Finn Upham

• Nielsen, Nanette; Haswell-Martin, Remy; Upham, Finn & H?ffding, Simon (2025). Embodied, Exploratory Listening in the Concert Hall. Behavioral Sciences. ISSN 2076-328X. 15(5). doi: 10.3390/bs15050710.
• Upham, Finn; H?ffding, Simon & Rosas, Fernando E. (2024). The Stilling Response: From Musical Silence to Audience Stillness. Music & Science. ISSN 2059-2043. 7, p. 1¨C14. doi: 10.1177/20592043241233422.
• Upham, Finn; Lee, Jin Ha & Park, So Yeon (2023). Audience reconstructed: social media interaction by BTS fans during live stream concerts. Frontiers in Psychology. ISSN 1664-1078. 15, p. 1¨C17. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1214930. Show summary

  COVID-19-motivated social distancing made online concerts common practice in 2020 and 2021, with millions logging into streaming sites to see their favorite artists perform in realtime. For some fans, watching alone at home may have been enough, but concert-concurrent surges of social media activity suggest many virtual performance attendees are doing more. To understand why fans would turn their attention from these precious performance streams to social media, we explored Twitter engagement during four live streamed concerts performed by the Kpop group BTS in 2021. In public Tweets sampled by either concert hashtag or a predefined stream of users and keywords, we evaluated patterns in posting rates in relation to concert program events and investigated the content patterns in 1,200 Tweets sampled from four ranges of popularity (number of Retweets during the concert). Across concerts, short "Shout" Tweets surged at the start of songs, while the rate of retweets often fell during musical performances and shot up when BTS was off stage. Content analysis on the subsample found the materials most widely shared were informational or featured concert visuals, mimicking how fans use their phones at in-person concerts. Most original posts received few Retweets and were more personal and expressive of admiration for the performers. Comparison between the samples (concert hashtag vs. stream) also suggests users were strategic in using or omitting official concert hashtags with the strongest differences in the most widely disseminated content. Postings on Twitter during these performances seemed principally directed to fellow fans and audience members, by individuals choosing to share their own excitement and check in with others. By leveraging their existing social media networks, these concert attendees constructed a collective and interactive concert space, connecting with friends and strangers in the crowd and helping each other capture a richer experience than any broadcasting platform currently supports.

• Riaz, Maham; Upham, Finn; Burnim, Kayla; Bishop, Laura & Jensenius, Alexander Refsum (2023). Comparing inertial motion sensors for capturing human micromotion, Proceedings of the Sound and Music Computing Conference 2023. SMC Network . ISSN 978-91-527-7372-7. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.8316051. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The paper presents a study of the noise level of accelerometer data from a mobile phone compared to three commercially available IMU-based devices (AX3, Equivital, and Movesense) and a marker-based infrared motion capture system (Qualisys). The sensors are compared in static positions and for measuring human micromotion, with larger motion sequences as reference. The measurements show that all but one of the IMU-based devices capture motion with an accuracy and precision that is far below human micromotion. However, their data and representations differ, so care should be taken when comparing data between devices.

• Swarbrick, Dana; Upham, Finn; Erdem, Cagri; Jensenius, Alexander Refsum & Vuoskoski, Jonna Katariina (2022). Measuring Virtual Audiences with The MusicLab App: Proof of Concept. In Michon, Romain; Pottier, Laurent & Orlarey, Yann (Ed.), Proceedings of the 19th Sound and Music Computing Conference. SMC Network. ISSN 9782958412609. p. 532¨C539. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.6798290. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  We present a proof of concept by using the mobile application MusicLab to measure motion during a livestreamed concert and examining its relation to musical features. With the MusicLab App, participants¡¯ own smartphones¡¯ inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors can be leveraged to record their motion and their subjective experiences collected through survey responses. The MusicLab Lockdown Rave was an Algorave (live-coded dance music) livestreamed concert featuring prolific performers Renick Bell and Khoparzi. They livestreamed for an international audience who wore their smartphones with the MusicLab App while they listened/danced to the performances. From their acceleration, we computed quantity of motion and compared it to musical features that have previously been associated with music-related motion, namely pulse clarity and low and high spectral flux. By encountering challenges and implementing improvements, the MusicLab App has become a useful tool for researching music-related motion.

View all works in Cristin

• Upham, Finn (2024). Publikumsbevegelse i infrar?dt lys. Show summary

  Video demonstration audience motion measurement using infrared camera, lamps, and reflective bands.

