Cultivating Creativity
"The Runaway Species" is being published in 14 countries. Now available in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Germany, Greece, Italy, Korea, Romania, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkey. Coming soon in Hungary.
NEA Research LabBeethoven and Divergent Thinking
Defining Creativity: A View from the Arts
Blueprints for a Creative Classroom
Music and Language: Milestones of Development
|
|
Music and Early Language Acquisition
Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence. Music, while recognized as a human universal, is often treated as an ancillary ability – one dependent on or derivative of language. In contrast, we argue that it is more productive from a developmental perspective to describe spoken language as a special type of music. A review of existing studies presents a compelling case that musical hearing and ability is essential to language acquisition. In addition, we challenge the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language and is more difficult; instead, we argue that music learning matches the speed and effort of language acquisition. We conclude that music merits a central place in our understanding of human development.
|
|
Collaborations with artist Jo Ann Fleishhauer and composer Chapman WelchCommissioned by the Blaffer Art Gallery and Houston Downtown District, What Time Is It? was an installation on display in Houston’s Market Square from September 2013 until March 2014. Artist Jo Ann Fleischhauer reimagined the square’s historic clock tower while composer Chapman Welch and I created computer music to take the place of the tolling of the bell.
Rather than tolling like a traditional clock-tower, the musical installation told the time by a gradual progression of chords, one per hour, that rose and set over the course of the day like the sun. Each chord sounded for three minutes, beginning slightly before the hour and ending slightly after. The cycle of chords repeated each day, so that over time, someone who frequented the square might be able to tell the time musically. On top of each chord, a computer hidden in the Clock Tower improvised using an array of ringing sounds, making each hourly tolling a unique performance. The sound source of both the underlying chords and ringing improvisations was Market Square itself—recorded street noise—which was filtered into pure tones. The installation was entirely automated: once set in motion, the computer ran the performances on its own. We followed that up with The Library of Babble, part of a curated exhibition at the Silos at Sawyer Yards as part of Houston Sculpture Month. Chapman and I created a sound collage based on the international phonetic alphabet to complement Jo Ann's installation, which was constructed inside of a converted grain silo. Here is a video created by Obed McCalip: The Library of Babble from jo fleischhauer on Vimeo. |