Satinder Gill
University of Cambridge, Centre for Music and Science, Department Member
- Human Computer Interaction, Neuroscience, Social Neuroscience, Interaction Design, Performance Studies, Pragmatics, and 41 moreSocial Psychology, Social Networks, Psycholinguistics, Gesture, Discourse Processes, Music Psychology, Music, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Musicology, Music Theory, Music Education, Music and Language, Psychoacoustics, Music Archaeology, Music Perception and Cognition, Musical Instruments, Archaeology of Music, Neurosciences in music, Music and Gesture, Entrainment, Soundscapes Theory and Practice, Philosophy, Computer Science, Psychology, Anthropology, Art History, New Media, Cognitive Science, Aesthetics, Philosophy Of Language, Ethnography, Media and Cultural Studies, Ethnomusicology, Music Technology, Philosophy of Technology, Psychology of Music, Process Philosophy, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Autism Spectrum Treatment, and Public Policyedit
Music plays a prominent role in human interaction, and is thought to have broad impact on social, emotional, and intellectual competencies, and on personal wellbeing. In order to better understand how, why, and under what conditions music... more
Music plays a prominent role in human interaction, and is thought to have broad impact on social, emotional, and intellectual competencies, and on personal wellbeing. In order to better understand how, why, and under what conditions music affects wellbeing, this chapter summarizes recent work that demonstrates specific aspects of wellbeing that are positively affected by joint engagement in music. In particular, the chapter focuses on the role of synchrony experience in enhancing social-emotional attitudes and behaviors. The chapter introduces a working model that aims to explain the processes by which synchrony during joint music-making may help to develop and refine social-emotional competencies, suggesting the potential for enhanced wellbeing. The case is made for a future multi-disciplinary approach to researching direct links between synchrony experience and wellbeing, as well as to understanding the most effective ways to use musical interaction to enhance wellbeing.
Research Interests: Psychology and Musical
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In this paper, vulnerability is considered in terms of our ability to synchronise in time with others, and how the consequences of being unable to do so leads to isolation and a range of social, emotional, and psychological issues. We... more
In this paper, vulnerability is considered in terms of our ability to synchronise in time with others, and how the consequences of being unable to do so leads to isolation and a range of social, emotional, and psychological issues. We describe a project to develop a shared musical instrument to facilitate the process of joint interaction and the emergence of moments of synchronising in time with others. The design involves a multidisciplinary and multi-practice team that includes music therapists, artists, performance artists, musicians, music psychologists, music technologists, software and hardware sound engineers.
HCI is slowly realizing that being aware of, and understanding the implications of, the body in communication and its extension through tools and technology is important to a wide range of research fields from virtual characters to... more
HCI is slowly realizing that being aware of, and understanding the implications of, the body in communication and its extension through tools and technology is important to a wide range of research fields from virtual characters to co-located interaction around technology. ...
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Ambience and immersive technological environments allow us to explore some basics of human pragmatics that lie beyond linguistics, intentionality and the subject-agency perspectives of human interaction. We focus on gesture and the body... more
Ambience and immersive technological environments allow us to explore some basics of human pragmatics that lie beyond linguistics, intentionality and the subject-agency perspectives of human interaction. We focus on gesture and the body in sense-making and propose a discussion drawing on a non-dualist and agent-free account of embodied, material experience. By agent-free we mean an approach that does not presume a monolithic subject. Moreover, we deal with the problem of intersubjectivity by studying the human coordination of activity without appealing to a transmission theory of communication. [6] We achieve this by considering how gesture spans multiple bodies and how aesthetic design works with this and facilitates it. The paper is in two parts, the first part covers movement studies, focusing on gesture and body movement, drawing on the acting and pragmatics, and the second part develops this with the example of the TGarden, a responsive play space for experimental performance a...
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Body Moves are rhythmic coordinations in communication of at least two people. In performing them, we indicate the state of our connection and understanding, most importantly the degree of our contact and commitment within a communication... more
Body Moves are rhythmic coordinations in communication of at least two people. In performing them, we indicate the state of our connection and understanding, most importantly the degree of our contact and commitment within a communication situation ( ...
