A Sonification Tool for the Analysis of Large Databases of Expressive Gesture

Expert musical performance is rich with movements that facilitate performance accuracy and expressive communication. Studying these movements quantitatively using high-resolution motion capture systems has been fruitful, but analysis is arduous due to the size of the data sets and performance idiosyncrasies. Compared to visual-only methods, sonification provides an interesting alternative that can ease the process of data analysis and provide additional insights. To this end, a sonification tool was designed in Max/MSP that provides interactive access to synthesis mappings and data preprocessing functions that are specific to expressive movement. The tool is evaluated in terms of its ability to fulfil the goals of sonification in this domain and the goals of expressive movement analysis more generally. Additional benefits of sonification are discussed in light of the expressive and musical context.