EyeHub Lecture 2023: Music in the Eye of the Listener

Seeing and listening are dynamic processes in two highly specialized sensory modules: the visual and the auditory systems. I am interested in how the two systems work together, interact or interfere with each other, and will report on three very different projects in this research field: (i) How strongly does visual information affect the perception of musical expressivity of opera singers? (ii) Can eye movements and blink activity tell us anything about the subjective experience of music listening (in the absence of visual information)? (iii) When music is not in the focus but the background during text reading, does the musical beat affect oculomotor control?

Biography

Elke B. Lange is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany, in the Music Department. She started her education at the Karlsruhe University of Music as a trained pianist (with Günter Reinhold), became a musicologist at the Technical University Berlin (with Helga de la Motte-Haber). She then moved to cognitive psychology (PhD at the Technical University Berlin), where she became a specialist in working memory (with Klaus Oberauer) and the method of eye movement research (with Ralf Engbert). With the founding of the Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, she returned 2014 to music as a research focus with an emphasis on empirical methods. Together with Lauren Fink she organized twice the conference on "Music and Eye Tracking (musicET)" in Frankfurt.

Workshop

Elke B. Lange will also host a full-day workshop on November 1st. For more information and signup, please click here.