With the increasing use of communications technology across cultural boundaries, and within cultural boundaries, we see shifts taking place both within a culture about itself, and across cultures about each other. Yet in what way are the... more
With the increasing use of communications technology across cultural boundaries, and within cultural boundaries, we see shifts taking place both within a culture about itself, and across cultures about each other. Yet in what way are the shifts distinct, if so, from those ...
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HCI is slowly realizing that being aware of, and understanding the implications of, the body in communication and its extension through tools and technology is important to a wide range of research fields from virtual characters to... more
HCI is slowly realizing that being aware of, and understanding the implications of, the body in communication and its extension through tools and technology is important to a wide range of research fields from virtual characters to co-located interaction around technology. Finding ways to illuminate the often subtle contributions of the body to communication in an HCI context can be
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What knowledge can be represented? Is it possible to represent practical knowledge? Is it possible to represent personal knowledge? These issues are concerned with design as a process where design is an example of the formation and... more
What knowledge can be represented? Is it possible to represent practical knowledge? Is it possible to represent personal knowledge? These issues are concerned with design as a process where design is an example of the formation and transfer of knowledge, as well as with two contrasting ‘traditions’ of knowledge (Gill, 1988; Josefson, 1987, 1988).
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Background This interdisciplinary study combines researchers and methods from linguistic communication (Gill, 2007), as well as music and movement (Himberg & Thompson, 2011). We consider conversation as performance, and improvisation in... more
Background This interdisciplinary study combines researchers and methods from linguistic communication (Gill, 2007), as well as music and movement (Himberg & Thompson, 2011). We consider conversation as performance, and improvisation in music as akin to this performance. Improvisation, musical or linguistic, involves rules/conventions, but the interactive performance will often unfold in unpredictable ways, involving heightened moments of rhythmic and empathic connection (salient rhythmic moments, SRM), and ...
Background This interdisciplinary study combines researchers and methods from linguistic communication (Gill, 2007), as well as music and movement (Himberg & Thompson, 2011). We consider conversation as performance, and improvisation in... more
Background This interdisciplinary study combines researchers and methods from linguistic communication (Gill, 2007), as well as music and movement (Himberg & Thompson, 2011). We consider conversation as performance, and improvisation in music as akin to this performance.
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The engagement space (Gill, Kawamori, Katagiri, Shimojima, 2000) is the arena within which coordinated body movements take place in interactive settings. It is a commitment on the part of its participants to be together, or to be present.... more
The engagement space (Gill, Kawamori, Katagiri, Shimojima, 2000) is the arena within which coordinated body movements take place in interactive settings. It is a commitment on the part of its participants to be together, or to be present. Previous work on the metacommunicative body dynamics of the engagement space showed that composite dialogue acts of gesture, speech, and silence (Body Moves (BM)) play an important role in the flow of information in interaction. One of the Body Moves, namely the Parallel Coordinated Move, was difficult to categorise according to the patterns of metacommunicative body motion that involved a clear rhythmic sequential motion of action and reaction, and was hence left undeveloped (Gill et al. 2000). This move will be described as a multi-activity gestural coordination, where different but related projects are being expressed in the body action of the participants at the same time. It is analysed here for its collaborative feature which enables participants to negotiate and engage in the formation of a common ground. The analysis of the parallel coordinated move also raises a need to appraise the concept of floor, and it will be proposed that 'floor' needs to be conceived as consisting in three dimensions of 'self' and 'self with other' dynamics.
Our everyday interactions increasingly involve both embodied face-to-face communication and various forms of mediated and distributed communication such as email, skype, and facebook. In daily face-to-face commu- nications, we are... more
Our everyday interactions increasingly involve both embodied face-to-face communication and various forms of mediated and distributed communication such as email, skype, and facebook. In daily face-to-face commu- nications, we are connected in rhythm and synchrony at multiple levels ranging from the moment-by-moment continuity of timed syllables to emergent body and vocal rhythms of pragmatic sense-making. Our human capacity to synchronize with each other may be essential for our survival as social beings. Moving our bodies and voices together in time embodies a potent pragmatic purpose that of being together. In this synchrony of self with other, witnessing and being present become part of each other. There is growing research into how rhythm and synchrony operate in embodied face-to-face interaction and this provides parameters for investigating the relations and differences in how we connect and are socially present in the embodied and distributed settings, and understanding the effect of one setting upon the other. This paper explores the arena of research into rhythm in human interaction, musical and linguistic, with a focus on the movements of body and voice. It draws together salient issues and ideas that would form the basis for a framework of rhythm in embodied interaction.
