Back Zacharias Vamvakousis defends his PhD thesis on September 16th

Zacharias Vamvakousis defends his PhD thesis on September 16th

15.09.2016

 

16 Sep 2016

Zacharias Vamvakousis defends his PhD thesis entitled "Digital Musical Instruments for People with Physical Disabilities" on Friday September 16th 2016 at 17:30h in room 55.316 of the Communication Campus of the UPF.

The jury of the defense is: Jose Manuel Iñesta (Alicante University), Hendrik Purwins (Aalborg University), Alfonso Perez (UPF)

Thesis abstract:
Playing a musical instrument has been shown to have a positive impact in the life of individuals in many different ways. Nevertheless, due to physical disabilities, some people are unable to play conventional musical instruments. In this dissertation, we consider different types of physical disabilities and implement specific digital musical instruments suitable for people with disabilities of each type. Firstly, we consider the case of people with limited sensorimotor upper limb functions, and we construct low-cost digital instruments for three different scenarios. Results indicate that the constructed prototypes allow musical expression and improve the quality of life of these users. Secondly, we consider disabilities such as tetraplegia or locked-in syndrome with unaffected eye-movements. For individuals with such conditions, we propose the EyeHarp, a gaze-controlled digital music instrument, and develop specific target selection algorithms which maximize the temporal and spatial accuracy required in music performance. We evaluate the instrument on subjects without physical disabilities, both from an audience and performer perspective. Results indicate that the EyeHarp has a steep learning curve and it allows expressive music performances. Finally, we examine the case of brain-controlled music interfaces. We mainly focus in auditory event related potential-based interfaces. In particular, we investigate and evaluate how timbre, pitch and spatialization auditory cues affect the performance of such interfaces.

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