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Affective computing allows computers to monitor and influence people’s affects, in other words emotions. Currently, there is a lot of research exploring what can be done with this technology. There are many fields, such as education, healthcare, and marketing, that this technology can transform. However, it is important to question what should be done. There are unique ethical considerations in regards to affective computing that haven't been explored. The purpose of this study is to understand the user’s perspective of affective computing in regards to the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Code of Ethics, to ultimately start developing a better understanding of these ethical concerns. For this study, participants were required to watch three different videos and answer a questionnaire, all while wearing an Emotiv EPOC+ EEG headset that measures their emotions. Using the information gathered, the study explores the ethics of affective computing through the user’s perspective.
The purpose of this project is to create a useful tool for musicians that utilizes the harmonic content of their playing to recommend new, relevant chords to play. This is done by training various Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) on the lead sheets of 100 different jazz standards. A total of 200 unique datasets were produced and tested, resulting in the prediction of nearly 51 million chords. A note-prediction accuracy of 82.1% and a chord-prediction accuracy of 34.5% were achieved across all datasets. Methods of data representation that were rooted in valid music theory frameworks were found to increase the efficacy of harmonic prediction by up to 6%. Optimal LSTM input sizes were also determined for each method of data representation.
My proposed project is an educational application that will seek to simplify the<br/>process of internalizing the chord symbols most commonly seen by those learning<br/>musical improvisation. The application will operate like a game, encouraging the<br/>user to identify chord tones within time limits and award points for successfully<br/>doing so.
Affective video games are still a relatively new field of research and entertainment. Even
so, being a form of entertainment media, emotion plays a large role in video games as a whole.
This project seeks to gain an understanding of what emotions are most prominent during game
play. From there, a system will be created wherein the game will record the player’s facial
expressions and interpret those expressions as emotions, allowing the game to adjust its difficulty
to create a more tailored experience.
The first portion of this project, understanding the relationship between emotions and
games, was done by recording myself as I played three different games of different genres for
thirty minutes each. The same system that would be used in the later game I created to evaluate
emotions was used to evaluate these recordings.
After the data was interpreted, I created three different versions of the same game, based
on a template created by Stan’s Assets, which was a version of the arcade game Stacker. The
three versions of the game included one where no changes were made to the gameplay
experience, it simply recorded the player’s face and extrapolated emotions from that recording,
one where the speed increased in an attempt to maintain a certain level of positive emotions, and
a third where, in addition to increasing the speed of the game, it also decreased the speed in an
attempt to minimize negative emotions.
These tests, together, show that the emotional experience of a player is heavily dependent
on how tailored the game is towards that particular emotion. Additionally, in creating a system
meant to interact with these emotions, it is easier to create a one-dimensional system that focuses
on one emotion (or range of emotions) as opposed to a more complex system, as the system
begins to become unstable, and can lead to undesirable gameplay effects.
Using two interviews with local Phoenix professional chamber musicians, this document aims to compare their experiences across musical styles to find common ground and understand the value of chamber music as a professional and educational tool.
The topic of my thesis is Louis Armstrong and his influence on society and the Civil Rights Movement. The intent is to demonstrate how Louis Armstrong aided the Civil Rights Movement by using his music to promote social justice and racial equality. The focus will be on the context of African-Americans, their social status, and rights from the early 1900s to the mid-1900s. I will connect this to important events in that time such as the fight against Jim Crow Laws and how Louis Armstrong played a role in ending segregation. He accomplished this by pushing the movement forward through speeches, fund-raising events, and his innovation of jazz. Armstrong’s gift was a form of swing jazz that advanced improvisation and emotion of music.
He was criticized for playing to segregated audiences and was thought to keep offensive stereotypes alive. However, Louis Armstrong battled against these conspiracies by performing fund-raising events and through public political stances against the oppression of African-Americans. As an example, he was outspoken about his disapproval of government and the public for their treatment of the nine African-American students enrolled at Little Rock. This resulted in the first time the school would be unsegregated between whites and blacks. Louis Armstrong worked hard in the fight against segregation and used his mastery of jazz to advance the civil rights movement. Finally, I will make a proposal as to how society can learn from Louis Armstrong and how to inspire new innovative forms of positively influencing society to help the less fortunate.
For the second part of my thesis I talk about how I came to create the creative project aspect. I discuss how and why I designed the narrative that I did, and also analyzed the music I have created to illustrate how I implemented the various methods of musical storytelling that I detail in the first part of the paper. Lastly, I discuss my plans for publication and release of the creative project.
The third part of this thesis is a sample of the creative project. There is a version of the narrative that goes along with the creative project, as well as one of the eight pieces of original music on the creative project, entitled Journey.
Overall, I found that music does have meaning, it is just meaning that society ascribes to it based off of artistic intent and context, and as to whether music should mean anything, I believe that this is a question best left to be answered on an individual basis. Music can be whatever it wants to be.