Caillois-four_play_types (Photo credit: michieldelange)

Musical Games
MUS 87 A00
Section ID: 788841
Dubnov, Shlomo  (Email: sdubnov@ucsd.edu)
Location: WLH  2136
Tuesdays, 10:00 a.m. to 11:50 a.m.
Seminar will meet October 8 - October 29

We will learn about music principles and do some improvisation by creating games with musical materials. Students will learn basic musicanship through playing, interacting and conducting. Some computer examples will be shown as well. No musical knowledge or preconceptions are assumed. 

http://ugseminars.ucsd.edu/UGSEM_SeminarListing.asp

Syllabus

1. Why people play? - the 4  categories, Paidia - Ludus axis (Roger Caillois)
2. Chance and Rules in Music - Mozart Dice Game, Lexikon Sonata (Karlheinz Essel)
3. Affordances - instruments, toys and their possibilities (Don Norman and Jamos Gibson)
4. (rules implied in the object design)
5. Soundpainting - structured improvisation, ensemble as an instrument (Walter Thompson)
6. Aesthetics - art object as a game, challenge and its payoff (George Birkhoff)
7. Temporal Aesthetics - gratification in time (Shlomo Dubnov)
8. OMax - machine improvisation, automatic discovery of possibilities and play in a musical recording (Gerard Assayag and Shlomo Dubnov)
9. Flow - learning, play and the arts, balance of skill and challenge as a metric for success (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
10. Expectation - Violation - Explanation (EVE) - Wow and Aha, ITPRA Anticipation (David Huron)
11. John Zorn's Cobra - social play, interactive communication
12. Culture as game (Johan Huizinga)