emotional aspects of music video

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1 Dr. Kathrin Fahlenbrach Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Germany IGEL-Conference Pécs, August 2002 Feeling Sounds. Emotional aspects of music videos. I. First remarks to the effects of music videos and their aesthetics. Talking about audiovisual culture today, the high influence of music videos can not be ignored. Looking at the TV-culture, it is particularly obvious that promotion clips and music videos have formed the aesthetics and the effects of TV-images on our perception. It is getting more and more difficult to distinguish the TV-programme from promotional forms like promotion clips or music videos. And even the film is highly influenced by the culture and the aesthetics of video clips. With this growing influence of the clip culture, the effects of audiovisual media have changed. With the increasing concurrence between the channels in attracting the attention of the public, the strategies of promotional forms like video clips are expanding – which are first of all emotional strategies. Given that the audiovisual producers today increasingly use explicitly modern knowledge about media perception, audiovisual aesthetics, particularly in promotional forms, can not be isolated from their main intention: to have an influence on our perception. Therefore aesthetics and reception are especially closely connected in music videos. Producers of music videos use directly all the common technical and aesthetical possibilities of audiovisual creation to make the most of the sensorial and emotional effects of pictures and sound. Video clips thus represent a special form of the TV-aesthetics because they highly concentrate the effects of audiovisual media: The fast succession of pictures in a continuing flow of pictures that nearly can not be perceived and the affective and emotional effects that are connected to the high density of visual and acoustic stimuli. Even in the fugitive and superficial perception, fragmented sounds and images are isolated from the acoustic and visual background and attract the attention of the viewers. Within a split second they evoke associations, feelings and moods in an observer who looks reflexively at

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Academic article on the emotional aspects of music videos

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Page 1: Emotional Aspects of Music Video

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Dr. Kathrin Fahlenbrach Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Germany

IGEL-Conference Pécs, August 2002

Feeling Sounds. Emotional aspects of music videos.

I. First remarks to the effects of music videos and their aesthetics.

Talking about audiovisual culture today, the high influence of music videos can not be

ignored. Looking at the TV-culture, it is particularly obvious that promotion clips and music

videos have formed the aesthetics and the effects of TV-images on our perception. It is getting

more and more difficult to distinguish the TV-programme from promotional forms like

promotion clips or music videos. And even the film is highly influenced by the culture and the

aesthetics of video clips.

With this growing influence of the clip culture, the effects of audiovisual media have

changed. With the increasing concurrence between the channels in attracting the attention of

the public, the strategies of promotional forms like video clips are expanding – which are first

of all emotional strategies. Given that the audiovisual producers today increasingly use

explicitly modern knowledge about media perception, audiovisual aesthetics, particularly in

promotional forms, can not be isolated from their main intention: to have an influence on our

perception.

Therefore aesthetics and reception are especially closely connected in music videos.

Producers of music videos use directly all the common technical and aesthetical possibilities

of audiovisual creation to make the most of the sensorial and emotional effects of pictures and

sound. Video clips thus represent a special form of the TV-aesthetics because they highly

concentrate the effects of audiovisual media: The fast succession of pictures in a

continuing flow of pictures that nearly can not be perceived and the affective and emotional

effects that are connected to the high density of visual and acoustic stimuli.

Even in the fugitive and superficial perception, fragmented sounds and images are isolated

from the acoustic and visual background and attract the attention of the viewers. Within a split

second they evoke associations, feelings and moods in an observer who looks reflexively at

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the screen. Even looking unconsciously at them, this sensorial clearness of video clips has an

immediate effect of attraction or repulsion – even if the clips are only diffusely activating

stimuli in the background.

Looking at this sensorial clearness that characterizes not only music videos but audiovisual

aesthetics in general, I would like to demonstrate some approaches that could describe the

specifics of audiovisual media without referring to the traditional models of semiotics or

linguistics, which are still dominating descriptions of the audiovisual construction of meaning.

Even recent studies that deal with the specific relation of images and sound in music videos

treat the visual and even the musical aesthetics as text (cf. Altrogge 2000). But if visual and

musical forms are only treated as narrative or linguistic categories, the specificity of the

sensorial aesthetics and effects of audiovisual media can not be comprehended. First of all the

immediate sensorial and affective processing of music videos is reduced with this linguistic or

semiotic foundation to the construction of more or less cognitive meaning.

