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Preparing ourselves to craft a musical world, Roddy Cowie, professor of psychology, Queen's University, Belfast
(Seminar/Conference)
Technology has made music a pervasive feature of life, and is currently giving people the ability to tailor musical experience to a far greater extent than ever before. The understanding of what that means remains very shallow, which limits the ability to foresee and shape the transformation. Psychological and musicological research is beginning to illuminate some of the things that music does. Intellectual and/or aesthetic satisfaction certainly deserve attention, but not to the exclusion of other functions. There is solid research that music evokes emotion. That means can be used to regulate emotion, which is increasingly recognized as an important activity. Newer research shows that music also expresses identity, and shapes social interactions. Other areas are emerging, including music's ability to synchronize activity and feeling, which also has a social impact. Music defines the character of spaces, and empowers individuals by allowing them to set that character. It also empowers language, by heightening the emotional impact of words and making them memorable.
About the speaker:
Roddy Cowie studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Stirling and the University of California, Los Angeles, as an undergraduate, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex, where he conducted research on relationships between human and machine vision. He was appointed lecturer in the psychology department at Queen's University, Belfast, in 1975, senior lecturer in 1991, and professor in 2003. Cowie's core research area is perception, particularly cases where the quality of experience is important, but hard to describe. He has developed a variety of formal techniques to capture these elusive impressions and his work has spanned several areas, including picture perception, the experience of hearing loss, and the perception of music. The most sustained theme has been the perception of emotion -- not stereotypical outbursts of emotion, but the emotional coloring that pervades everyday life.
This lecture is co-presented by the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT), Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science, Center for Human-Computer Interaction, and Virginia Tech's Department of Music. ICAT supports on-going talks and opportunities to explore the boundaries and synergies between art, science, engineering, and design.
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