Exercise 1 – Body Motion
Contents
Exercise 1 – Body Motion¶
Research Question:¶
Does an increase in the intensity of a musical performance correlate with an increase in the bodily motion of a performer?
To investigate this issue, we will be utilising the open-source Motion Energy Analysis software, developed by Fabian Ramseyer at the University of Bern. This software was developed initially to aid in the analysis of non-verbal synchrony during psychotherapy; however, it has applications in all situations that require the quantification of human movement.
MEA works by using image differencing. The user defines a series of Regions of Interest (ROIs) – for instance, the head or arm of a musician – and, for each frame of the video, a score is given that shows how much movement occurs within this region. The software is a powerful alternative to expensive motion capture suites and, unlike computer vision approaches, does not require any previous knowledge of coding.
