˗ˏˋ ChristineDinata ˎˊ˗

Currently, I'm pausing on adding more research related to my Music & Emotions project as I am writing the report. However, that doesn't mean I stopped reading. Reading articles by other bloggers became a guilty pleasure of mine since I was in charge of copywriting @step.dmd 's posts. Looking for interesting articles or coming up with the character's backstories. Then it got me thinking. What's actually the difference between copywriting and storytelling? Storytelling needs to capture its readers. The story needs to speak to them – their desires, their hopes, their dreams. With that, it would allow the writers to turn those readers into customers far better than any sales pitch could do. And that is the essence of copywriting. (Eli Landes's blog post ) According to Eli, creative writing's main objective is to make sure the readers are swept away with the stories they are reading. To keep their attention captive until the story ends. To entertain...

Interactivity tends to lead to better engagement, and it’s thought that better user engagement equals more conversions and more long term satisfaction with a brand. Of course, it's not always 100% effective. Just because it looks cool or eye-catching, doesn't mean it works. There are some pros, cons, and uncertainties to this strategy, just as there are any others. People like to be engaged in the things they are doing. Remember when you were young and your favorite subjects are the ones that include playing games? Well, research shows that interactive education is not only more fun but also more effective. Generally, interactivity makes us feel involved in the process, not simply a passive observer. Interactivity works online, for your business, too. Done right, it increases user engagement, and user engagement tends to correlate higher conversions (though not always – sometimes it distracts from the desired action). Interactive elements draw a user in and allow th...

On today's post, I would like to introduce you to our Raffles Jakarta's graduation project called Step . Step is an interactive exhibition created by the digital media design students that include interactivity and story gameplay by pressing floor tiles. When people come to our booth, expect to be challenged on their problem-solving skills. The story of the gameplay is about a planned out murderer, and it's up to the players to determine who the killer is after reading all the conversations of the characters. To guess, the players are expected to interact with Step 's Instagram as well. The right guesser might win prices provided by us. The graduation exhibition will be held in Gandaria City Mall, Jakarta. From 25th - 29th of September 2019. If you are interested, stay tuned for more updates on our  Instagram . You can see more about how the project was planned from the beginning or how we sketch the booth in our highlights. 

Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott, known by his stage name Joey Badass (stylized as Joey Bada$$), is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. I first stumbled upon Joey, not from his music. Honestly, I don't even listen to his music. But what I want to share today is an impressive website of his. I found him on awwwards.com , and I immediately was fascinated by his website's look. This website tells you who Joey is as a person and as a rapper. From his early life to his present life, his career and who he is as a person. The website design is really cool, and the aesthetic is very excellent as well. As users, we're asked to just scroll through the whole website and read his back story. Here are some pictures of the website. To enjoy the site yourself, click here .

Earlier this week, we are asked to present one of our experiment we did over the weekends. It can be unrelated to our topic as well. And as I mentioned previously, I did try out several Arduino projects with my kit. But today, I'm going to show the one I showcased in class. This is an Arduino bot to light up like traffic light. The 3 lights (stop, ready, go) on the left indicate the car traffic light, while the 2 lights (stop and go) on the right represent the cross-road. There is also a blinking light to note that the time for crossing is almost out. Below I attached how it works.

One of the terms I learned during the Art x Tech Canada @ SG seminar was Brainwave Arts . It is a type of art that uses human's brainwave as a key player on an art installation. And I think it fits the description of the project/topic I'm choosing. When you google brainwave art, there are several well-known projects made by artists. However, brainwave arts are still not as common as other types of arts. This is because: to do brainwave arts, the artists need to have an interest or knowledge or the urge to learn some part of science as well. Mostly, brainwave arts lean towards types of arts that plays with human's emotions or thinking, since the brain is where we control everything. Brainwave arts are considered more fluid and indefinite as well since everyone's mind will think differently, even when presented the same object. One of the coolest brainwave arts I came across is: Making a song with repurposed brainwaves , by the creator of the show Sense8 on Netflix....

On the 22nd of September, 2019, Art x Tech Canada  did a seminar in Singapore's The Arts House. The seminar was free, and our class went there to listen to experts from Canada talk about the art world meets digital technology.  The event took quite some time. It started at 2pm, followed by opening remarks and a keynote address about the whole event by Dr. Sara Diamond, president and vice-chancellor of Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD University). Then before the actual seminar starts, we all had a coffee break together. The first part of the seminar took about an hour, followed by a rapid question and answer for the rest 20 minutes. It was about 'Creating a Digital Arts Ecosystem', and the speakers (Roch Michel – Media Creative Director of GSM Project, Henry Faber – President of the Toronto Media Arts Centre Boards, Kezia Toh – Senior Manager of DigiMuse from National Heritage Board Singapore, and Eric Lefebvre – Director of Devel...

One question that stumbled to me while I was researching for my paper about music and emotion is: How do the deaf listen to music? And upon searching on Google, I found out that the deaf 'listens' to music by feeling the vibration a sound produces. First, let's start off with the misconception that being deaf means you cannot hear anything at all – there are varying levels of deafness. Secondly, deaf people can feel the vibrations produced by the music being played and consume those vibrations through their body. The humming sound produced by picking a bass string or the boom of the drums can be felt very easily by them. The lyrics evoke different types of feelings, and the combination of vibrations and lyrics is how deaf people enjoy music. Someone who wears hearing aids or Cochrane implants may have some enhanced levels of hearings, but for those who don’t, they turn up the volume so they can feel the vibrations from beats and bass more strongly as they read the lyr...

