Eric Isaacson: Communicating about music through images

A Research Seminar presented by CIRMMT RA2 (music information research).

Eric Isaacson

(Photo credit: Charlotte Martin)

ABSTRACT

Music scholars often communicate their findings visually, through graphics, drawings, tables, charts, annotated musical examples, or other kinds of images. At their best, these images transform raw data into a narrative that illuminates and enlightens. At their worst, they obfuscate or distort, or fail to inform at all. This talk is designed to help those working in all scholarly musical subdisciplines—including music technology, music theory, music cognition, and musicology—to aspire toward the former. It will focus on both information design, choosing what information to include and how to represent it, and on graphical design, the technical decisions that give shape to the final product. 

BIOGRAPHY

Eric Isaacson teaches music theory and is Director of Graduate Studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. His research and other professional activities are typically situated on some part of a Venn diagram that includes post-tonal music theory, computational models of music, cognitive models of music, and music theory pedagogy. He is completing a book titled Visualizing Music (Indiana University Press) that straddles all four.