In this paper, vulnerability is considered in terms of our ability to synchronise in time with others, and how the consequences of being unable to do so leads to isolation and a range of social, emotional, and psychological issues. We... more
In this paper, vulnerability is considered in terms of our ability to synchronise in time with others, and how the consequences of being unable to do so leads to isolation and a range of social, emotional, and psychological issues. We describe a project to develop a shared musical instrument to facilitate the process of joint interaction and the emergence of moments of synchronising in time with others. The design involves a multidisciplinary and multi-practice team that includes music therapists, artists, performance artists, musicians, music psychologists, music technologists, software and hardware sound engineers.
Skilled cooperative action means being able to understand the com- municative situation and know how and when to respond appropriately for the purpose at hand. This skill is of the performance of knowledge in co-action and is a form of... more
Skilled cooperative action means being able to understand the com- municative situation and know how and when to respond appropriately for the purpose at hand. This skill is of the performance of knowledge in co-action and is a form of social intelligence for sustainable interaction. Social intelligence, here, denotes the ability of actors and agents to manage their relationships with each other. Within an environment we have people, tools, artefacts and tech- nologies that we engage with. Let us consider all of these as dynamic repre- sentations of knowledge. When this knowledge becomes enacted, i.e., when we understand how to use it to communicate effectively, such that it becomes invisible to us, it becomes knowledge in co-action. A challenge of social intel- ligence design is to create mediating interfaces that can become invisible to us, i.e., as an extension of ourselves. In this paper, we present a study of the way people use surfaces that afford graphical interaction, in collaborative design tasks, in order to inform the design of intelligent user interfaces. This is a descriptive study rather than a usability study, to explore how size, orientation and horizontal and vertical positioning, influences the functionality of the sur- face in a collaborative setting.
The importance of non verbal communication within the human interface, the point at which interaction occurs, is becoming of increasing significance for natural language pragmatics and the design of interactive systems based upon it. This... more
The importance of non verbal communication within the human interface, the point at which interaction occurs, is becoming of increasing significance for natural language pragmatics and the design of interactive systems based upon it. This dimension of communication is essential for an understanding of 'co-presence' (Good 1996), which is an essential component of human understanding. Co-presence denotes simply how we are present to each other, be this in the same physical space or in differing physical spaces. Being present may be described as a precondition for communication, and the nature of this precondition has a bearing on how we coordinate with each other.
What constitutes our human capacity to engage and be in the same frame of mind as another human? How do we come to share a sense of what ‘looks good’ and what ‘makes sense’? How do we handle differences and come to coexist with them? How... more
What constitutes our human capacity to engage and be in the same frame of mind as another human? How do we come to share a sense of what ‘looks good’ and what ‘makes sense’? How do we handle differences and come to coexist with them? How do we come to feel that we understand what someone else is experiencing? How are we able to walk in silence with someone familiar and be sharing a peaceful space? All of these aspects are part of human ‘interaction’. In designing interactive technologies designers have endeavoured to explicate, analyse and simulate, our capacity for social adaptation. Their motivations are mixed and include the desires to improve efficiency, improve consumption, to connect people, to make it easier for people to work together, to improve education and learning. In these endeavours to explicate, analyse and simulate, there is a fundamental human capacity that is beyond technology and that facilitates these aspects of being, feeling and thinking with others. That capacity, we suggest, is human entrainment. This is our ability to coordinate the timing of our behaviours and rhythmically synchronise our attentional resources. Expressed within the movements of our bodies and voices, it has a quality that is akin to music. In this paper, disparate domains of research such as pragmatics, social psychology, behaviourism, cognitive science, computational linguistics, gesture, are brought together, and considered in light of the developments in interactive technology, in order to shape a conceptual framework for understanding entrainment in everyday human interaction.
