Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology

Digital media handles music as encoded physical energy, but humans consider music interms of beliefs, intentions, interpretations, experiences, evaluations, and significations. In thisbook, drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology, Marc Lemanproposes an embodied cognition approach to music research that will help bridge this gap. Assumingthat the body plays a central role in all musical activities, and basing his approach on ahypothesis about the relationship between musical experience (mind) and sound energy (matter), Lemanargues that the human body is a biologically designed mediator that transfers physical energy to amental level--engaging experiences, values, and intentions--and, reversing the process, transfersmental representation into material form. He suggests that this idea of the body as mediator offersa promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Leman proposes that, undercertain conditions, the natural mediator (the body) can be extended with artificial technology-basedmediators. He explores the necessary conditions and analyzes ways in which they can be studied.Leman outlines his theory of embodied music cognition, introducing a model that describes therelationship between a human subject and its environment, analyzing the coupling of action andperception, and exploring different degrees of the body's engagement with music. He then examinespossible applications in two core areas: interaction with music instruments and music search andretrieval in a database or digital library. The embodied music cognition approach, Leman argues, canhelp us develop tools that integrate artistic expression and contemporary technology.Marc Leman isResearch Professor and Head of the Department of Musicology at Ghent University, Belgium.

Marc Leman is Research Professor and Head of the Department of Musicology at Ghent University, Belgium.