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Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality (2023)
Journal Article
Gordon, R. L., Martschenko, D. O., Nayak, S., Niarchou, M., Morrison, M. D., Bell, E., …Davis, L. K. (2023). Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1522(1), https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14972

New interdisciplinary research into genetic influences on musicality raises a number of ethical and social issues for future avenues of research and public engagement. The historical intersection of music cognition and eugenics heightens the need to... Read More about Confronting ethical and social issues related to the genetics of musicality.

Exploring Time-Coded Comments on YouTube Music Videos of ‘Top 40’ Pop 2000–20 (2023)
Book Chapter
Bell, E. (2023). Exploring Time-Coded Comments on YouTube Music Videos of ‘Top 40’ Pop 2000–20. In H. Rogers, J. Freitas, & J. F. Porfírio (Eds.), YouTube and Music: Online Culture and Everyday Life (255-276). Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501387302.0024

As part of a larger project to understand the way that structural features of the design and implementation of radio technology influences its audiences – calling this the medium’s ‘physiognomy’ – Theodor Adorno opened the mailbags of the radio stati... Read More about Exploring Time-Coded Comments on YouTube Music Videos of ‘Top 40’ Pop 2000–20.

Genome-wide association study of musical beat synchronization demonstrates high polygenicity (2022)
Journal Article
Niarchou, M., Gustavson, D. E., Sathirapongsasuti, J. F., Anglada-Tort, M., Eising, E., Bell, E., …Gordon, R. L. (2022). Genome-wide association study of musical beat synchronization demonstrates high polygenicity. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(9), 1292-1309. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01359-x

Moving in synchrony to the beat is a fundamental component of musicality. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study to identify common genetic variants associated with beat synchronization in 606,825 individuals. Beat synchronization exhibite... Read More about Genome-wide association study of musical beat synchronization demonstrates high polygenicity.

Cybernetics, listening, and sound-studio phenomenotechnique in Abraham Moles’s Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958) (2021)
Journal Article
Bell, E. (2021). Cybernetics, listening, and sound-studio phenomenotechnique in Abraham Moles’s Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958). Resonance (Oakland, Calif.), 2(4), 523-558. https://doi.org/10.1525/res.2021.2.4.523

In his Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958), the sociologist of culture Abraham Moles (1920–1992) set out to demonstrate the applicability of information theory—a mathematical linchpin of cybernetics—to the arts more generally. Mo... Read More about Cybernetics, listening, and sound-studio phenomenotechnique in Abraham Moles’s Théorie de l’information et perception esthétique (1958).

Two musical episodes at the piano keyboard in the study of human information-processing: Information as ‘cognitive good’ in interdisciplinary research (2021)
Conference Proceeding
Bell, E. (2021). Two musical episodes at the piano keyboard in the study of human information-processing: Information as ‘cognitive good’ in interdisciplinary research.

In the early 1950s, the biologist Henry Quastler asked pianists to sight-read randomly generated musical scores as quickly and as accurately as possible. Quastler computed their performance as their “information transmission rate,” measured in bits-p... Read More about Two musical episodes at the piano keyboard in the study of human information-processing: Information as ‘cognitive good’ in interdisciplinary research.

Interleaving as Cultural Technique in the Audio CD and the End of Archaeophonography (2021)
Journal Article
Bell, E. (2021). Interleaving as Cultural Technique in the Audio CD and the End of Archaeophonography. Media theory, 5(1), 115-146

This article discusses a significant if imperceptible feature of how audio compact discs (CDs) inscribe sound: interleaving. It shows how CDs materialize interleaving—the microtemporal re-ordering of data—as a cultural technique of contemporary digit... Read More about Interleaving as Cultural Technique in the Audio CD and the End of Archaeophonography.