This chapter presents an analysis of knowledge as a process of tacit knowing embodied in dialogue rather than as a process of information transfer embodied in signal processing (Shannon and Weaver 1949). Within dialogue we acquire... more
This chapter presents an analysis of knowledge as a process of tacit knowing embodied in dialogue rather than as a process of information transfer embodied in signal processing (Shannon and Weaver 1949). Within dialogue we acquire knowledge (experiential knowledge, tacit knowing, practical knowledge) through our embodied performance of ’how ’ and ’what’ we know about the communication situation we are in. This embodied performance includes utterances, gestures, movement and modulation of body and voice, as well as mediating artefacts, such as interactive technologies. This chapter explores the implications of this perspective of knowledge for the conception and design of interactive technologies that seek to facilitate joint action and joint attention.
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Body Moves is a conceptual framework for the bodily metacommunicative (Gill, Kawamori, Katagiri, Shimojima, 2000) or metapragmatic (Mey, 2001) dimensions of human interaction for managing information flow, formation and transformation... more
Body Moves is a conceptual framework for the bodily metacommunicative (Gill, Kawamori, Katagiri, Shimojima, 2000) or metapragmatic (Mey, 2001) dimensions of human interaction for managing information flow, formation and transformation within interactive settings (Gill, 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Information flow is carried through sequential body moves of action and reaction response, whilst knowledge transformation emerges in parallel coordinated motion (Gill, 2002, 2003b). The process of moving from the state of information flow to knowledge transformation is seen as a process of grounding, where grounding occurs within the integration of the axes of awareness, activity and cognitivity of the tacit and explicit dimensions of human knowing. Managing this flow and formation of knowledge in co-action (Gill, 2003a) is a form of social intelligence, and makes for sustainable communication. This conceptual framework of body moves and tacit knowing is developed in a discussion about cooperative behaviour within design tasks. These tasks involve participants acting upon various interfaces that influence the communicative strategies they use to collaborate with each other. The analysis suggests that mediational interfaces that can support this collaborative behaviour need to handle this pragmatics, and in doing so, the paper contributes to the discussion of pragmatic processes of cognitive technology.
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ABSTRACT This paper is a discussion about how the Application Perspective works in practice.1 We talk about values and attitudes to system development and computer systems, and we illustrate how they have been carried out in practice by... more
ABSTRACT This paper is a discussion about how the Application Perspective works in practice.1 We talk about values and attitudes to system development and computer systems, and we illustrate how they have been carried out in practice by examples from the Florence project.2 The metaphors ‘utensil’ and ‘epaulet’ refer to questions about how we conceive the computer system we are to design in the system development process. Our experience is that, in the scientific community, technical challenges mean making computer systems that may be characterised as ‘epaulets’: they have technical, fancy features, but are not particularly useful. Making small, simple, but useful computer systems, more like ‘utensils’, does not give as much credit even if the development process may be just as challenging.
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Information Theory, Social Interaction, Political Culture, and 18 moreSociology of Science, System Design, Knowledge Based System, System Theory, Knowledge Engineering, Artificial Intelligent, expert System, Knowledge Acquisition, Domain Knowledge, Communication Channels, Organisational Structure, Legal system, AIS, Social System, Development Process, Social Science, Real-world Application, and AI & Society
Many authors have argued the need for abroader understanding of context and the situatedness of activity when approaching the evaluation of systems. However, prevailing practice often still tends toward attempting to understand the use of... more
Many authors have argued the need for abroader understanding of context and the situatedness of activity when approaching the evaluation of systems. However, prevailing practice often still tends toward attempting to understand the use of designed artifacts by ...
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This chapter applies ideas from Chap. 2 about knowledge and practice, by investigating expertise and knowledge as embodied human expertise. It discusses various case studies and corporeality in human sense-making. It investigates how... more
This chapter applies ideas from Chap. 2 about knowledge and practice, by investigating expertise and knowledge as embodied human expertise. It discusses various case studies and corporeality in human sense-making. It investigates how knowledge is embodied in how we perform when we communicate, exchange ideas, present information to each other, train and learn, and become skilled. How we relate with others is a skilled performance.
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The discussion in this chapter continues an investigation of tacit knowing as a personal act of knowing by considering: I can only see how you see if we share the experience in the same physical space. In doing so, it takes the discussion... more
The discussion in this chapter continues an investigation of tacit knowing as a personal act of knowing by considering: I can only see how you see if we share the experience in the same physical space. In doing so, it takes the discussion on mediated expertise further by considering mediation as an embodied process involving a collective act. This is a personal act of knowing where the body mediates experience of knowing how, knowing that, and knowing when simultaneously.
