From the January-March 2013 issue

Directing Physiology and Mood through Music: Validation of an Affective Music Player

Marjolein D. van der Zwaag, Joris H. Janssen, Joyce H.D.M. Westerink

Music is important in everyday life, as it provides entertainment and influences our moods. As music is widely available, it is becoming increasingly difficult to select songs to suit our mood. An affective music player can remove this obstacle by taking a desired mood as input and then selecting songs that direct toward that desired mood. In the present study, we validate the concept of an affective music player directing the energy dimension of mood. User models were trained for 10 participants based on skin conductance changes to songs from their own music database. Based on the resulting user models, the songs that most increased or decreased the skin conductance level of the participants were selected to induce either a relatively energized or a calm mood. Experiments were conducted in a real-world office setting. The results showed that a reliable prediction can be made of the impact of a song on skin conductance, that skin conductance and mood can be directed toward an energized or calm state and that skin conductance remains in these states for at least 30 minutes.

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Editorials and Announcements

Announcements

• The fifth biannual Humaine Association Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2013) will be held in Geneva, Switzerland on September 2-5, 2013
• eBooks of issues of TAC can now be downloaded from the Computer Society Digital Library
• Transactions on Affective Computing 2010 Annual Index is now available. (PDF)
• Dr. Jonathan Gratch Featured in April's Volunteer Spotlight

Editorials

• Introduction to TAC by J. Gratch

Guest Editorials

• Editorial for the Special Section on Ethics and Affective Computing
• Introduction to the Affect-Based Human Behavior Understanding Special Issue
• Affective Computing: From Laughter to IEEE by R.W. Picard

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