction between “functional” and “mechanistic” modes of reflection pertain to where the reflection is placed within the mind of the designer. In the “functional” model, reflection primarily occurs after action has taken place from the designer, altering design choices based on drafting, whereas the “mechanistic” model implies that the designer reflects on their wealth of experience in order to move systematically toward a refined design objective. I can particularly relate to the reflective design processes described here. Though much of the reflection in my design process is ‘functional’ in the execution stage, I aspire to work more ‘mechanistically’.

VART3510 - AkE Internship Journal Week 2

Following on from last week, I'm continuing to develop my software and look into existing research on brainwave entrainment.

In preparation for a literature review I spent some time on the RMIT library search system for academic research papers. I had not used this system before, such a wealth of knowledge freely available! I am glad at least in point in my program I have found a need to investigate published journals.

I have never assembled a literature review before, I have made some key notes based on my findings.

• Brainwave entrainment uses rhythmic auditory and visual stimuli to alter brainwave frequency and have been investigated since the late 1800's [Huang et al. 2008]

• Most commonly used auditory stimulation in brainwave entrainment experiments use isochronic, monaural or binaural beats.

• Binaural and monaural beats use 2 tones with similar frequencies that trick the brain into perceiving the difference in frequency as a "beating" - monaural beats sum these two signals into one, where the binaural method uses two independent tones are fed to either ear and the 'beating' is creating psycho acoustically.

• Isochronic tones are evenly spaced tones between moments of silence to create "beating.

• Binaural beats are best perceived when the carrier and standard tone frequencies are at approximately 400hz with differences between the two frequencies being no more than 35hz. [Krishnan et al. 2004]

• The Frequency Follow Response has been observed using audio cues, the EEG response has been correlated to the binaural beat frequency [the difference between tones] [Marsh et al 1970]

• Control factors for brainwave entrainment experiments have incorporated periods of white noise and measuring a baseline EEG response. 

• Recent studies controlling for personality traits have failed to produce statistically significant results. [Goodin et al. 2012]

• Recent controlled studies have concluded that binaural beat theta brainwave entrainment methods are no more effective than Pink noise [Stevens et al. 2003]

• The evidence that brainwave entrainment can be used to affect vigilance, performance and mood is largely anecdotal [Lane et al. 1997]

As is to be expected, the further I dig into the established literature - the more confounding the results. What is promising is that research into this area remains current with studies still being conducted locally at institutions like Swinburne Uni.


Darrin and I have a meeting tomorrow with Dr. Eva Cheng from RMIT to discuss the research.

VART3459 - Production Strategies Journal 4

Other algorithmic processes to pursue:

Markov Chains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain

Serialism / Tone Row
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_row

Euclidean Rhythms (Godfried Toussaint banff paper)
http://aatpm.com/banff.pdf

Genetic Algorithms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_music
Bruce Jacob - Composing with Genetic Algorithms
https://ece.umd.edu/~blj/papers/icmc95.pdf

Lindenmayer Systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system

Désordre’s algorithms
"Désordre’s algorithms. The main argument of Désordre consists of foreground and background textures: Foreground (accented, loud). Two simultaneous instances of the same basic process, melodic/rhythmic, one in each hand, both doubled at the octave, and white note (righthand) and black-notew (pentatonic, lefthand) modes; and Background (quiet).
http://theacademyofthefuture.tumblr.com/post/62193508590/an-algorithmic-model-of-gyorgy-ligetis-desordre
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/7/109891-algorithmic-composition/fulltext

Cellular Automata
http://tones.wolfram.com/about/how.html

Chaos & Fractal Music
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~clark/nordmodularbook/nm_algorithmic.html

Rissett Rhythm
http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/4708/how-does-the-risset-rhythm-work

ARCH1372 - Reading 1 :: Estimating Room Impulse Responses from Recorded Balloon Pops

Estimating Room Impulse Responses from Recorded Balloon Pops

Jonathan S. Abel, Nicholas J. Bryan, Patty P. Huang, Miriam A. Kolar, and Bissera V. Pentcheva

AES 129th Convention, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2010 November 4–7

Abel et al. propose that Balloon Pop Impulse Response Recording is in most cases a more advantageous method for acoustic measurement however, properties of the impulse waveform create an undesired effect akin to comb-filtering when applied with convolution to other material. Abel et al. provide a methodology to avoid the aforementioned distortion through the synthesis and filtering of a pattern of echoes similar to those seen in a balloon pop impulse response recording. The echo sequence is generated in such a way as to create the same psychoacoustic impression as the original sequence of arrivals, though without the artifacts present in the recorded impulse method. I found the site specific example demonstrated in this article to be especially interesting, the application of synthesized/filtered impulse response convolution to authentically auralize a hymn performed in the 6th Century at the site of the Hagia Sophia. This example not only necessitates the methodology described in the article, but demonstrates the archeological, cultural and historical value of accurate acoustic measurement techniques.