Music and emotion

It is well known that the use of music and organised sound can be an effective means of producing and enhancing emotional response. Applications in affective interfaces from ring tones to computers to video games and in environments from restaurants to elevators to movie soundtracks are ubiquitous. Recent popular books on the relationship between music, mind, and emotion have introduced this field to the general public; however, emotion's crucial role in musical experience has long been the object of philosophical reflection and empirical study. Contemporary work on music and emotion is happening in fields as diverse as aesthetics, psychology, sonic arts, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and neuroscience. This session brings together international experts in musicology, psychology, computer science, and sonic arts to analyse and theorise ways in which emotion is encoded, mediated and unfolded by musical sounds and structures; and how musical emotion is measured, modelled and conceptualised. The aim of this session is to further introduce the broad and heterogeneous field of music and emotion to the ACII community by presenting the key outcomes and debates of the Music and Emotion conference and to present papers on some of the important topics within this field.

To create a strong discussion component, this session will be organised such that there will be a five minute introduction of the field followed by a 10 minute presentation and 5 minute discussion for each speaker and within their discipline and then a final 20 minutes to begin a discussion on the broad field itself. It is hoped that this session will share concepts, definitions, and methodologies; communicate technical and practical knowledge across disciplinary boundaries; improve consensus and thereby develop a framework to guide future research.

Contributions

Measurement of Motion and Emotion during Musical Performance

R Benjamin Knapp, Javier Jaimovich, Niall Coghlan

Using Dimensional Descriptions to Express the Emotional Content of Music

Roddy Cowie, Cian Doherty, Edelle McMahon

Measuring entrainment in small groups of musicians

Antonio Camurri, Giovanna Varni, Gualtiero Volpe

Musicology's Dialogue with Emotion Studies: Analysing Musical Structure

Michael Spitzer