Perspectives on gesture from music informatics, performance and aesthetics

This article chronicles the research of the Nordic Network of Music Informatics, Performance and Aesthetics (NNIMIPA), and shows how the milieux bridge the gap between the disciplines involved. As examples, three projects within NNIMIPA involving performance interaction examine the role of audio and gestures in emotional musical expression using motion capture, the visual and auditive cues musicians provide each other in an ensemble when rehearsing, and the decision processes involved when a musician coordinates with other musicians. These projects seek to combine and compare intuitions derived from low-tech instructional music workshops that rely heavily on the use of whole-body gestures with the insights provided by high-tech studies and formal logic models of the performing musician, not only with respect to the sound, but also with regard to the movements of the performer and the mechanisms of group coordination.