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La mayoría de las veces, si no todas, se piensa que, para preparar y formar a un director, lo único que se necesita es la enseñanza formal y técnica de lo que existe en la partitura como indicaciones para la interpretación. La otra dimensión, la expresiva, simplemente es algo que se deja a la voluntad del director como si fuera solamente una expresión de su propio talento o destreza personal. Y esto es cierto. Sin embargo, este artículo, que es la sistematización de una experiencia de diez años enseñando dirección, ha arrojado algunas certezas de que existen elementos de la dimensión expresiva que son enseñables en lo que se refiere, ante todo, al gesto, el movimiento y el lenguaje como metáforas, es decir, pueden ser objeto de una práctica pedagógica formal.

International audience

International audience; Recent research in music-gesture relationship has paid more attention on the sound variations and its corresponding gesture expressive-ness. In this study we are interested by gestures performed by orchestral conductors, with a focus on the expressive gestures made by the non dominant hand. We make the assumption that these gestures convey some meaning shared by most of conductors, and that they implicitly correspond to sound effects which can be encoded in musical scores. Following this hypothesis, we defined a collection of gestures for musical direction. These gestures are designed to correspond to well known functional effect on sounds, and they can be modulated to vary this effect by simply modifying one of their structural component (hand movement or hand shape). This paper presents the design of the gesture and sound sets and the protocol that has led to the database construction. The relevant musical excerpts and the related expressive gestures have been first defined by one expert musician. The gestures were then recorded through motion capture by two non experts who performed them along with recorded music. This database will serve as a basis for training gesture recognition system for live sound control and modulation.

This article introduces a model and a system for embodied social active listening to sound and music content. The model is based on the simultaneous navigation/exploration of multiple maps, starting from a low-level physical map, up to a high-level emotional, affective map. The paper discusses the concepts underlying such a model, the system implementing it, and two concrete examples: The Orchestra Explorer designed for the Museo degli Strumenti Musicali at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Roma, Italy, and the interactive dance and music performance The Bow Is bent and Drawn (composer Nicola Ferrari), presented at Casa Paganini, Genova, Italy, in occasion of the opening concert of the 8th Intl. Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME08), June 4, 2008, and in museum interactive experiences at Festival della Scienza, Genova. This work is part of current research at Casa Paganini—InfoMus on embodied social active listening to sound and music content through the analysis and processing of expressiveness in human full-body movement and gesture. A user-centric interactive multimedia system architecture is proposed, operating on prerecorded music. From the perspective of valorization of cultural heritage, this research provides engaging paradigms of interaction with prerecorded music content, enabling a large number of nonexpert users to rediscover the musical heritage (e.g., classical and contemporary music) they may not be familiar with. Research was carried out in the framework of the EU-ICT Project SAME (Sound and Music for Everyone, Everyday, Everywhere, Every Way, www.sameproject.eu, 2008–2010) and has been recently extended to active experience of audiovisual content, and in particular to cultural heritage and museum scenarios: the novel interactive permanent museum exhibition Viaggiatori di Sguardo has been designed and developed at Palazzo Ducale, Genova, enabling visitors to explore virtually the UNESCO Heritage Palazzi dei Rolli in Genova.

This paper presents a framework for analysis of affective behavior starting with a reduced amount of visual information related to human upper-body movements. The main goal is to individuate a minimal representation of emotional displays based on nonverbal gesture features. The GEMEP (Geneva multimodal emotion portrayals) corpus was used to validate this framework. Twelve emotions expressed by 10 actors form the selected data set of emotion portrayals. Visual tracking of trajectories of head and hands were performed from a frontal and a lateral view. Postural/shape and dynamic expressive gesture features were identified and analyzed. A feature reduction procedure was carried out, resulting in a 4D model of emotion expression that effectively classified/grouped emotions according to their valence (positive, negative) and arousal (high, low). These results show that emotionally relevant information can be detected/measured/obtained from the dynamic qualities of gesture. The framework was implemented as software modules (plug-ins) extending the EyesWeb XMI Expressive Gesture Processing Library and is going to be used in user centric, networked media applications, including future mobiles, characterized by low computational resources, and limited sensor systems.

Analysis of expressiveness in human gesture can lead to new paradigms for the design of improved human-machine interfaces, thus enhancing users’ participation and experience in mixed reality applications and context-aware mediated environments. The development of expressive interfaces decoding the highly affective information gestures convey opens novel perspectives in the design of interactive multimedia systems in several application domains: performing arts, museum exhibits, edutainment, entertainment, therapy, and rehabilitation. This paper describes some recent developments in our research on expressive interfaces by presenting computational models and algorithms for the real-time analysis of expressive gestures in human full-body movement. Such analysis is discussed both as an example and as a basic component for the development of effective expressive interfaces. As a concrete result of our research, a software platform named EyesWeb was developed (http://www.eyesweb.org). Besides supporting research, EyesWeb has also been employed as a concrete tool and open platform for developing real-time interactive applications.

