Home institution: University of Western Ontario
Visiting Research Fellow, April to July 2020
Project: Music and Embodied Social Interaction
In piano duos, rock bands, or orchestras with more than a hundred players, musicians coordinate their actions and the sounds they produce. How is such coordination achieved? How do ensemble members communicate and respond to each other, gesturally or sonically? What technologies, techniques, or musical features facilitate such interactions? This project combines music analysis with cognitive science and phenomenology. It considers interaction as an important aspect of musical organisation, while using music to reflect on human embodiment, technology, and culture.
Biography
Jonathan De Souza is an associate professor in the Don Wright Faculty of Music and an associate member of the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario. His research develops interdisciplinary perspectives on music, embodiment, and technology. He is the author of Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition (Oxford University Press, 2017).