MAS.825J -- Musical Aesthetics & Media Technology

"Music, Mind and Health meets Personal Opera"
Professor Tod Machover ()
TA: Anita Lillie ()
Wednesdays, 2:00-4:30pm, Room E15-443A
MIT Media Lab

• September 5: Introduction - Where Music meets Health [Slides]
  • Syllabus (.pdf)
  • Tod's article on the Brain Opera (.pdf)
  • Joe Paradiso's paper on Brain Opera technology (.pdf)
  • New Yorker article: "My Near-Death Experience" (.jpg)
  • Shaping Minds Musically (.pdf)
  • Also handed out: VALIS CD (Bridge Records), BBC 3 recording of Toy Symphony, CD-Rom of "Minsky Melodies" from the Brain Opera
• September 12: Hyperdisciplinarity - VALIS, Brain Opera and Toy Symphony
  • MP3: Brain Opera (53.6 MB)
  • Movie: Brain Opera Vienna (37.7 MB)
  • Movie: Toy Symphony (224.6 MB)
  • Movie: Music Toys (48.3 MB)
  • PDF: Visuals and production information for Death and the Powers (58.3 MB)
• September 19: The Next Big Thing - Death & the Powers

  Homework:

  • study: http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/Powers_update_3-5-07.pdf
  • libretto: http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/DeathandthePowers_libr2-06.pdf
  • look at: http://www.media.mit.edu/deathandthepowers
  • start reading "This Is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin
• September 26: Frontiers in Music, Mind and Health (with Adam Boulanger)

  Homework:

  • Memory enhancement in healthy older adults using a brain plasticity-based training program: A randomized, controlled study
  • Music, the food of neuroscience?
  • Effects of Cognitive Training Interventions With Older Adults
  • Environmental Influences on Cognitive and Brain Plasticity During Aging
• October 3: Music Visualization (with Anita Lillie) [Slides]

  Homework:

  • Read What you see is what you get: On Visualizing Music (.pdf)
  • Read Golan Levin's Masters thesis: "Painterly Interfaces for Audiovisual Performance"
  • [By the end of the day Monday, Oct. 1] Explore Visual Complexity's collection of music-based projects, look for other music visualization projects online, or read a little more about one you already know about. Send Anita email () with a link to one of your favorite projects, and just a sentence or two about why it's provocative to you. You can point out any implementation of a combination of images and music; it does not have to be a navigation tool, or an animation, although it certainly can be.

  Optional readings:

  • Marc Downie's PhD Thesis: "Choreographing the Extended Agent: performance graphics for dance theater"
  • Foundations of Visual Music (.pdf)
  • Instruments to perform color-music: Two centuries of technological experimentation
  • Visual Music: Searching for an Aesthetic
• October 10, 2:00-4:30 (date shift due to Sponsor Week): Voice and Identity (with Nina Young)

  The topic of this class is going to be "Human Voice and Identity". This lecture will be devoted to analyzing the human voice and its role in music. In preparation for class please listen to a selection (of at least 5, but more would be great) of the recommended listening. Listening notes have been provided to add context to the music. While listening please consider the role the human voice is taking in each selection. Some of these selections are concert music, others are more culturally and spiritually based. Consider some of the following ideas:

  • voice and speech
  • voice and rhythm
  • voice and melody
  • voice and timbre
  • other instruments mimicking the human voice
  • creation of music that matches the human voice
  • dehumanizing the voice
  • voice/song and cultural identity
  • voice/song and spirituality
  • voice/song and healing
  • how will the voice be used in the future (art, healing, spirituality, politics, etc)
  • the human voice as a method of personal archiving

  Homework:
  Read the listening notes. The listening recordings and recommended readings are available here.

• October 17: Class Discussion about MMH and Death and the Powers

  Release date of Oliver Sacks' "Musicophilia" (required reading)

  Also, please feel free to discuss Radiohead's new album at our wiki page.

• To Be Rescheduled (was Oct 18): Directing Powers

  Special session with Diane Paulus, theatrical director of Death & the Powers

• October 24: The Future of Personal Archiving

  Invited guest: Professor Deb Roy, MIT Media Lab, Cognitive Machines Group

  Homework:

  • TotalRecall: Visualization and Semi-Automatic Annotation of Very Large Audio-Visual Corpora
  • Contextual Factors in Word Learning: Analysis of Ultra-dense Longitudinal Data

• October 31: Sacks' "Musicophilia" and Levitan's "This Is Your Brain on Music"
• November 7: Music, Mind and Meaning

  Invited guest: Professor Marvin Minsky, MIT Media Lab
  Minsky's "The Emotion Machine" is required reading; read by this date

  Homework:

  • Read Minsky's classic paper Music, Mind, and Meaning

• November 14: Creativity and Plasticity

  Invited guest: Professor Ed Boyden, MIT Media Lab

  Homework:

  • Cerebral blood flow associated with creative performance: A comparative study
  • Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight
  • The Functional Neuroanatomy of the Placebo Effect

• November 21 (change day for Thanksgiving?): Personal Opera

  Invited guest: Paul Reeve, Director of Education, Royal Opera House (London)

• November 28: Brain Imaging and Musical Ability

  Invited guest: Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, Director: Neuroimaging Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston

• December 5: "Fashion Day" @ MIT Media Lab (presentation of relevant class projects)
• * December 7: (extra session, 2:00-4:30pm) Future of Sound

  Invited guests: audio gurus from Bowers & Wilkins, London (will be in residence all week)

• December 12: Class Discussion, preliminary project review
• December 19: Final Project Presentations

  Projects:

  • Peter Torpey's documentary
  • Anita Lillie's last.fm tag browser

Required reading:

• This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel Levitan (Plume paperback)
• The Emotion Machine, by Marvin Minsky (Simon & Schuster)
• Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks (Knopf, comes out on 10/17)