4. Affective Musical Interaction: Influencing Users’ Behaviour and Experiences with Music

In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) use of the auditory channel normally involves communicating information to users in the form of short, auditory messages. Given the recent trend of HCI research towards incorporating experiential objectives, we propose that the auditory channel could also be exploited for affective intent. In particular, music could be integrated within interactive technologies as a vehicle to influence users’ behaviour and their experiences. This chapter describes some of the research conducted from other fields that already embrace the affective characteristic of music within their context. The limited amount of research exploiting music affectively in an HCI environment is discussed; including a review of our previous work involving Ambient Music Email (AME), an affective musical extension for email clients. By reflecting on how other subjects investigate the affective nature of music, this chapter aims to show that the HCI field is falling behind and inspire further work in this area. In fact, there are a wide variety of potential motivations for working with affective musical interaction, with a vast realm of potential research avenues, some of which are proposed here.