Similar to the way that Sidanius and Pratto (1999) use it in their theory of human behavior: Now, IвЂ™m not going to argue as vehemently as Pinker against the three myths I mentioned earlier, as I see them as myths in the more anthropological definition of the word. The research time and time again has shown that intelligence is primarily inherited somewhere between 25 and 75 % and as such everyone ends up with a finite potential, but we educate kids as if they had limitless potential, which leads to policies that flush money down the toilet because we elect to ignore the facts when making those policies. This is not to say that people are not capable of learning, simply that they cannot bend certain features they were born with and can only hope to maximize others. However, genetics has shown us that we are not. So many people assume based on this centuries old non-empirical logic that humans are infinitely malleable. Like I said I donвЂ™t want to give away PinkerвЂ™s exact arguments as he has much more experience in his repertoire to draw from, and as a linguistic scientist also can write in a much more appeasing literary verbiage than I, but a simple example is the notion of the tabula rasa that so many people are familiar with from discussions of philosophy. tabula rasa), the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine have become so entrenched in modern ideologies that even empirical evidence to the contrary of each cannot be rationally discussed because to oppose these myths is seen by the radical scientists as confirmation of their negative. PinkerвЂ™s basic premise is that myths such as the blank slate (i.e. In fact, that is actually one of PinkerвЂ™s primary themes in this book that liberal arts and the humanities need to reclaim their disciplines by re-evaluating many of the commonly held ideologies held by those he labels вЂњradical scientistsвЂќ. IвЂ™m going to avoid details again as I think that anyone who wishes to be educated in the classical sense of a liberal arts education should read this book. It was both confirmatory on a lot of my world view, but also very eye-opening at the same time. These techniques have been integrated into a prototypical electronic music instrument, also serving as an experimental platform for future research.I finally finished PinkerвЂ™s (2002) the blank slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. In order to hint the gesturefollower for the transition from one gesture to the next one an anticipation strategy using a higher-level Markov model working on gesture classes has been developed.

A novel method of intelligent real-time corpus element selection has been implemented, combining statistical sound segmentation, classification and gesture-following building on IRCAMвЂ™s HMM-based gesturefollower.

Machine listening methods have been used to analyze those interaction traces and establish associations with elements of a sound corpus. A basic musical interface based on piezo microphones and pressure sensors has been built, capable of tracing hand interaction on a plain surface. The focus was on the relationship between sound-producing bodily gestures and gestural evolutions perceived in sound, fused into the concept of gestural-sonorous objects. The IRCAM Musical Research Residency project was embedded in the larger scope of embodied interaction with computer music instruments based on recorded sounds. The final talk of the residency, presenting findings of my research can be found at or below. IRCAM has made available video recordings of talks held as part of my вЂњMusical Research ResidencyвЂќ taking place from September thru November 2011.

Tabula rasa 2011