Academic Research

Visualization of music in two and three-dimensional space has been one of the issues usually found at the forefront of interest in cross-domain studies. As the outcome of a blend of different conceptual domains (namely sound, linguistic metaphors, and visual imagery), this area has received a lot of attention due to its approachability and application in everyday life. Having at its basis the possibility to deconstruct music to its elements and understand the latter both in terms of intra-musical (i.e., pitch height, tempo, loudness, harmonization, timbre, consonance/dissonance) and extra-musical parameters (i.e., performance setting, genre, performers’ age,  gender) it is possible to determine how listeners may relate these parameters to other domains. Within the boundaries of cross-modal perception and of particular interest for this project, studies have also examined the relationship between auditory roughness and angular shapes in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes (Liew, Styles & Lindborg, 2017, Liew et al., 2018).

 

With this project, our aim is to explore auditory roughness (as expressed via harmonic dissonance) to tactile stimuli of varying roughness. Research indicates that both linguistic and non-linguistic associations between music and images are feasible, and can be readily blended together as conceptual metaphors of space, path, velocity, size, and force, among others. Should there be a consistent pattern of organization in the participants’ responses, it may be possible to further support the claim that there is a clear organizational model of human perception which facilitates the conceptual blend of visual music imagery (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2018; Gritten & King, 2006; Godøy & Leman, 2010). 

 

The association of specific elements of musical stimuli to tactile roughness may provide an alternative method of associating music with another non-linguistic domain in a more comprehensible manner, and it may empower researchers to see broader designs or even patterns in human perception, that may have otherwise gone unnoticed without visualization.

 

References

 

Godøy, R. I., & Leman, M. (Eds.). (2010). Musical gestures: Sound, movement, and meaning. Routledge.

 

Gritten, A., & King, E. (Eds.). (2006). Music and gesture. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

 

Liew, K., Lindborg, P., Rodrigues, R., & Styles, S. J. (2018). Cross-modal perception of noise-in-music: Audiences generate spiky shapes in response to auditory roughness in a novel electroacoustic concert setting. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 178.

 

Liew, K., Styles, S. J., & Lindborg, P. (2017). Dissonance and roughness in cross-modal perception. In Proceedings of the 6th Conference of the Asia Pacific Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.

 

Malloch, S., & Trevarthen, C. (2018). The human nature of music. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1680.

Advanced undergraduate students (from third year) 
Master's students 
Ph.D. students 

Conversation with project leaders.