Abstract
In this presentation, I will tell about how I spent the summer on, at least partly, sitting still while working on data of myself and others standing still. This is part of completing my upcoming book Still Standing, which tells the story about how much a human body moves when it is trying not to. The empirical material behind the book spans fifteen years of research: a three-person artistic project begun in 2011, seven Norwegian Championships of Standstill with more than 700 participants, a laboratory study of headphones against loudspeakers, a cross-cultural listening study, a year of daily standstills in 2023, and a group performance at a public library. One of the research questions is how much people move when they try to stand still. My updated number is about 5 millimetres per second, measured at the head. Most of the book is about explaining how I reached that number and what it takes to make people move more (or sometimes less). After my summer adventure, I now have most of the data deposited online in the Oslo Standstill Database, scripts and reports documenting every number in the book, and a new Python toolbox, micromotion, to support such analyses.
Bio
Alexander Refsum Jensenius is Professor of music technology at the University of Oslo, where he directs RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, MishMash Centre for AI and Creativity, and the fourMs Lab. His research combines theories and methods from phenomenology, psychology, and technology to study music-related body motion, with both scientific and artistic outcomes. Once known as "Dr Air Guitar", he has spent the last fifteen years studying human micromotion as "Professor Standstill", including seven Norwegian Championships of Standstill. He is the author of Sound Actions (2022) and is currently completing the book Still Standing.