Interacting with the Music Paint Machine: Relating the constructs of flow experience and presence

Dalcroze meets technology: integrating music, movement and visuals with the Music Paint Machine

“…This general objective is translated into a set of more concrete goals. A first goal is the development of musical creativity by inviting learners to be playful with musical parameters and by provoking an optimal experience (Addessi and Pachet 1999;Csikszentmihalyi 1990;Deliège and Wiggins 2006;Kratus 1991;Nijs et al 2012;Woszczynski, Roth, and Segars 2002). A second goal is the development of an embodied understanding of music by integrating body movement as an essential component of musical expression and by providing a multimodal experience in which body movement and music converge into a common visual stimulus, that is, the digital painting (e.g.…”

“…In this way learners can move from exploration and experimentation towards carefully designed exercises. A fourth feature is the ability to tailor the system to the conditions of an optimalor flowexperience in order to elicit such an experience (Chen, Wigand, and Nilan 1999;Csikszentmihalyi 1990;Nijs et al 2012;Nijs and Leman 2014). The system allows the design of activities that have clear goals, carefully balance skills and challenge and provide immediate and unambiguous feedback on what is being played.…”

“…Therefore, in the linear approach, the musician has to partially recalibrate the bodily attunement to the music. A possible alternative approach, as advocated by the MPM (Nijs and Leman 2014), is to integrate non-instrumental movements right from the start in the instrumental musical learning process to provoke a bodily attunement to the music's expressive affordances with the instrument at hand. Such an approach may allow developing musicians to explore their musical creativity and expressivity beyond the mere reproduction of a score, whereby the exploration of gestural (or: choreographic) ideas in relation to the music is the starting point of an individual perspective on the music rather than prior knowledge of established styles and performance conventions (Hubrich 2016;Nijs 2017;Schroeder and Newland 2013).…”

“…This article proposes to connect emerging technology-based approaches to music educational approaches that stood the test of time and that, as such, may inspire new educational technologies to become a bridge between tradition and innovation. By way of example, it discursively elaborates on the possible connections between a specific technology, the Music Paint Machine (MPM, Nijs and Leman 2014), and a specific educational approach, the Dalcroze approach (Jaques-Dalcroze 2000; Greenhead, Habron, and Mathieu 2016;Juntunen 2016;Mead 1994;Wedin 2015).…”

On the use of a multimedia platform for music education with handicapped children: A case study

“…The evaluation of this tool was done with musicians (Nijs et al, 2012), and the authors focused on the relationship between flow experience and presence. Results showed that Music Paint Machine has a didactic relevance for learning to improvise and to stimulate creativity, and that there is a significantly strong correlation between flow and presence while engaging with an interactive music system.…”