In October 2020 I graduated from the master New Media Design with this master thesis on emotion-congruity in social ads. I received an 8 from my thesis supervisor Neil Cohn, who was a big support and inspiration for this big piece of writing. I am proud with the result and I hope you enjoy it as well!
In this blog post, I would like to apply Bernd Brabec de Mori’s (2015) theory on how unspoken music can affect people, to a case study. The case study for this comparative analysis will be the music duo Dead Can Dance.
For the course “Cognition of Visual Narratives” we had to analyze a case study of one particular modality according to Neil Cohn’s theory for Visual Narrative Grammar. Visual Narrative Grammar is “the organization of meaning into a well-formed presentation” (Cohn, 2019a; Cohn, 2019b), “with the function to organize or package semantic information in a cohesive order” (Cohn, 2019c; Cohn, 2019d).
For the course “Creativity and Innovation” I had to invent a product that is able to stimulate creativity for groups. At various primary schools, children get musical education. However, it appears that many teachers are unfamiliar with how to stimulate musical creativity during music lessons (Barnes, 2001; Byrne, 2005; Sinnamon, Moran & O’Connell, 2012). This is a serious problem considering that creativity is an important element in musical education (Robertson, 1999; Webster, 2002). This is especially true for the composing lessons in which the students have to write their own music (Baker & MacDonald, 2013). That is why a tool is needed to enhance this creativity.
For the course “Creativity and Innovation” I had to invent a product that is able to stimulate creativity for individuals. As more and more people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (“Facts and Figures,” 2018), I chose this group as my target group. Alzheimer’s disease also causes other symptoms than memory loss. One of those is depression (Cerejeira, Lagarto & Mukaetova-Ladinska, 2012). It is estimated that 40% of patients with Alzheimer suffer from depression symptoms (“Depression,” n.d.). While there are antidepressants for Alzheimer patients with depression, there is not enough evidence that supports whether these medications are effective for Alzheimer patients in particular (Cerejeira et al., 2012). Therefore, different approaches are needed to help those patients.
Voor mijn pre-master communicatiewetenschappen kreeg ik de opdracht een individueel onderzoek op te zetten en uit te werken met als onderwerp ‘reviews’. Na veel literatuuronderzoek gedaan te hebben, vond ik uiteindelijk toch een manier om mijn onderzoek ook over muziek te doen. En ik moet zeggen, ik ben ontzettend blij met het resultaat dat mijn onderzoek opleverde. Mijn verwachtingen werden namelijk bevestigd!
Ter afsluiting van mijn bachelor muziekwetenschap schreef ik een scriptie over de invloed van muziek op de (stereo)typering van etnische minderheden in de serie Master of None.
‘When I am laid, laid in earth. May my wrongs create no trouble, no trouble in thy breast’. This mesmerizing sentence illustrates the enchanting power of Nicole Beutler’s opera remake of the famous semi-opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. The remake called Dido Dido revolves around the last aria of the opera called ‘When I am laid in Earth’, also known as ‘Dido’s Lament’. In this aria the Queen of Carthage, Dido, kills herself after she is left heartbroken by the love of her life, the Trojan hero Aeneas. This tragic opera remake has received a lot of good reviews. Most of them saying the performance is ‘touching’, ‘beautifully pure’, and ‘a tearjerker’. That the performance got several positive and emotional reactions from different newspapers is not a coincidence. Beutler used every possible skill to captivate and enchant the audience to make them feel how Dido felt when she was left by her true love. This paper illustrates how Beutler does this: how she constructs a specific kind of spectatorship to captivate and enchant the audience.
Lees verder
In midden jaren 80 werd de platenindustrie getroffen door de introductie van de cd en later de opkomst van massaal illegaal downloaden. De verkoop van muziek daalde enorm in de daaropvolgende jaren. In 2012 werden nog maar de helft van de albums verkocht in vergelijking met 2001. Ondanks dit gegeven wordt er meer muziek geconsumeerd dan ooit tevoren. Het gaat voor het grootste deel om (illegale) downloads en streams. Voornamelijk de vinylindustrie voelde de klap hard aankomen. De verkoop daalde vanaf de jaren 90 enorm en in platenzaken werden lp’s massaal vervangen door cd’s. Ook na de opkomst van de downloadbare muziek bleef de vinylverkoop op een laag pitje staan. Totdat het jaar 2008 aanbrak. Plotseling leken de verkoopcijfers weer toe te nemen en kreeg de vinylindustrie weer het vertrouwen. De verkoop van muziek bleef laag door de vele illegale downloads, maar in verhouding nam de vinylverkoop flink toe. Dit lijkt een vreemd gevolg. Waarom koopt men vinyl terwijl tegenwoordig bijna alle muziek zo makkelijk gedownload kan worden?
On February 14, 2016, hip-hop artist and rapper Kendrick Lamar performed his song ‘Alright’ at the Grammy Awards. This performance was broadcasted by the American commercial broadcast television network CBS. CBS aired Lamar’s performance on TV under the condition he changed some lines of ‘Alright’. According to CBS, these lines would be inappropriate for TV. Lamar changed the lines, but during his performance he let the words ‘fuck it’ slip out. CBS decided to cut the audio during the unaltered line. Hereby CBS did not only preventatively censor Lamar, but also repressively. In this paper I will answer the question if CBS did the right thing censoring Lamar’s performance, while I will focus mainly on the lyrics of the song.
Mariting 