Most people listen to music by the natural use of electronic media. Due to the technical transmission and presentation, performed music is transformed in many respects. Inter alia it is dissolved away from its sounding, spatial, temporal and social conditions. This changes the aesthetics as well as the use of music.

The project medium and emotion investigates, how the emotional effects of live performed music and technically reproduced music differ. For instance, the further development of audio technology implies the assumption that an technical enhancement of the transmission and a more extensive and precise simulation of the physical features of a music performance allows for a more intense aesthetic and emotional experience.

Besides this hypothesis, further factors potentially apt to influence emotional effects of music are investigated, e.g. typical transmission artefacts of historic media and social situations of music listening using media. For the realisation of the experimental conditions modern technologies of virtual acoustics such as dynamic binaural synthesis and wave field synthesis are applied allowing for a plausible simulation and immediate comparableness of the experimental conditions. Findings being applicable with regard to music production and restoration of sound recordings, as well as fundamental insights into the genesis of emotional response to music are expected.

More information: http://www.ak.tu-berlin.de/menue/forschung/forschungsprojekte/