Dr Simon Holland

The Music and Human-Computer Interaction Network (MIN) will connect academics, researchers, SMEs, charities and industrial partners in order to pool and expand ideas, drive new research, and develop collaborative projects around emerging issues in the field. The UK has an excellent track record of research in the two contributing areas, including a number of internationally recognised research centres and organisations around the country. The combined field is broad however, and communication and collaboration between researchers, charities and businesses is essential for both informed, relevant, high-impact research, and for charities and businesses to engage with and creatively explore the possibilities suggested by current research. Research in music and human computer interaction is useful not only to music and musicians - one of the UK's largest industries - but also to research generally into making computers easy to control and understand. Research aimed at making computers fluidly useful for music and musicians has inspired numerous innovations in human computer interaction, for example in gestural interfaces, data gloves and touch interfaces. Many musical activities involve coordinating the whole body, in real-time, often with other people, while also making significant perceptual and cognitive demands. Techniques for wearable motion capture originally developed for musicians are now being used in a range of clinical applications such as managing physical rehabilitation after stroke. Because of this long established synergy between music and HCI, a network that brings together researchers in music and HCI along with interested parties from industry and charities will have the capacity to create new theories, products, approaches and services for musicians, the music industry and computing generally. This network therefore aims to support communication and dialog between academics, charities, and SMEs working in fields such as digital music, creativity and interaction, assistive technology, accessible musical instruments, live performance, music production, haptic and tactile interactions, interactive machine learning and music technology for education.

This research will aim to design, develop and evaluate innovative digital systems to improve health and rehabilitation, with particular reference to stroke and other neurological conditions. The work will draw on leading edge research in human computer interaction and on wearable, haptic and other advanced technologies. Sources of inspiration will include recent work in musical cognition and rhythm perception and production. A key starting point for this research will be recent seminal research on the use of multi-limb haptics and motion sensing to exploit human biological entrainment mechanisms for purposes ranging from musical training to stroke and other neurological rehabilitation.

For distance learning students often it is difficult to facilitate creative studio-based activities in the same format as conventional universities. This can result in a short fall of distance learning students ‘maker-process’ skills and practice. The benefits of haptic technology for applied online education, such as e-crafts and e-design practice, is that it enables and enriches the student’s hands-on approach. Currently haptic technology is able to aid students’ interactions to 3D virtual environments. However, haptics that could afford greater sensory engagements with the maker-process with a fidelity akin to real-world is still to be developed. This project aims to embed haptics within a variety of ‘hands-on’ methods, designed by Open University (Engineering and Innovation school) academics. This will enable the development of a working haptic prototype which will focus on haptics and the ‘maker-process’ aiming to add value to core learning technology resources for undergraduate and post graduate programmes. In line with the OU’s ‘access to learning policies’ there is a greater onus placed onto inclusive learning, and the provision of accessible learning technology to include a variety of learners with a range of needs e.g. sensory impairment, motor skills etc… By increasing access to virtual immersive technologies a wider student body could be given access to engage with their own version of the maker-process using multimodal interactions.