Earlier this week, I bought my first Arduino Kit . Since this is week 6 of term, our lecturer has asked us to display an experiment by week 7. It could be any type of experiment, and it doesn't even have to be related to our project. The reason why I picked to try on Arduino is that I think it's the closest medium I'll be using for my actual work. But I was kind of worried about this, mainly it is because I've never used or tried it before. I've only heard about it but never actually played around with it. So this is the kit I bought. It costs SGD 70 at one of the shops in Sim Lim Tower. It contains a lot of items to try out experiments. It also includes several tutorial cards that can be successfully running with the items provided in the kit. For more detailed tutorials and the codes of each project, we are asked to go to their website and search for the complete step by step tutorials. Thus far, I have tried several projects, and for ...

Thus far, we've have concluded that music affects people's emotions. How different types/genres of music can change one's current feelings just by listening to them. We also have learned a little about how our brain process music, and how fascinating it is that listening to music is not processed like other auditory stimuli. Even the Oxford dictionary defines music as 'vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.'. In the definition, the term music itself is said to represent vocal, instrumental sounds or even both combined. Music that has lyrics is more understandable to influence someone's emotions because the words chosen by the lyricist backed up by the rhythm and melody made by the producer can easily affect people who are listening to it. But what if the songs are non-lyrical? What if you have to depend on your own interpretation on how you perceive the music and its infl...

When I first stumble upon Muse™ , I was looking for an EEG headpiece that I could purchase for my Research and Development subject. One part of my research is to understand the brain activity of a person when listening to a certain type of music. By looking at the Alpha waves of the brain activity scan, it can show how one perceives the music they are listening to. Muse™ is an EEG device widely used by neuroscience researchers around the world. It uses advanced signal processing to interpret your mental activity to help guide you. When your mind is calm and settled, you hear peaceful weather. Busy mind? As your focus drifts, you’ll hear stormy weather that cues you to bring your attention back to your breath. Muse™ connects to your phone via Bluetooth, and once you're connected, users can immediately open the Muse™ Meditation app, put their headphones on and close their eyes. Once the session is completed, users can review their results and track the progress. ...

Let's go back to the beginning of this Research and Development blog. When I first was researching around on what I want to do for this subject, I came across an article post by Elite Daily . It talks about how this generation has so much trouble being vulnerable, and I thought to myself, that's me! Based on my own experience and what I understand from the people around me, we are always scared when we have to share how we are feeling. We would rather be in an uncomfortable situation as long as we are not hurting other people's feelings. We would rather do anything else (except dying probably) as long as we don't show our emotions to other people. Maybe the reason could be to not show weaknesses towards other people or avoid hurting other people's feelings or even making sure you look and stay as cool as everyone said you are. It could be a lot of things, but definitely, no talking about your emotions. Candice Jalili (2015) did research on this, and sin...

In today's post about music therapy, I actually got the chance to interview (via email) a friend of mine; Novelyne Faustine B.A., who is a music therapist and piano instructor from Indonesia. I reached out to her to ask about what she took for her degree and if she has anyone she knew that could help me with my research topic because I knew she was learning music. But when I found out she was actually taking Music Therapy, I was beyond lucky and I had to do this interview with her instead. She was really kind to agree to help me and patient enough to answer my list of questions. So I prepared several questions to ask her more about her knowledge on the topic.  I asked her why she picked Music Therapy as her preferred studies.  She said, "As cliché as this may sound, growing up, I have always enjoyed playing and listening to music. It was a very natural process for me to choose music as my professional field but music therapy ... was something I discovered just a year be...

So I set a view questions for my interview for my Research and Development subject about Music and Emotions . These questions are for someone who has knowledge about Music Therapy since I talked about music therapy as one of my updates to my lecturers. So my target interviewee would be a music therapist. 1. Why did you take music therapy as your preferred study? This question is to open up the topic of music therapy for the interviewee and to understand more about the subject's personal reasons to his/her interest in the subject. 2. What is music therapy all about? This question is more direct, it asks the interviewee about her definition of Music Therapy and what can it do. 3. How can music therapy help people and their emotions? The objective of this question is to know and understand a little better about how music therapy works for clients/patients/people that are prescribed with it. 4. In what cases are music therapy usually used? The intention of this question is ...

As part of our Research and Development subject, we are asked to pick a topic of our choosing to do a report on. I chose the topic of  Music & Emotions , and the idea is to learn and understand more about how music relates to people's emotions, how it affects people when listening to them, and what happens after they listen to them. But reading other people's findings and papers is not enough. I have to do some primary research. One of the things I did is a survey. Specifically, a survey to understand people's habit of listening to music and understanding how they pick the music they listen to. I then divide the questions into two parts. The first part of the survey is to understand my demographics; their sex, their age, if they have any hearing disabilities and their musical knowledge. And the second is to determine the participants' personal preference/habit when listening to music; such as how many hours do they spend listening to music, on what occasions do ...

ArtScience Museum has been known to host a lot of future world  exhibitions. And this time, they have collected several artworks made by renown artists that including Ant Farm, Artúr van Balen,  Dawn Ng, Franco Mazzucchelli, Jean-Paul Jungmann, José de Miguel Prada Pool, Luigi Rados, Luke Jerram, Momoyo Torimitsu, The Yes Men, Thomas Baldwin,  UFO and many more. Floating Utopias– The Transformative Power of Inflatable Art , is a playful and poetic exhibition that also explores the social history of inflatable objects, and how it has been used as art, architecture or social activism over the decades. Floating Utopias shows how inflatable objects have opened up new windows to technological advances, from the invention of the hot air balloon, it has allowed humanity to be able to leave the confinements of ground for the first time and experience a new point of view of the Earth. Inflatables invite people to be playful and yet to claim their space as well; ...