Dr. Steven Campbell
College of Music, Visual Arts and Theatre
James Cook University, Australia

The research project involves the development of software (in Max) for disabled/handicapped and more specifically, autistic children. With the I-CubeX I can set up a large space in which the participants can move freely to generate sounds either individually or as a group. I’ll be working with a music therapist and a cognitive psychologist to develop the software which will be a set of programs tailored to the needs of the individual patients. Similar systems have been used in music therapy (e.g. Soundbeam in the UK) but there is little documented research that has been carried out and while the benefits of such systems are obvious to music therapists and careers, the work done so far is very ad hoc and calls for a considerable amount of research.

august 1999