Hello, I am Doga Cavdir from Stanford University.
I will be presenting part of my dissertation project
about movement-based music making
focusing on an aesthetics-based evaluation of a case study
with a new digital musical instrument.
I am in the final two years of my Ph.D. program at
Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
My research focuses on
movement-based interaction design for digital musical interfaces.
My two dissertation projects address accessible and inclusive
musical instrument design and performance practices.
Felt Sound project is an ASL based MDMI.
It is designed as an accessible instrument
for Deaf and Hard of Hearing listeners
and aims to deliver physical sensations of music
through body movement and low frequency-high amplitude sounds.
In this talk, I will focus on the Bodyharp Project
which aims to bring the musician's and the mover’s perspectives closer
through movement interaction.
As a wearable instrument, Bodyharp connects the musician's body
and body movement to the instrument stings.
It embodies both musical and dance-like gestures
expanding the gestural vocabulary of the musician
and their use of space
through larger-scale gestures.
it encourages expressive body movements
while keeping some familiar musical interaction.
The first prototype of the instrument
was played in an improvisational performance
with dancers and other musicians.
The interaction between the movements of
the dancers and the Bodyharp’s performer
suggested to explore shared spaces between
the perspectives of the two artistic practices.
Here are two excerpt from Bodyharp’s performances.
The first one is improvised with dancers in 2018
and the second is played by dancers as part of this user study in 2021.
The last excerpt shows the composition and free movement improvisation steps of the user study.
The study overall consists of three main parts.
The first one is learning and practicing the instrument,
the second one is the composition and movement improvisation step
and the third one is the questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.
20 participants joined the study from music, composition, dance,
choreography, and other artistic backgrounds.
Most of them reported to have a multidisciplinary artistic practices.
The participants’ experiences and performance tendencies
varied based on their artistic backgrounds.
While musicians focused on understanding the sound mapping
and controlling the musical features
dancers performed in response to the music generated through their movement
with a more improvisational approach.
Overall, both groups reported that the instrument encouraged them move more
and use their body movement to express musical ideas.
They reported that the physicality of music making and the affordances of the instrument
encouraged new compositional and choreographic ideas.
In the study, we wanted to focus on the first-person experience of the performer
and bring the musician and the movers’ perspectives
and their experiences closer to each other.
Both groups shared some elements of each other’s artistic practice.
The study’s aesthetics-based evaluation included
a qualitative analysis of users’ self-reported experiences
and a holistic assessment of the system and its affordances for creative outcome.
The participants ability to create music and movement compositions
showed the usability of the instrument for dancer-musician collaboration.
We plan to conduct quantitative movement analysis
using OpenPose for pose extraction
and Laban Movement Analysis for movement quality computation.
This future work will contribute to the design of movement-based musical instruments
and offer more accessible and embodied performance practices.
We will continue to explore its artistic directions in collaborative dance projects
and with dancers and musicians with disabilities.
Thank you for listening.
For your questions, feel free to reach out to the author.
Performance excepts of the participants are available online.