Composers and performers communicate emotional intentions through the control of basic musical features such as pitch, loudness, and articulation. The extent to which emotion can be controlled by software through the systematic manipulation of these features has not been fully examined. To address this, we present CMERS, a Computational Music Emotion Rule System for the real-time control of musical emotion that modifies features at both the score level and the performance level. In Experiment 1, 20 participants continuously rated the perceived emotion of works each modified to express happy, sad, angry, tender, and normal. Intended emotion was identified correctly at 78%, with valence and arousal significantly shifted regardless of the works' original emotions. Existing systems developed for expressive performance, such as Director Musices (DM), focus on modifying features of performance. To study emotion more broadly, CMERS modifies features of both score and performance. In Experiment 2, 18 participants rated music works modified by CMERS and DM to express five emotions. CMERS's intended emotion was correctly identified at 71%, DM at 49%. CMERS achieved significant shifts in valence and arousal, DM in arousal only. These results suggest that features of the score are important for controlling valence. The effects of musical training on emotional identification accuracy are also discussed.

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Surround displays are used in simulation, training, and other applications based on virtual worlds. A wide-view display engages the viewer's peripheral vision, providing a more accurate view of the virtual world and therefore a heightened sense of immersion. However, most commercially available surround displays are expensive and complex. We developed a low-cost alternative, which uses a standard digital projector, a hemispherical mirror, and any roughly spherical or cylindrical screen. The software can handle irregular surfaces and will be open-sourced in the next release of the CaveUT/VRGL freeware. We also conducted a pilot study comparing game play in our prototype and game play with a standard desktop monitor. Players using the surround display reported significantly shorter (P = 0.0051) perceived duration of time during play. Reduced awareness of the passage of time during game play was positively correlated with greater engagement and enjoyment.