Manfred Clynes: Sentic Forms ~ Patents and articles

![](0logo.gif) **[rexresearch.com](../index.htm)**

---



**Manfred CLYNES**

**Sentic ( Essentic ) Forms**

---

**[Sentic Forms](#forms)**  
> ******[******M.
> Clynes  (Ed./Author):****** Music,
> Mind, and Brain The Neuropsychology of
> Music](MusicMindBrainNeurospsychology.pdf) [ PDF, 43 MB ]****[Manfred Clynes: Sentic Cycles --- The
> Passions At Your Fingertips; *Psychology Today*
> (May 1972)](#pt72)**  
> **[M. Clynes: Time-Forms, Nature's
> Generators and Communicators of Emotion; *Proc.
> IEEE Intl. Workshop on Robot & Human Comm.* (
> Tokyo, Sept. 1992 )](#ieee)**  
> **[Manfred Clynes: US Patent # 3,691,652 ~
> Programmed System for Evoking Emotional Responses](#3691)**  
> **[M. Clynes: USP # 3,995,492 ~
> Sound-Producing Isometric Exerciser](3995492.htm)**  
> **[M. Clynes: USP # 4,704,682 ~
> Computerized System for Imparting an Expressive
> Microstructure to...  a Musical Score](4704682.htm)**  
> **[M. Clynes: USP # 4,763,257 ~
> Computerized System for Imparting an Expressive
> Microstructure...](4763257.htm)**  
> **[M. Clynes: USP # 4,999,773 ~
> Technique for Contouring Amplitude of Musical Notes...](4999773.htm)**  
> **[M. Clynes: USP # 5,195,895 ~
> Sentic Cycler Unit](5195985.htm)**  
> **[M. Clynes: USP # 5,305,423 ~
> Computerized System for Producing Sentic Cycles...](5305423.htm)**  
> **M. Clynes: USP # 3,755,922 ~ System for Producing
> Personalized Sentograms**
>
> ---
>
> **Sentic Forms**
>
> ![](sntc4ms.gif)![](sentform.jpg)
>
> ---
>
> ***Psychology Today* (May 1972)**
>
> **Sentic Cycles --- The Passions At
> Your Fingertips**
>
> **by**
>
> **Manfred Clynes**
>
> *Specific emotions --- anger, hate, grief,
> love, sex, joy and reverence --- produce distinct muscle
> movement. Theyre the same in Mexico, Japan, Indonesia,
> and upstate New York. When you run through a cycle,
> expressing each of the seven with your fingertip, you
> feel better for it.*
>
> In 1967 I took part, as pianist, in Pablo
> Casals master classes in San Juan, Puerto Rico. One day
> when Casals was teaching Haydns "Cello Concerto", he
> asked a participant, a young master in his own right, to
> play the theme from the third movement. His playing was
> expert, sure and graceful. But for Casals something was
> missing.
>
> The master stopped the performance. No,
> no!, he said, waving his hands. That must be graceful!.
>
> He took up his own cello and played the same
> passage. And it was graceful, a hundred ties more graceful
> than we had just heard. Yes --- it seemed as though we had
> never heard grace before. We had experienced one of the
> least understood forms of human communication --- a
> powerful and clear transmittal f feeling without words, a
> feeling that penetrated our defenses and transformed our
> states of mind.
>
> Casals played the same notes, and at similar
> speed. But the muscles of his hands and arms acted
> precisely together with his cello according to his very
> clear idea of grace.
>
> How was his possible? How, precisely, was
> Casals expression different from the students? And how
> did the sound of his cello carry the idea and feeling of
> grace from his mind to ours?
>
> **Action** --- These and similar
> questions that I thought about for many years led me to
> record and measure the precise motions of expressive
> action. My experiments on impulses from the pressure of a
> single finger, precisely expressing various fantasized
> emotional states have shown that there is a specific
> dynamic form of action underlying the expression of each
> emotion, and that the dynamic character of this
> action-form probably is universal, unlearned, and
> genetically programmed.
>
> Emotions may be experienced in various
> aspects: (1) in a real situation, or (2) through fantasy
> --- as when one imagines being with a loved person. Also
> one may experience emotion trough empathy with another
> person who is (1) either really experiencing the emotion,
> or (2) experiencing it as fantasy --- as when one is
> watching a play or movie.
>
> It is hard to study the quantitative effects
> of emotion in a real situation. In most experiments it is
> difficult to specify situation that reliably produce a
> given emotion. Repeated experiments are difficult to carry
> out under the same conditions. Emotions, in real
> situations, may today be less amenable to scientific study
> than fantasized emotions are. I have found a way of
> generating and expressing fantasy emotions that allows
> precise, repeated measurement.
