Scott Lipscomb: Re: correlation of vision and audition (Dan Ellis )

Subject: Scott Lipscomb: Re: correlation of vision and audition
From:    Dan Ellis  <dpwe(at)ICSI.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date:    Mon, 9 Feb 1998 11:12:20 PST

Dear List -

Scott Lipscomb asked me to forward the enclosed response to Al
Bregman's post.

  DAn.

------- Forwarded Message
From: Scott Lipscomb <lipscomb(at)utsa.edu>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 12:26:08 -0600
Subject:        RE: correlation of vision and audition (fwd)

List members:

I must confess that I was THRILLED to see the posting by Al
Bregman and his student, Jason Corey.  There has been quite a flurry
of activity in the experimental investigation of film music and its
associated context ... e.g., animation, motion pictures, etc.  Both my
Master's thesis (1990) and doctoral dissertation (1995) at UCLA looked
at these issues from an experimental aesthetic frame of reference.
With the assistance of Dr. Roger Kendall, a 7-year series of
experiments were run.  The results the Master's thesis were published
in Psychomusicology (vol. 13, nos. 1&2) in 1994 ... in fact, the
entire volume is devoted to Film Music, guest-edited by Annabel Cohen.
Dr. Cohen and one of her students have also done some important
research in this area (see Marshall & Cohen, 1988 in Music Perception,
vol 6).

More germaine, however, are the results of my dissertation, which
addressed the issue of A-V synchronization ... directly relevant to
Jason's question(s).  I am hoping to publish these results soon,
so they will be generally available.  Some aspects of the study may be
viewed at my Web address ... http://music.utsa.edu/~lipscomb

I would welcome any additional discussion of the role of Film Music
and/or comments about my research.

Sincerely,
Scott Lipscomb

> Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 14:15:35 -0500 (EST)
> From: Jason Corey <corey(at)music.mcgill.ca>
>
> While creating and editing a soundtrack for an animated film, it
> became apparent that sounds occurring sychronously in time with visual
> events on the screen, had a effect on how I perceived the visuals.
> For one particular scene there happened to be a great deal of activity
> happening in the animation, with different events happening at
> different positions on the screen.  Without a sound track there were
> many events that were not perceived, until a sound effect was
> sychronised with the particular visual events.
>
> It seems that by having sound accompany a visual, many more details of
> the visual are perceived than without a soundtrack.  It would seem
> that our auditory system helps the visual system to "sort out" the
> details when there are many events happening visually.  Maybe this
> somehow helps us focus on certain visual details more than others.  My
> guess is that by changing the soundtrack to a given moving picture, it
> is possible to alter what the subject will focus on.
>
> I was wondering how much work has been done in this area.  Any help
> would be appreciated.
>
> Jason Corey


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