Facing these problems, I am currently evaluating diverse approaches of psychological, social

and media research concerning the reception and production of audiovisual media that could

overcome this philological and semiotic paradigm. As there is almost no work done in this

direction, I am presenting you today first approaches that I wish to develop in my following

works.

II. Multidimensional and intermodal perception. Premises for the emotional effects of music videos.

In the following I would like to show some cognitive and emotional premises of the

perception of music videos, which are closely connected to their synthesis of audiovisual

creation and emotional effects.

In zapping fast between the channels many pieces of the TV-programme are rapidly assigned

to simple binary codes, such as: pleasant – unpleasant / interesting – boring etc. In doing so

our sensory and cognitive-emotional system works hardly: within a split second perceived

views, parts of action, single pieces of dialogue as well as genre-characteristics, camera

views, cuttings etc. are identified and their subjective attraction is evaluated. The cognitive

knowledge of media, knowledge in general and the situation of reception are just as

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important for the decision to stay or to zap over to another channel as the emotional

perception of described feelings, tension and affective intensity.

If one zaps to a running video clip on MTV, the cognitive-emotional system decides

particularly fast. The highly dense stimuli, that are aesthetically designed to fit in the complex

flow of pictures in the zapping-mode, offer all the relevant cognitive and emotional dates to

the young public in a concentrated form: the musical and visual codes of youth- and

subculture as well as the connected moods of lifestyle (cf. Altrogge 2000).

The fast running visual and acoustic data are evaluated mostly on three dimensions:

• Sensorial processing of the audio-visual stimuli

• Emotional experience

• Cognitive evaluation

According to some latest theories on cognition and emotion (Fisher / Shaver / Carnochan

1990, Roth 2001, Damasio 1999, LeDoux 1996, Sokolowski 1993) the different dimensions

of the cognitive, emotional and sensorial processing are strongly correlated. The diverse

sensory stimuli are therefore evaluated in a parallel and simultaneous way. The immediate

scanning of the diverse sensory stimuli is reinforced specifically by the capacity of the brain,

to evaluate them in an intermodal way simultaneously and to relate them.

There are some recent theories on neurology and developmental psychology that deal with

this phenomenon of cross-modal or intermodal processing (Stern 1993, Marks 1978).

Acoustic, visual, tactile and olfactory stimuli are evaluated upon the so-called amodal

qualities – which are qualities of the stimuli that can be perceived in all sensorial modes.

There are several propositions how to name these amodal qualities. According to the main

categories proposed by Daniel Stern I am focussing the following qualities:

• Intensity1: concerning the experience of the density of the stimuli – along the

categories: strong – weak, loud – silent etc..

• Rhythm / Tempo: concerning the sensorial experience of temporal patterns – which

is evaluated in all modes along the categories: fast – slow

• Form / Pattern recognition: concerning the primary tendency of the brain to

integrate all perceived stimuli in well known patterns; this moreover cognitive

1 The level of Intensity concerns in the model of Stern first of all the interaction of mother and child and their specific physical and affective coordination. Cf. Stern 1993, 209 ff.

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processing follows criteria like: moving – quiet, common – uncommon, harmonic –

disharmonic, complex – simple, varied – redundant, contrasting – similar,

symmetric – asymmetric; (cf. Mehrabian 1976)

Along this intermodal processing the brain is capable to evaluate immediately all the

perceived sensorial stimuli in a parallel way and thereby regulates the cognitive and the

emotional processing.

On the level of cognitive processing the intermodal processing thus regulates the cognitive

attention: In relating the diverse interpreted stimuli, in assigning gradual differences

between the amodal qualities and in differentiating polarities between the diverse

dimensions, the intermodal processing produces semantic structures which regulate the

following process of attention (cf. Marks 1987).

On the level of emotional processing, the intermodal processing regulates by the way of

affective-emotional activation the experienced density of the stimuli. This affective-

emotional regulation is especially relevant for media reception: depending on the

subjectively experienced density of the stimuli, the zapping TV-viewer decides on the

emotional level about ‘staying’ or ‘zapping on’. This reaction relies primarily on the

subjective coping potential: the intensity of the stimuli is experienced as ‘too high’ or ‘too

low’– and thereby as ‘too exhausting’ or ‘too boring’. By their media reception the viewers

thus regulate their acute activation – and their emotional moods (cf. Zillmann 1988). Media

thus can be used to reinforce or to reduce activation and emotion by ‘avoidance’ or by

‘sensation seeking’ (cf. Zillmann 1988, Winterhoff-Spurk 1999).