• Upham, Finn (2024). SUSY Limits. Show summary

  Surrogate Synchrony (SUSY) is a strategy for identifying some shared information in parallel recordings of the same type of signal from people in some interactive context, originally in motion trajectories between people in dialogue (specifically therapy sessions), but it has been applied to many types of measurements taken for people in musical interaction conditions as well. Most recently in used in a Scientic Reports paper (Tschacher, et al., 2023) on physiological and motion measurements of an audience during a classical music concert, it has been applied in similar contexts a few times over without a reconning of how synchronised the shared information must be to be counted (Seibert, et al., 2019; Tschacher, et al., 2019). From my experience with similar measurements and other approaches to shared information in time series, I am very concern that this method is missing much of what readers (and maybe some authors) assume it is capturing in these musical contexts. The current notebook is only on dyadic SUSY with average non-absolute-valued Fisher's Z transformed cross-correlations, though many of the consequences generalise to the multivariate derivative (M. What I am trying to show is not an opinion about where this technique could be useful, these are the mathematical facts of what kinds of "synchrony" it is capable of assessing. As it stands, there are surely some published false negatives from using this method without sensitivity to what it cannot see.

• Upham, Finn (2024). M?linger av orkestermusikerne. Show summary

  Video demonstration of cardiac and respiratory measurements from an orchestra. Originally to be played during Lydo 2024 concert series by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra.

• Upham, Finn (2024). Heart Rate consistency and Heart Rate Variability constraints in orchestral musicians across performances.
• Lartillot, Olivier; Swarbrick, Dana; Upham, Finn & Cancino-Chac¨®n, Carlos Eduardo (2023). Video visualization of a string quartet performance of a Bach Fugue: Design and subjective evaluation.
• Upham, Finn (2023). Making the best of it: Constraints and opportunities in studying complex human musicality.
• Upham, Finn (2023). Insight into human respiration through the study of orchestras and audiences.
• Upham, Finn & Christophersen, Bj?rn Morten (2023). Bodies in Concert: RITMO project with the Stavanger symfoniorkester.
• Upham, Finn & Oddekalv, Kjell Andreas (2023). Fingers and Tongues: Appreciating Rap Flows through Proprioceptive Interaction in Rhythm Hive. Show summary

  Rhythm games have been studied for their potential to develop interest in music making (Cassidy and Paisley, 2013) and transferable musicianship skills (Richardson and Kim, 2011), but how might they influence players appreciation for specific musical works? Proprioceptive interaction, a concept by game designer Matt Bloch (Miller, 2017), refers to changes in a game player's perception of music as they practice specific movements to it. By drawing attention to coincidental sounds, players can develop their hearing and appreciation for nuances of production and performance. Many fans of rap enjoy performances in languages they do not speak themselves. Without specific language skills, expertise in rap performance, and/or time to learn lyrics phonetically, their experience of a rap flow is hampered by an inability to imitate and imagine the generative action of performance. Rhythm Hive is a mobile rhythm game based on the music of BTS, Enhyphen, and TXT, Kpop groups with substantial followings outside of Korea. Game play presents players with finger choreographies to these groups¡¯ hit songs, tapping sequences to the vocal performances across four to seven positions in a line. For these groups¡¯ many non-rapping and non- Korean-speaking fans, playing Rhythm Hive may offer deeper understanding of performances by rappers like RM, Suga, and J-Hope. Through expert analysis of rap performance, transcriptions of game play, and reflections on the experience of playing Rhythm Hive, we consider shared structure between the prescribed finger choreographies and the rap flows they accompany. We studied rap verses from four BTS songs along side their Easy and Hard level tapping sequences (vocal versions only) to identify parallels in rhythm, segmentation, repetition, and accents. Easy mode choreographies tend to mark their relationship to rap vocals by hitting the start of lines and then articulating structure with repeated contours tapped on quarter and eighth notes. Hard mode choreographies tend to hit every rapped syllable and incorporate more gestural flourishes to mark pitch changes, ending and internal rhymes, and interesting breaks from a steady 16th note flow. Both Easy and Hard tappings sequences consistently follow the rap track when it deviates from a quantized beat. The finger choreographies of Rhythm Hive illuminate rap performances by directing and rewarding players¡¯ attention to details of flows that may otherwise be missed. Game feedback pushes players to replicate delivery microtiming, while spatial patterns underline linguistic and rhythmic structure. Hard mode tapping sequences articulate distinguishing characteristics of specific rap styles, given players tangible sensitivity to degrees of technicality and nuances of genre. While fans may be motivated to play rhythm games like Rhythm Hive out of a preexisting love of the music and bands, tapping along offers them a chance to attend to, appreciate, and even rehearse key aspects of these rappers¡¯ expert performance choices, regardless of how well they might follow by ear.

• Upham, Finn (2023).