Photo: Annica Thomsson, UiO
I had the privilege of being a postdoctoral researcher at RITMO, moving there in the autumn of 2018 after one year at the Department of Musicology at UiO. It was the first time I truly felt part of a bigger research family and I will forever be thankful to everyone at RITMO for making me feel at home every day.
When I think about my time at RITMO, I think about faces and smiles, and I believe the greatest part about RITMO (even with all its great resources to make sure everyone has all the tools and opportunities to be at their best) is the group of brilliant, fun people that comprise the Centre.
Micromotion and music
My main research at RITMO dealt with quantifying and explaining very small body movements induced by music. As part of the MICRO project, my colleagues and I explored whether music indeed makes people move and why.
Photo: Alexander Refsum Jensenius, UiO.
The MICRO project led to several publications on involuntary movement responses to music and I believe we have made contributions to the understanding of music cognition and perception, setting the stage for further research, and pointing at specific music features (pulse clarity) and personality traits (empathy) that can help us to better map human responses to music and sound.
The project led also to a large motion capture data set of people trying not to move to music under a range of conditions, and we have made such data openly available for others to continue exploring what we started but also to use for alternative approaches and for any related research questions.
MICRO had also artistic objectives and this gives me the opportunity to have great experiences using technology and research to explore new interfaces for musical expression. These experiences brought our research closer to other audiences and it gave me a completely different perspective on scientific work and outreach.
Human movement research
Being a part of RITMO allowed me to research other topics related to my human movement science background. I conducted studies on performing musicians and the movement and motor control features that lead to fluency in music performance. I was also involved in studies of physiological responses of audiences to live music and the influence of rhythmic stimuli on sport performance. This research also led to publications and presentations and I hope we can continue collaborating on what we started.
All these experiences together made my time at RITMO one of great learning and development both as a researcher and as a person and I will truly miss the diverse and interdisciplinary environment I was part of.
I want to thank all my research colleagues and the administrative staff at RITMO to make this possible, especially Professor Alexander Jensenius for trusting me with his amazing project and Professor Rolf Inge God?y for wisdom and inspiration.