Links between music and emotional state have been posited for many years, dating back to Aristotle, and periodically taken up by musicians, musicologists, philosophers and most recently neuroscientists. Mounting evidence suggests that music is used by many as a form of mood regulation and there is a long history of music as therapy, usually realised as performance or group work, with more recent studies showing links between music listening and positive healthcare outcomes. In addition to interest in the relationship between music and emotion, there ha.s been a recent upsurge in research into emotion as a channel for technological and creative interaction with music, multimedia artworks, computers and new digital instruments. It is exploring this aspect of emotion-based interaction that provides the motivation for this thesis, a desire to utilise emotion (and the physiological characteristics associated with affect) as an interaction channel. In order to achieve this, further exploration of the associations between emotion, physiology and music is necessary. As context for my own work, this thesis initially presents an overview of the dominant theories relating to emotions, and in particular their interaction with music and the mechanisms and audio features by which music may induce emotion. An overview and critique of artworks utilising signifiers of affective state is also presented before detailing my own artistic contributions as co-creator of artworks utilising physiological correlates of emotion. An overview of a large-scale public experiment (Emotion In Motion) designed to explore and deepen knowledge of some these issues is presented, along with an analysis of the data collected. This analysis found relationships between specific musical features such as tempo, mode and dynamic range and participant experiences of factors relating to emotions such as valence, arousal and engagement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:673796 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Coghlan, Niall Frederick |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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