My study centers around exploring how individuals perceive rhythm and beats. The presence of a beat often elicits spontaneous synchronized movement, and our ability to remember and perform a rhythm is influenced by its presence. With this in mind, I seek to explore a new symphonic approach that encourages harmonious interaction among participants. Different from the traditional symphony model, this innovative approach allows each performer to listen only to the previous individual. By looping through this pattern to culminating in a final audio composition. Through this asynchronous process, unexpected connections and unique outcomes could emerge. async;symphony offers an exciting opportunity to experience collaborative creation and explore the diversity of human cognition and emotion through sound and music.
How I test it:
The study will involve recruiting participants from different backgrounds and musical trainings to create a 1-2 min piece of audio using a ceramic instrument created by the researcher. The first participant will be asked to choose an instrument from a group of ceramic instruments provided by the researcher and will be asked to play a random sound with the instrument she/he picked. This captured track will become the initial track for the next participant. The second participant will also choose an instrument they interested in from the instrument group provided by the researcher. They will listen to the first participant's track and be asked to ensemble with the sound. The process will continue until several loop of for participants have contributed to the final audio piece, which will be analyzed to determine how the brain processes rhythm and timing in individuals with different backgrounds and musical trainings. The study will focus on the rhythm and how differences in cognitive processing and musical training may result in jarring or cohesive sounds.
