Foster creative music listening through visualization and new media

Abstract

School is a privileged space to open ears and minds to music and arts as a value for the whole life. But music listening in the classroom is not often a collaborative task which involves creativity and collaboration between pupils. Nevertheless, visual arts can be used to foster collaborative creativity and encourage students to listen to unknown music by passing from one art form to another. In a secondary music classroom, teachers are usually confronted with pupils without any special music expertise and interest for classical music. New media like Music Eyes gives everyone the opportunity to create their own visual creation with their classmates according to their personal capabilities.

Our study aims to understand how creative collaboration via visualization with an online tool can foster music listening. How the new media influenced their capacity to involve in the listening task and appreciate this kind of music? What did they finally learn about music ?

In a study with 40 adolescents (13 to 17 years old) with no specific musical background, pupils had to create a visualization on a short classical piece. This collaborative task in groups of 3 pupils) allowed them to choose their visualization depending on their own understanding of the piece. Each group created a short video online and explained their creative process by linking musical and visual elements. Qualitative analysis of teacher-learner dialogue, the final production and feedback from both, two teachers and their pupils had been analyzed.

First results show a growing implication of pupils during the task. Collective decision-making fostered repeated listening, creative visual solutions and shared musical understanding. Pupils seemed to be more motivated and engaged in this new kind of task in the classroom. The new media offered space/possibility for pupils to continue their creative exploration at home. Further investigation is planned to observe pupils with special needs to show the potential of visualization through new media for creative music listening.