This article introduces the approach, the developed models, and ongoing research issues on expressiveness and physical interaction in interactive systems, with a special focus on human-robot communication. Research issues and related concrete examples from the interactive multimedia performance “L‘Ala dei Sensi” (literally, “The Wing of the Senses”), held in Ferrara (Italy) in November 1999, are presented. “L‘Ala dei Sensi” is formed by different episodes, a subset of which include one or more dancers interacting in real-time with a robot on stage. This interaction can influence and generate computer-generated music and video. Experiments have been conduced on the concept of musical and visual “clones” on large screens interacting with humans and the robot. The underlying models and approaches are introduced, with a special focus on expressiveness in the physical interaction of dancers with mobile robots and with visual/music “clones”. An overview of the hardware and software architecture is shortly prese...

When people perform a task as part of a joint action, their behavior is not the same as it would be if they were performing the same task alone, since it has to be adapted to facilitate shared understanding (or sometimes to prevent it). Joint performance of music offers a test bed for ecologically valid investigations of the way non-verbal behavior facilitates joint action. Here we compare the expressive movement of violinists when playing in solo and ensemble conditions. The first violinists of two string quartets (SQs), professional and student, were asked to play the same musical fragments in a solo condition and with the quartet. Synchronized multimodal recordings were created from the performances, using a specially developed software platform. Different patterns of head movement were observed. By quantifying them using an appropriate measure of entropy, we showed that head movements are more predictable in the quartet scenario. Rater evaluations showed that the change does not, as might be assumed, entail markedly reduced expression. They showed some ability to discriminate between solo and ensemble performances, but did not distinguish them in terms of emotional content or expressiveness. The data raise provocative questions about joint action in realistically complex scenarios.

The thesis studies gesture in the context of Human-Computer interaction. It aims at creating new interaction paradigms that offer the user further expressive possibilities based on gestures. The theorists and practitioners of the dance call "movement qualities” (MQ), a notion that conveys expressive content describing the way a gesture is performed. This notion has been rarely taken into consideration in the field of HCI. Our work draws on collaborations with the field of dance to explore the notion of movement qualities and to integrate it as interaction modality. The contributions of the thesis are in the formalism of the notion of movement qualities and evaluation of its integration as interaction modality in terms of user experience. We also provide computational tools for considering MQ in interactive systems in terms of analysis, representation and gesture control methods. On the representational level, our work have demonstrated that physical models based on masses and springs systems offer great opportunities for simulating dynamics related to MQs and for real-time gesture control. On the analysis level, we developed innovative approaches to automatic real time recognition of movement qualities. Finally, we implemented of a set of interaction techniques based on movement qualities that we applied and evaluated in the context of dance pedagogy and performance.; La présente thèse a pour but d’approfondir l’étude du geste dans le cadre de l’interaction Homme Machine. Il s’agit de créer de nouveaux paradigmes d’interaction qui offrent à l’utilisateur de plus amples possibilités d’expression basées sur le geste. Un des vecteurs d’expression du geste, très rarement traité en Interaction Homme Machine, qui lui confère sa coloration et son aspect, est ce que les théoriciens et praticiens de la danse appellent « les qualités de mouvement ». Nous mettons à profit des collaborations avec le domaine de la danse pour étudier la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’intégrer à des paradigmes d’interaction gestuelle. Notre travail analyse les apports de l’intégration des qualités de mouvement comme modalité d’interaction, fournit les outils propices à l’élaboration de cette intégration (en termes de méthodes d’analyse, de visualisation et de contrôle gestuel), en développe et évalue certaines techniques d’interaction.Les contributions de la thèse se situent d’abord dans la formalisation de la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’évaluation de son intégration dans un dispositif interactif en termes d’expérience utilisateur. Sur le plan de la visualisation des qualités de mouvement, les travaux menés pendant la thèse ont permis de démontrer que les modèles physiques masses-ressorts offrent de grandes possibilités de simulation de comportements dynamiques et de contrôle en temps réel. Sur le plan de l’analyse, la thèse a permis de développer des approches novatrices de reconnaissance automatique des qualités de mouvement de l’utilisateur. Enfin, à partir des approches d’analyse et de visualisation des qualités de mouvement, la thèse a donné lieu à l’implémentation d’un ensemble de techniques d’interaction. Elle a appliqué et évalué ses techniques dans le contexte de la pédagogie de la danse et de la performance.

