The term media education refers to the field of study that deals with

CHILDREN'S STYLE INTERACTION WITH MUSICAL MACHINE
Anna Rita Addessi
Università di Bologna
[email protected]
François Pachet
CSL - Sony, Paris
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND
The term media education refers to the field of study that deals with the relationship between new technology and learning. As
recent research indicates, this topic is also gaining more relevance in the field of music education. The majority of the study
developed up until now regards the new technologies as pedagogical tools (Webster 2002, Gaggiolo 2003), or as “transparent”
instruments that allow, even outside of scholastic contexts, to make and produce music (Folkestad 1996).
THE RESEARCH PROJECT
Our project deals with an area still under-studied, that of interactive musical systems, attempting to understand in what way it can
affect the learning and the musical creativity of children. In particular, we chose to study the young children, 3/5 years old, becouse
in this field, the problem of the interaction between child and machine takes on a fundamental role in the learning process. An
experimental protocol has been established to observe selected categories of conducts of the children facing the interactive musical
system. Following a preliminary experiment (Pachet 2003), we used a particular system, the Continuator, able to produce music in
the same style as the human playing the keyboard (Pachet 2002). The design of the Continuator as a Flow Machine, based on the
theory of Flow by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), and its interaction with the children, similar to the human interactions observed by
Imberty (2002), suggested us that.
METHOD
The experiment was carried out with 27 children of 3/5 years olds, in an Italian kindergarten (Scuola Materna Statale "La Mela",
Quarto, Bologna). We used Roland ED PC-180A keyboard as the interface for the Continuator. Three sessions were held once a day
for 3 consecutive days. In every session, the children were asked to play in 4 different ways: just with the keyboard, with the
keyboard and the Continuator, with another child, and both with another child and the Continuator. The tasks were given in random
order. All the sessions were recorded on video. We also recorded the music played by the children and the Continuator.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
We will show some videos of the children improvising with the system, which is followed by our analysis of their response
according both their age (3-5) and the exposure to the experience. We particularly pay strong attention to discussing why and how
the interaction between children and the Continuator starts, develops and ends.
REFERENCES
Addessi, A. R. & Pachet, F.. "Musical style replication in 3/5 year old children: experiment and analysis", in print.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow. The psychology of optimal experience, Harper & Row.
Folkestad, G. (1996). Computer based creative music making. Young people's music in the digital age, Acta Universitatis
Gotheburgensis, Göteborg.
Gaggiolo A. (2003). Educazione musicale e nuove tecnologie, EDT, Torino.
Imberty M. (2002). "Il bambino e la musica", in J.-J. Nattiez (cur.), Enciclopedia della Musica, Einaudi, Torino, vol. II.
Pachet, F. (2002). "Interacting with a musical learning system: the Continuator", in C. Anagnostopoulou, M. Ferrand, A. Smaill,
editor, Music and Artificial Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2445, Springer Verlag, pp. 119-132.
Pachet F. (2003). "The Continuator and children: preliminary experiments", Sony CSL Technical report.
Pachet F. & Addessi A.R. (2003). "Children reflect on their own playing style: experiments with Continuator and children", ACM
Computers in Entertainment.
Webster P. R. (2002). "Computer-based technology and music teaching and learning", in R. Colwell & C. Richardson (Eds), The
New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, Oxford University Press.
3rd Conference “Understanding and Creating Music”, Caserta, December 2003, 11-15
UCM 2003