The Spatiotemporal Representation of Dance and Music Gestures using Topological Gesture Analysis (TGA)

Abstract

Music Perception vo lu m e 28, issue 1, pp. 93-111, issn 0730-7829, electronic issn 1533-8312 © 2010 by t h e regents o f t h e university o f california. all rights reserved. please d i r e c t all requests f o r permission to p h oto c o p y o r r e p ro d u c e a rt i c l e c o n t e n t t h ro u g h t h e university o f california press's rights a n d permissions w e b s i t e , h t t p ://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. doi:10. 1525/mp.2010.28.1.93 Topological Gesture Analysis (TGA) 93 luiz naveda & marc leman Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium spatiotemporal gestures in music and dance have been approached using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Applying quantitative methods has offered new perspectives but imposed several constraints such as artificial metric systems, weak links with qualitative information, and incomplete accounts of variability. In this study, we tackle these problems using concepts from topology to analyze gestural relationships in space. The Topological Gesture Analysis (TGA) relies on the projection of musical cues onto gesture trajectories, which generates point clouds in a three-dimensional space. Point clouds can be interpreted as topologies equipped with musical qualities, which gives us an idea about the relationships between gesture, space, and music. Using this method, we investigate the relationships between musical meter, dance style, and expertise in two popular dances (samba and Charleston). The results show how musical meter is encoded in the dancer's space and how relevant information about styles and expertise can be revealed by means of simple topological relationships.

Musical Instruments, Body Movement, Space, and Motion Data: Music as an Emergent Multimodal Choreography

“…Researchers use topology to study intrinsic geometric properties of objects that do not depend on a chosen set of coordinates and this process also has been employed in the analysis of dance patterns (Naveda & Leman, 2010). This approach provides very useful notions for interpreting movement data generated by musical performance gestures.…”

“…Quantity of motion (QoM) has been related to expressiveness (Thompson, 2012) and has been used to study the dynamic effects of the bass drum on a dancing audience (Van Dyck et al, 2013), while contraction/expansion of the body can be used to estimate expressivity and emotional states (Camurri, Lagerlöf, & Volpe, 2003). More advanced statistical methods, such as functional principal component analysis and physical modeling, have led to midlevel descriptors, including topological gesture analysis (Naveda & Leman, 2010), curvature and shape (Desmet et al, 2012;Maes & Leman, 2013), and commonalities and individualities in performance (Amelynck, Maes, Martens, & Leman, 2014).…”

The Need for a Cross-Cultural Empirical Musicology

“…The focus here is on trying to define a quantitative methodology for gesture analysis. At my lab, this approach is currently further explored by Denis Amelynck, who focuses on the statistical description of the micro-timing of movements and on bottom-up approaches that allow the specification of, for example, goal points in hand gestures that perform a pattern in response to music (Amelynck, Maes, Martens, & Leman, submitted; see also Naveda and Leman (2010) for spatiotemporal representations that link gesture with music). What we try to gain with this is accuracy of description, theory refinement, explanatory power, perhaps prediction of musical gestural behavior, and modeling.…”

Beating-Time Gestures Imitation Learning for Humanoid Robots

“…Movements in response to music are particularly relevant here as they often reflect the periodic auditory patterning of music. These movements may range from simple foot tapping or head nodding, to more complex forms of dance [8,9]. In the current study, we focus on so-called 'beating-time gestures', which reflect the periodically repeated basic temporal pattern of strong and weak accented beats within music (i.e., 'musical meter') into a corresponding spatiotemporal 'conducting model'.…”