The fourMs Lab is fundamental in developing new insights that have had (and most likely will have) societal impact in several different ways:
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Power of music: many of the basic research questions at RITMO concern the “power” of music. Music plays a significant role in many people’s lives, yet there are still many unanswered questions about how and why. More knowledge about the effects of music can lead to improved well-being at a societal scale.
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Music and performing arts: several leading musicians and artists have benefitted from knowledge and experience coming out of the lab. This is related to how they can improve their performance, both in the sense of creating better artistic experiences, but also in the sense of playing more fluently and hence reduce their risks of injury.
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Sports applications: the lab has an on-going collaboration with athletes, to improve elite training through the use of interactive sonification driven from real-time motion capture.
Knowledge Transfer
There are several possible areas for knowledge transfer to industry:
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Musical applications: A number of the activities of the fourMs Lab are either directly or indirectly connected to the cultural sector in Oslo and beyond.
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Multimedia applications: The SoundTracer project used gestures to retrieve music from large media databases. Such media-related human-computer interaction is fundamental to many of the activities in the lab, and there are many connection points to media, games, and VR/AR companies.
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Medical applications: Computer vision algorithms from the lab have been implemented in CIMA - Computer-based Infant Movement Assessment, which is a collaboration with NTNU. This is a clinical package used for screening preterm infants for the risk of developing cerebral palsy (CP).