III. The synthesis of perception and aesthetics. Some aesthetic qualities of music videos with regard to their emotional effects.

There is every reason to believe, that intermodal processing has a particular role in the

reception of music videos – assuming that their successful reception relies on the harmonic

perception of picture and music.

Thus the most important aesthetic quality of music videos that directly corresponds with the

immediate emotional processing is the aesthetical synthesis of pictures and music. In most

of the videos that we see on MTV, this synthesis appears in form of a harmonic

synchronicity of pictures and music to facilitate and guarantee the fast and simple reception.

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In designing the visual level in direct correspondence to the acoustic level, the music videos

seem to coincide structurally with the sensory processing of our brain.

Looking at the network of emotional, cognitive and sensorial processing I would like to

indicate some main aspects of the cognitive processing of music videos, as they are detected

in empirical studies on the reception of music videos (Altrogge 2000; Haack 1995).

III.1 The design of cognitive data in music videos

On the level of the cognitive evaluation, the visual and musical codes are evaluated on the

basis of the individual socio-cultural – especially the disposition of youth culture. Thus

musical and visual data are assigned to binary codes like: interesting – boring, strange –

familiar etc. In the cognitive evaluation of music videos youth cultural and sub cultural

codes play the most important role. Thus the video clips offer to their young public all of the

most important information for the stylistic and youth cultural assignment in a dense and

complex combination of visual and musical codes. Here are some of the most important data

on the level of the visual and acoustic creation of youth cultural codes:

• The visual style of the protagonists in a clip including all of the visible signs of their

habit, like clothes, hairstyle, make-up, nonverbal signals (gestures, facial expression)

etc. (cf. Altrogge 2000);

• The presentation of familiar or idealized situations and interactions corresponding

to a familiar or an idealized lifestyle of the public;

• The creation of youth cultural codes on all visual levels of the TV-production like:

the decoration of the studio, the creation of trailers and jingles, the clip production

itself;

• The musical codes that refer to the main musical styles like rock, pop, hip-hop etc.

which are recognized first of all by melody and rhythm.

In referring to the common codes and the taste of their public, music videos allow the

immediate cognitive affirmation or repulsion of the viewer on the cognitive level. Though

the cognitive youth cultural codes and taste, represented in music videos, also provoke

emotional effects. Looking at protest cultures for example, that define themselves in explicit

differentiation from their social environment, this emotional codification of musical and

visual codes is especially obvious (cf. Fahlenbrach 2002).

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III.2 The design of emotional signals in music videos.

The evocation of emotions is related to the presentation of emotional signals that already can

be identified on the neurological level – the primary level of emotional experience. There are

some neurological studies (Damasio 1999, LeDoux 1996) that show, that the primary

emotions like pleasure, love, fear, sorrow, rage etc. can already be evoked in the sub cortical

brain structures directly by single images or sounds.

Emotional signals are often explicitly visually designed in video clips as well. On the level of

visual presentation this seems to happen mostly in two forms:

• The visual representation of (primary) emotions in conventionalised (narrative)

plots (cf. Grodal 1997):

o Love scenes (love)

o Scenes of separation / Scenes of loneliness (sorrow) etc.

• The presentation of emotional interaction which can evoke immediate parasocial

effects. These parasocial effects are based on the tendency of the viewer to feel

empathically the emotions that they see presented by the protagonists on the screen

(cf. Vorderer 1996). In the representation of those emotional interactions, all technical

and aesthetical possibilities of audiovisual media are used, i.e.:

o The visual presentation of face-to-face-interaction by close shots, by shot –

reverse shot, often intensified by slow motion;

o The presentation of single emotional reactions in the facial expression by

close shots, often showing the eyes (cf. Mikunda 2002);

o The creation of erotic proximity by close shots of the protagonist’ body and

the camera turning around him / her.

