New Music Performamatics projects launched for the Spring 2009 semester

During the Spring 2009 term, two music performamatics projects will be underway. As part of a National Science Foundation CPATH grant several faculty at UMass Lowell from the Music, Art, English and Computer Science departments are allied in collaborative interdisciplinary projects designed to attract more students to computer science majors through arts-focused experiences.

This semester music education professor Gena Greher and computer science professor Jesse Heines are collaborating on a general education course entitled Sound Thinking:

Course Description:

What is sound? How do we capture it, manipulate it, and harness it in the digital world? The field for multimedia applications is expanding, creating new challenges for artists, technologists, and educators as well as consumers.

This course will explore the intersection of the arts with technology, where students majoring in the arts will interact with those in computer science to explore the art and science of digital audio from the perspective of basic end-user applications. The specific applications to be examined will be chosen based on their abilities to promote creative expression and exploration. We will also consider the underlying code that allows these programs to run and function.

This course will use a learner-centered approach that emphasizes project-based experiences. It will provide students with multiple opportunities to explore, create, and solve problems with music technology. The concept of collaboration is integral to this course. As the workforce moves to a more collaborative structure, it is important that students learn to work in groups with others who may not share their skill sets and levels of expertise, and that they gain experience in problem-solving the myriad issues that arise when using technology.

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Music education professor Alex Ruthmann is also collaborating with computer science professor Jesse Heines as part of a synchronized course. Ruthmann's General Music Methods II  students will be working together with students from Prof. Heines' GUI Programming II course on a project to develop online music composing software. Working together with middle school students at the Bartlett Community Partnership School in Lowell, MA music education and computer science students will collaboratively develop new online music composing applications for use by middle school students. 

Graduate Student Tony Beatrice Featured in MENC Online Article

Tony Beatrice (B.M. in Music Studies '08; M.M. in Music Teaching '09) was recently interviewed for an online article for the MENC (The National Association for Music Education) website entitled: What's Lurking in Your Online Profile, a special feature for the Future Teachers section.

While finishing his Masters degree in Music Teaching here at UMass Lowell, he is Director of Instrumental Music at Pentucket Regional High School and Middle School in West Newbury, MA. Check out his website and online student projects.

UML String Project Winter Concert

Alex Ruthmann presents Keynote at Michigan Music Conference

Keynote: Music Learning and Teaching at the Intersection of Creativity and Technology

Technology fluency and the ability to think creatively are two skills highly prized by employers in the 21st Century knowledge-based economy. As music educators, we are intimately familiar with the possibilities our music classes provide for developing these skills in ways that are personally meaningful and engaging for students. However, new developments in interactive online and portable computing are inspiring totally new cultures of engaging with and experiencing music. In a world where our children and students touch the screens of iPhones or move Nintendo Wii controllers in a whole-body approach to experiencing music, it is imperative that we take the time to understand these new modes of music making and to learn how to better connect to our students' increasingly complex techno-musical culture within our music classes. Today's technologies are enabling a more active engagement with music than ever before. This presentation will offer small glimpses into the musical worlds of today's students and offer insights into how we as music educators can support this culture within our school programs.

Presentation: Social Networking for the Music Classroom

Workshop: Designing and Supporting Composing Experiences with Technology

This extended, hands-on workshop will engage participants with area students in a variety of composing projects. This workshop will focus on how to develop an in-class peer-learning network where students along with the teacher support each other musically and pedagogically. In our dialogue with actual students, special attention will be paid to how the design of the composing experience can enable or hinder students' creative thinking and expression. 

All links and presentation slides are available on Alex Ruthmann's blog at http://www.alexruthmann.com/blog/mmc-2009/.

Visiting Researcher & Curriculum Scholar - Pauline Sameshima

Pauline Sameshima's research and art-making center on looking at both the official and the hidden curriculum. She is interested in learning system designs, technology integration, collaborative and creative scholarship, eco-responsive pedagogies, and alternative forms of knowledge production and acknowledgment.

Pauline teaches math methods for elementary teachers, arts integration, and curriculum theory. She is an exhibiting multi-media artist, lyricist, and designer. Her artwork has been included in three editions of Night of Artists Biographies and Works, a Canadian publication archived at the National Gallery of Canada. She combines her professional interests with her experience teaching elementary public school for 17 years with five years in administration.

Recent accomplishments

• Sameshima, P., Vandermause, R., & Chalmers, S (with Gabriel). (in press). Climbing the ladder with Gabriel: Poetic inquiry with a methamphetamine addict in recovery. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.


• Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (Eds.). (in press). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.


• Sameshima, P. (2007).Seeing Red—a pedagogy of parallax. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. REVIEWS


• Sameshima, P. (2008). Letters to a new teacher: A curriculum of embodied aesthetic awareness. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(2), 29-44.


• Sameshima, P. (2008). AutoethnoGRAPHIC relationality through paradox, parallax, and metaphor. In S. Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo & P. Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with a/r/tography (pp. 45-56). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.


• Sameshima, P. (2008). Pauline Sameshima’s story, “Seeing Red” (with Patrick Slattery, Howard Gardner, Elliot Eisner, Rebecca Carmi and Gregory Cajete). In Four Arrows aka Don Trent Jacobs (Ed.), The authentic dissertation: Alternative ways of knowing, research and representation (pp. 51-60). London: Routledge. 


• Section Chair:  AERA Division B: Curriculum Studies, Interpretive/Qualitative Studies in Curriculum


• Archived featured artist on the AERA Arts-Based Educational Research Site
  

Music, Creativity and Technology: An Example from Actual Practice

Step 1: Find music notation scribbled on a bathroom wall.

Step 2: Take a picture of it with your cell phone camera and post it online to ImageShack:

http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1ix9.jpg

Step 3: Post a link to that photo on Reddit for others to see and discuss:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/7bqjc/music_found_in_the_toilet/

Step 4: Transcribe melody into Noteflight and create a custom arrangement of "Toilet Melody":



click on Noteflight logo to launch score at Noteflight.com

Step 5: Repost Noteflight arrangement back on Reddit for others to discuss:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/7bqjc/music_found_in_the_toilet/

Credits:
Photo = TrippingChilly
Music Arrangement = Skynare

If this is how young people are using technology in their lives, how can we draw on this in the classes we teach?

-Alex Ruthmann

Visiting Computer Musician & Researcher - Andrew Brown

Andrew R. Brown in the Research Manager for the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID), teaches music and sound at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and coordinates the Computational Arts Research Group at QUT. His expertise is in technologies that support creativity and learning, computational music and art, and the philosophy of technology. His current research focuses on the aesthetics of computational processes and adaptive music for interactive entertainment. He is an active computer musician, computational artist, and a builder of software tools that support creativity.

Here at UMass Lowell, we are using his book Computers in Music Education as a text for Technology in Music Education.