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This chapter brings the discussion from the previous four chapters together and develops it further. Firstly, it summarises what has been learned about the conception of an interacting and mediating interface, irrespective of specific... more
This chapter brings the discussion from the previous four chapters together and develops it further. Firstly, it summarises what has been learned about the conception of an interacting and mediating interface, irrespective of specific contexts and technologies. The chapter ties together theory and practice across the various contexts to identify the foundational elements of a personal act of knowing within human relations. It looks to the future at what we need to consider as the foundations for human-technology relations for developing the relational interface, extending this discussion with fundamental philosophical and artistic questions being raised by the arts/performance arts about the relational in performance and human connectivity. A theoretical introduction is followed by a discussion of eight projects of artistic and design research, in which a new scientific paradigm is explored. The result is the formulation of the concept of 'tacit engagement'.
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This book explores how digital technology is altering the relationships between people and how the very nature of interface itself needs to be reconsidered to reflect this – how we can make sense of each other, handle ambiguities,... more
This book explores how digital technology is altering the relationships between people and how the very nature of interface itself needs to be reconsidered to reflect this – how
we can make sense of each other, handle ambiguities, negotiate differences, empathise and collectively make skilled judgments in our modern society. The author presents new directions for research at the relational-transactional intersection of contrasting disciplines of arts, science and technology,and in so doing, presents philosophical and artistic questions for future research on human connectivity in our digital age.
▶ Introduces the relational interface, which questions the historical idea of the interface as a conduit of the transactional and addresses an aesthetic and ethical balance
▶ Formulates tacit engagement as an emerging concept for the study of human relations
▶ Proposes a fundamental framework of mediation for expertise and decision making in complex human systems
▶ Critiques the concept of data and what makes for the success of knowledge transfer
we can make sense of each other, handle ambiguities, negotiate differences, empathise and collectively make skilled judgments in our modern society. The author presents new directions for research at the relational-transactional intersection of contrasting disciplines of arts, science and technology,and in so doing, presents philosophical and artistic questions for future research on human connectivity in our digital age.
▶ Introduces the relational interface, which questions the historical idea of the interface as a conduit of the transactional and addresses an aesthetic and ethical balance
▶ Formulates tacit engagement as an emerging concept for the study of human relations
▶ Proposes a fundamental framework of mediation for expertise and decision making in complex human systems
▶ Critiques the concept of data and what makes for the success of knowledge transfer
Research Interests: Psychology, Social Psychology, Information Science, Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, and 22 moreInformation Technology, Communication, Performing Arts, Music Technology, Digital Humanities, Social Research Methods and Methodology, Social Networks, Art, Social Sciences, Decision Making, Data Mining, Performance Studies, Gesture, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Behavioral Decision Making, Social Media, Sociology of the Body, Phenomenology of the body, Body in Performance, HCI, Databases, and Body Language
Cognition, Communication and Interaction is an edited collection of articles that examine the theoretical and methodological research issues that underlie the design and use of interactive technology. Present interactive designs are... more
Cognition, Communication and Interaction is an edited collection of articles that examine the theoretical and methodological
research issues that underlie the design and use of interactive technology. Present interactive designs are addressing the multi-modality of human interaction and the multi-sensory dimension of how we engage with each other. This book aims to provide
a trans-disciplinary research framework and methodology for interaction design. The analysis directs attention to three human capacities that our engagement with interactive technology has made salient and open to constant redefinition. These capacities are human cognition, communication and interaction.
In this book examination of these capacities is embedded in understanding the following foundations for design: concepts of “communication and interaction” and their application (Part 1); conceptions of “knowledge and cognition” (Part 2); the role of
aesthetics and ethics in design (Part 3).
research issues that underlie the design and use of interactive technology. Present interactive designs are addressing the multi-modality of human interaction and the multi-sensory dimension of how we engage with each other. This book aims to provide
a trans-disciplinary research framework and methodology for interaction design. The analysis directs attention to three human capacities that our engagement with interactive technology has made salient and open to constant redefinition. These capacities are human cognition, communication and interaction.
In this book examination of these capacities is embedded in understanding the following foundations for design: concepts of “communication and interaction” and their application (Part 1); conceptions of “knowledge and cognition” (Part 2); the role of
aesthetics and ethics in design (Part 3).