Concerning the musical design of emotions and moods there are some interesting

approaches in the field of music psychology. Klaus Scherer for example demonstrates that

music can directly evoke primary emotions in associating the acoustic qualities of vocal

expression of primary emotions. In his studies about the relation between emotional and

vocal expression Scherer indicates main acoustic parameters for the attribution of primary

emotional states in a rating scale. Fast tempo and high pitch level i.e. is mostly attributed by

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the participants of his study to positive emotions like pleasantness and happiness whereas low

tempo and low pitch level is mostly attributed to more negative emotions like sadness.2

This correlates with empirical studies that show that the dominant function of music in video

clips seems to be to communicate moods and emotions (cf. Haack 1995) There is every

reason to believe that music dominantly regulates the experience of moods and emotions in a

music video. Therefore the visual presentation of emotions and moods has to be orientated at

the musical presentation of moods in the songs.

III.3 Sensorial activation through audiovisual design: Intermodal perception of music videos.3

In the common aesthetics of music videos those visual strategies often lead only to a highly

sensorial activation by the density of visual stimuli. In close relation to the musical rhythm

and the melodies, all visual strategies are used for the sensorial and affective activation (cf.

i.e. Mikunda 2002). On this level of sensorial processing the density of stimuli seem to be

experienced first of all by intermodal processing of amodal qualities that were described at

the beginning of this lecture.

In the following paragraph I would like to indicate some main aesthetical characteristics of

music videos concerning the audiovisual synchronicity on the level of intensity, rhythm and

formal patterns. In concentrating at this point explicitly on the aesthetical formation of the

visual and acoustic stimuli, it can only be assumed, that the audiovisual synchronicity on

these three levels refer directly to the intermodal perception and processing as it was

described above in reference to recent studies. I hope that I can verify my hypothesis

concerning the intermodal perception of such an aesthetical design in some later studies.

2 Happiness i.e. is attributed by: fast tempo, large pitch variation, sharp envelope, few harmonics, moderate amplitude variation (salient configurations: large pitch variation plus pitch contour up, fast tempo plus few harmonics); Sadness: Slow tempo, low pitch level, few harmonics, round envelope, pitch contour down (salient configuration: low pitch level plus slow tempo); Potency: many harmonics, fast tempo, high pitch level, round envelope, pitch contour up (salient configurations: large amplitude variation plus high pitch level, high pitch level plus many harmonics. Cf. Scherer, quoted in: Veltman 2001. 3 In the lecture I demonstrated the following criteria at the example of the recent music video ”Work it out” from Beyonce (2002). In this script of the lecture, I abandon this example because my demonstration is based on the running pictures in relation to the music. Without these a written demonstration would need a differentiated structural description which would go beyond the scope of this paper.

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Audiovisual synchronicity on the level of rhythm:

The connection of musical rhythm and visual rhythm in music videos is mainly construed by

the editing of the pictures. The relation between musical and visual rhythm can be

synchronous or, as it is the recent convention of music videos, syncopical: the cuts between

the pictures don’t correspond exactly with the beat. This syncopic relation between the

rhythm of pictures and sound perfectly assimilate the processing of the cognitive system: the

attention of the accustomed viewer can not be activated through the harmonic composition of

rhythm of pictures and sound anymore, only the deviance of this pattern can stimulate his

attention (cf. Flückiger 2001).

Beneath the musical rhythm, beats, duration and metric schemes are related to other visual

elements, i.e.:

o The rhythm in the movement of persons and objects – including eye

movements of the protagonists

o The tempo of animated elements, like inserts, graphics and other effects;

o The tempo of the running camera: slow motion, fast motion etc.

o The tempo of the camera movement

o The tempo of change between the diverse visual levels of presentation in the

clip (i.e. stage of performance, inserts etc.)

Audiovisual synchronicity on the level of acoustic and visual patterns

Concerning the recognition of formal patterns in the musical and visual creation of a music

video it could be assumed, that the conventionalised schemata and plots of the aesthetical

production are, beneath the described rhythmical patterns, another main aspect of the

cognitive and first of all the affective-emotional activation. As mentioned above the

recognition of formal patterns is evaluated upon categories as moving – quiet, common –

uncommon, harmonic – disharmonic, complex – simple, varied – redundant, contrasting –

similar, symmetric – asymmetric and thereby highly influence the attention of the viewer.