The thesis studies gesture in the context of Human-Computer interaction. It aims at creating new interaction paradigms that offer the user further expressive possibilities based on gestures. The theorists and practitioners of the dance call "movement qualities” (MQ), a notion that conveys expressive content describing the way a gesture is performed. This notion has been rarely taken into consideration in the field of HCI. Our work draws on collaborations with the field of dance to explore the notion of movement qualities and to integrate it as interaction modality. The contributions of the thesis are in the formalism of the notion of movement qualities and evaluation of its integration as interaction modality in terms of user experience. We also provide computational tools for considering MQ in interactive systems in terms of analysis, representation and gesture control methods. On the representational level, our work have demonstrated that physical models based on masses and springs systems offer great opportunities for simulating dynamics related to MQs and for real-time gesture control. On the analysis level, we developed innovative approaches to automatic real time recognition of movement qualities. Finally, we implemented of a set of interaction techniques based on movement qualities that we applied and evaluated in the context of dance pedagogy and performance.; La présente thèse a pour but d’approfondir l’étude du geste dans le cadre de l’interaction Homme Machine. Il s’agit de créer de nouveaux paradigmes d’interaction qui offrent à l’utilisateur de plus amples possibilités d’expression basées sur le geste. Un des vecteurs d’expression du geste, très rarement traité en Interaction Homme Machine, qui lui confère sa coloration et son aspect, est ce que les théoriciens et praticiens de la danse appellent « les qualités de mouvement ». Nous mettons à profit des collaborations avec le domaine de la danse pour étudier la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’intégrer à des paradigmes d’interaction gestuelle. Notre travail analyse les apports de l’intégration des qualités de mouvement comme modalité d’interaction, fournit les outils propices à l’élaboration de cette intégration (en termes de méthodes d’analyse, de visualisation et de contrôle gestuel), en développe et évalue certaines techniques d’interaction.Les contributions de la thèse se situent d’abord dans la formalisation de la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’évaluation de son intégration dans un dispositif interactif en termes d’expérience utilisateur. Sur le plan de la visualisation des qualités de mouvement, les travaux menés pendant la thèse ont permis de démontrer que les modèles physiques masses-ressorts offrent de grandes possibilités de simulation de comportements dynamiques et de contrôle en temps réel. Sur le plan de l’analyse, la thèse a permis de développer des approches novatrices de reconnaissance automatique des qualités de mouvement de l’utilisateur. Enfin, à partir des approches d’analyse et de visualisation des qualités de mouvement, la thèse a donné lieu à l’implémentation d’un ensemble de techniques d’interaction. Elle a appliqué et évalué ses techniques dans le contexte de la pédagogie de la danse et de la performance.

Embodiment and reflexive interaction proved to be effective approaches to music education in childhood. A research challenge consists of merging them. This paper presents BeSound, an application intended to support children in learning the basic elements of composition. Children explore rhythm, melody, and harmony by playing at mimicking objects or characters; the qualities of their whole-body movements are analysed in real-time according to Rudolf Laban’s Theory of Effort and used to control sound. The paper focuses on the design of BeSound and describes the analysis performed to distinguish between direct and flexible movements - the Laban’s Space component - and between light and heavy movements - the Laban’s Weight component.

Endowing search engines with multimodal content indexing, sharing, and retrieval is a research challenge for the ICT community. This paper introduces a use case exploiting embodied cooperation as a paradigm for formulating social queries. It focuses on the assessment of the experience of users to this use case and on the design and exploitation of algorithms suitable to provide search engines with social intelligence.

Perception and attention mechanisms are of great importance for entities situated within complex dynamic environments. With roles extending greatly beyond passive information services about the external environment, such mechanisms actively prioritise, augment and expedite information to ensure that the potentially relevant is made available so appropriate action can take place. Here, we describe the rationale behind endowing artificial entities, or virtual agents, with real-time perception and attention systems. We cover the fundamentals of designing and building such systems. Once equipped, the resulting agents can achieve a more substantial connection with their environment for the purposes of reacting, planning, decision making and, ultimately, behaving.

The MIROR project is an European Union funded project under the 7th Framework programme (Technology-enhanced learning). The project is in its first year and so the aim of this paper is to explain its background and rationale, to describe its aims and structure. The MIROR Project deals with the development of an innovative adaptive system for music learning and teaching based on the reflexive interaction paradigm. The reflexive interaction paradigm is based on the idea of letting users manipulate virtual copies of themselves, through specifically designed machine-learning software referred to as interactive reflexive musical systems (IRMS). MIROR aims at extending the IRMS paradigm with the analysis and synthesis of multisensory expressive gesture to increase its impact on the musical pedagogy of young children. The MIROR platform will be developed in the context of early childhood music education. It will act as an advanced cognitive tutor, designed to promote specific cognitive abilities in the field of music improvisation, composition and body performance, both in formal learning contexts (kindergartens, primary schools, music schools) and informal ones (at home, kinder centers, etc.)..

National audience; This paper presents our ongoing work on an expressive gesture model for the humanoid robot Nao and the virtual agent Greta.