Validating kinematic displays for the perception of musical performance

Human gestures contain certain characteristics and meanings in communication and represent a link between intention and body. This paper describes a pilot study investigating the role of ancillary musical gestures in understanding musical meaning from the listener’s standpoint. We conducted a perceptual experiment using motion-capture recordings of musicians. Participants were presented video recordings and reconstructed point-light displays of music performances. By asking them to rate certain musicrelated parameters we found that abstract motions of the point-light displays yielded similar ratings to those of the real recordings. This suggests that pure body motion seems to be sufficient to communicate certain musical impressions.