Musical patterns like refrain and melody are related to visual patterns, construed i.e. by:

o The visual composition in the construction of rooms and movements by the so

called “continuity-editing” – a main aesthetic of the Hollywood film: the

coordination of continuity by the editing of the pictures, by camera movement

and camera position.

o The composition of view angles by central perspective as traditional pattern

of visual composition in the western culture. It is one of the most important

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form to create the image of stars in a picture: referring to the Christian

iconography it indicates both the distance of the viewer to the star and his

originality

o Nonverbal patterns of facial expression, gestures etc.

o Relation of sizes between persons, persons and objects etc.

Audiovisual synchronicity on the level of intensity

The audiovisual intensity of music videos rests on the density of the described acoustic and

visual aesthetical stimuli, first of all the dense composition of musical and visual rhythm by

the editing of the pictures. Analysing the music video „Work it out“, Beyonce (2002) I could

count 65 cuts in one minute – which indicates the high rhythmical density on the visual level.

On the visual level there are several other elements to construct high intensity, i.e.:

o The intensity of the colours on the screen

o The intensity of the contrast of light (bright – dark): i.e. in the low-key / high-

key-style or the contrasting of light to create an artificial atmosphere

o The density of the inner structure of the pictures, the composition of diverse

visual levels

The high intensity of pictures often corresponds to the intensity produced on the acoustic

level by loudness, pitch, contrast of rhythm, melody and pitch and the quality of the musical

representation of mood, like serious – funny, bright – dark, strained – relaxed.

As mentioned above, these are only my first criteria for an analysis of the sensorial aesthetics

of music videos. But even looking at these indicated sensorial, emotional and cognitive

stimuli of a running music video that are perceived within a split second, it is obvious how

many data the brain is processing by zapping fast over the TV-channels. The aesthetics of

music videos today are so perfectly assimilated to the multidimensional and intermodal

processing of our brain that they perfectly seem to reflect their genuine effects.

Literature:

Altrogge, Michael (2000). Tönende Bilder. Interdisziplinäre Studie zu Musik und Bildern in Videoclips und ihre Bedeutung für Jugendliche (3 Vol.). Vol I: Das Feld und die Theorie. Berlin.

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Clynes, Manfred, Evans, James R. (Ed.). Rhythm in psychological, linguistic and musical

Condon, William S. (1986). Communication: Rhythm and Structure. In: Clynes / Evans (Ed.). 55 – 79.

Damasio, Antonio R. (1999). The Feeling of what happens. Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York.

Fahlenbrach, Kathrin (2002). Protestinszenierungen. Visuelle Kommunikation und kollektive Identitäten in Protestbewegungen. Wiesbaden.

Fischer, Kurt W. / Shaver, Phillip R. / Carnochan, Peter. How Emotions Develop and how they Organise Development. In: Cognition and Emotion, H. 4, 1990. S. 81-127.

Flückiger, Barbara (2001). Sound Design. Die virtuelle Klangwelt des Films. Zürich.

Grodal, Torben (1997). Moving Pictures. A new Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition. Oxford.

Haack, Stefan (1995). Videoclips im semantischen Raum. (unpublished paper). Berlin. Quoted in: Rötter, Günther (2000). Videoclips und Visualisierung von E-Musik. In: Josef Kloppenburg (Ed.) Musik intermedial. Filmmusik, Videoclip, Fernsehen. Laaber.

Marks, Lawrence (1978). The unity of the senses – Interrelations among the modalities. New York.

LeDoux, Joseph E. 1996. The emotional brain. New York.

Mehrabian, Albert (1976). Public places and private places. The psychology of work, play, and living environments. New York.

Mikunda, Christian (2002). Kino spüren: Strategien emotionaler Filmgestaltung. Wien.

Riess-Jones, Mari (1986). Attentional Rhythmicity in human Perception. In: Clynes / Evans (Ed.). 13 – 41.

Rötter, Günther (2000). Videoclips und Visualisierung von E-Musik. In: Kloppenburg, Josef (Ed.) Musik Multimedial. Filmmusik, Videoclip, Fernsehen. Handbuch der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert. Vol 11. Laaber. 259 – 295.

Stern, Daniel (1993). Die Lebenserfahrung des Säuglings. Stuttgart.

Veltman, Joshua (2001). Notes on selected articles by Klaus R. Scherer (and collaborators) on Vocal Affect Expression. http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music829D/Notes/Scherer.html. May 11. 2001.

Vorderer, Peter (Ed.) (1996). Fernsehen als Beziehungskiste: parasoziale Beziehungen und Interaktionen mit TV-Personen. Opladen.

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