Current Search: creativity (x)
View All Items
Pages
- Title
- Functional Scaffolding for Musical Composition: A New Approach in Computer-Assisted Music Composition.
- Creator
-
Hoover, Amy, Stanley, Kenneth, Wu, Annie, Laviola II, Joseph, Anderson, Thaddeus, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
While it is important for systems intended to enhance musical creativity to define and explore musical ideas conceived by individual users, many limit musical freedom by focusing on maintaining musical structure, thereby impeding the user's freedom to explore his or her individual style. This dissertation presents a comprehensive body of work that introduces a new musical representation that allows users to explore a space of musical rules that are created from their own melodies. This...
Show moreWhile it is important for systems intended to enhance musical creativity to define and explore musical ideas conceived by individual users, many limit musical freedom by focusing on maintaining musical structure, thereby impeding the user's freedom to explore his or her individual style. This dissertation presents a comprehensive body of work that introduces a new musical representation that allows users to explore a space of musical rules that are created from their own melodies. This representation, called functional scaffolding for musical composition (FSMC), exploits a simple yet powerful property of multipart compositions: The pattern of notes and rhythms in different instrumental parts of the same song are functionally related. That is, in principle, one part can be expressed as a function of another. Music in FSMC is represented accordingly as a functional relationship between an existing human composition, or scaffold, and an additional generated voice. This relationship is encoded by a type of artificial neural network called a compositional pattern producing network (CPPN). A human user without any musical expertise can then explore how these additional generated voices should relate to the scaffold through an interactive evolutionary process akin to animal breeding. The utility of this insight is validated by two implementations of FSMC called NEAT Drummer and MaestroGenesis, that respectively help users tailor drum patterns and complete multipart arrangements from as little as a single original monophonic track. The five major contributions of this work address the overarching hypothesis in this dissertation that functional relationships alone, rather than specialized music theory, are sufficient for generating plausible additional voices. First, to validate FSMC and determine whether plausible generated voices result from the human-composed scaffold or intrinsic properties of the CPPN, drum patterns are created with NEAT Drummer to accompany several different polyphonic pieces. Extending the FSMC approach to generate pitched voices, the second contribution reinforces the importance of functional transformations through quality assessments that indicate that some partially FSMC-generated pieces are indistinguishable from those that are fully human. While the third contribution focuses on constructing and exploring a space of plausible voices with MaestroGenesis, the fourth presents results from a two-year study where students discuss their creative experience with the program. Finally, the fifth contribution is a plugin for MaestroGenesis called MaestroGenesis Voice (MG-V) that provides users a more natural way to incorporate MaestroGenesis in their creative endeavors by allowing scaffold creation through the human voice. Together, the chapters in this dissertation constitute a comprehensive approach to assisted music generation, enabling creativity without the need for musical expertise.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005350, ucf:50495
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005350
- Title
- DISTANCE.
- Creator
-
Kosik, Jonathan, Neal, Darlin, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Distance is a collection of short fiction that explores the spaces between us. Sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's physical; it lies before us like a cross-country journey, dragging us through emotional terrain fraught with countless dangers and rare rewards. A convict returns to his childhood home. A lonely man documents the unexpected damage of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A teenager learns that some boots are not made for walking. These stories are the long and short of it....
Show moreDistance is a collection of short fiction that explores the spaces between us. Sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's physical; it lies before us like a cross-country journey, dragging us through emotional terrain fraught with countless dangers and rare rewards. A convict returns to his childhood home. A lonely man documents the unexpected damage of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A teenager learns that some boots are not made for walking. These stories are the long and short of it. They examine the way we struggle to understand love, lust, disappointment and the kind of detachment that can develop where we least expect it. We all know the distance between two people differs by degree, but in the end, where that space exists, an inescapable question awaits: Should we sever the tie or bridge the gap?
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- Identifier
- CFE0003715, ucf:48783
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003715
- Title
- School Has a Bad Storyline: Gamification in Educational Environments.
- Creator
-
Pynn, Irene, Brenckle, Martha, Janz, Bruce, Underberg-Goode, Natalie, Hopp, Carolyn, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
School often has low engagement and frustrating or absent options for the kind of agency the Federal Government's 2016 National Education Technology Plan now recommends educators include in their curriculum. Video games offer opportunities for people to participate in critical problem solving through creative projects. From balancing character statistics, to collaborating with other players, to making ethical and tactical decisions that can change the outcome of the story, successful games...
Show moreSchool often has low engagement and frustrating or absent options for the kind of agency the Federal Government's 2016 National Education Technology Plan now recommends educators include in their curriculum. Video games offer opportunities for people to participate in critical problem solving through creative projects. From balancing character statistics, to collaborating with other players, to making ethical and tactical decisions that can change the outcome of the story, successful games draw on the player's interest in learning and analyzing numbers, locations, visual clues, narrative elements, people, and more. One useful example may be found in visual novels (VNs), a medium that pulls from narrative structures found in Choose Your Own Adventure Novels. These interactive narratives are a largely untapped resource (for educational uses) of guided critical thinking. My ongoing research explores the efficacy of implementing VNs into digital pedagogies to encourage the development of (")creatigational skills.(") This term is a response to the problematic wording already in use for skills such as creative thinking and collaborative abilities, skills encouraged by and developed through interactive activities, such as gaming and many of the arts. Current terminology labels them (")soft(") or (")non-cognitive(") skills, which are clear misnomers that passively diminish the importance of creative thought. This research explores how gaming, specifically so-called (")narrative(") gaming, of which VNs are one example, might contribute to the development of creatigational skills in students. Through the creation of VNs for this study, I examine both the ability of this genre to engage and encourage imaginative thought, as well as the practicality of designing and developing VNs for classroom use.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006906, ucf:51728
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006906