It considers the human body as the natural mediator between mind (focused on musical intentions, meanings, significations) and physical environment (containing musical sound and other types of energy that affords human action).
During the last decade, research in embodied music cognition has been strongly motivated by a demand for new tools in view of the interactive possibilities offered by digital media technology.
This musical gestures research has been rather influential in that it puts more emphasis on sensorimotor feedback and integration, as well as on the coupling of perception and action.
The scientific apparatus draws upon an empirical and evidence-based methodology, which is based on measurement of sound (via audio-recording), human movement (via video-recording, kinematic recording), human biology (via bioparameter-recording) and semantics (via questionnaires).
Using a scientific apparatus for measurement, statistical analysis and computational modelling, embodied music cognition aims to build up reliable knowledge about the role of the human body in meaning formation.
[citation needed] Influenced by Gestalt psychology, music cognition research of the last decades of the 20th Century was mainly focusing on the perception of structure, that is, the perception of pitch, melody, rhythm, harmony and tonality.
This engagement is articulated by means of corporeal expression which can be measured, analyzed, modelled and related to the musical stimulus.
René Descartes' idea that mental activity is of a separate order from body movement is refuted and, in fact reversed.
Instead, embodied music cognition fully recognizes the contribution of all mental and bodily systems including subjective feelings, emotions and coinaesthetic (or body image) awareness.
Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
International Conference on Music and Gesture University of East Anglia 28–31 August 2003.
En Daniele Barbieri, Luca Marconi e Francesco Spampinato (eds.).
“Biological roots of musical epistemology: Functional Cycles, Umwelt, and enactive listening”.
Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis, New York: Oxford University Press.