>
> **Signs** --- How can one know what
> another person is feeling? Psychologists and other
> scientists have tried to identify outward, physical signs
> that correspond to each emotion. Perspiration,
> pupil-diameter, skin conductance, heart rate --- all have
> been used as objective, observable indications of internal
> states. But these are not uniformly related to experience
> --- anger turns some persons faces red, others, pale.
>
> And yet, artists, musicians, dancers and
> actors are aware of the precision of emotions that may be
> communicated. They may communicate through movement of
> hands, legs, mouths, eyes, the whole body, and through
> tone of voice. The precise way that one uses his body to
> express an emotion is more important than the part of the
> body one sues [see Body Talk --- A Game by Layne
> Longfellow, *Psychology Today*, October 1970].
>
> **Anger** --- We may consider that there
> is a common brain program for specific emotion that
> determines the character of the movement and its precise
> time course, regardless of the particular body movement
> that expresses it. Or, example, in expressing anger no
> matter what part of the body one uses, the brain program
> that determines the character of its time course is
> revealed. And this is in turn what we notice when we watch
> the movement and perceive anger.
>
> In this method of generating and expressing
> fantasy emotions by a succession of single, expressive,
> appropriately timed acts, the fantasy emotion increases
> with each expression, until it reaches a peak that may be
> maintained for a time and then gradually dissipates. This
> dissipation takes place even though one continues to
> perform the expressive acts.
>
> **Finger** --- In view of this, I decided
> to use the expressive pressure movement of one finger as a
> standardized basic measure of expressed fantasized
> emotion. In my experiments, the subject sits in a
> straight-back chair and rests the middle finger of his
> right hand on a finger rest. I ask him to fantasize a
> given emotion (say, anger or love) for the next few
> minutes. Whenever he hears a signal --- a soft click ---
> he is to express that emotion as precisely as possible
> through the single, transient pressure of the finger. The
> clicks come at unpredictable intervals that vary by
> several seconds. The finger-rest is mounted with two
> pressure transducers that produce two graphic tracings of
> finger pressure during the two seconds immediately
> following the click. One tracing measures the fingers
> vertical pressure; the other measures its horizontal
> pressure, toward the body and away from it.
>
> **Trials** --- Most subjects find it easy
> to express a fantasy emotion with a single finger
> pressure. About 70 percent can do it on the first set of
> trials.
>
> To get a stable overall measurement, I
> usually have a subject express each emotion 50 times, then
> I feed the data into a computer of average transients
> (CAT) that averages the vertical tracings for a given
> emotion into one common vertical form and, likewise,
> extracts a common form from the horizontal tracings. I
> have found that the more a subject practices a clearly
> separate fantasy emotion, the more his individual
> expression tends to approach the common form for that
> emotion.
>
> Usually I have a subject express anger,
> hate, grief, love, sex, joy, reverence, and a state of no
> emotion.
>
> Expressing no emotion in this method is like
> the mechanical movement of typewriting: primarily
> downward, and slightly outward, away from the body. Anger
> is a similar emotion, but with reversed emphasis: outward
> movement is more pronounced than downward movement. Anger
> is a brief expression --- the finger returns to its
> original position in less than a second. Love is slower,
> and takes two seconds or more. Changes in pressure during
> love are gradual and smooth, and the horizontal tracings
> often show an inward, embracing movement. The form for sex
> is distinct from love.
>
> Measurements of electrical activity in the
> muscles show that there is a secondary delayed pressure
> that begins after the expression has started. Such delayed
> muscular activity also occurs in hate --- another
> passionate emotion. Hate, like anger, involves a push away
> from the body. Grief is slow, like love, but is flatter
> and slightly outward. In joy, after an initial downward
> push, the finger pressure rebounds above its starting
> position, as if one were jumping for joy. Reverence is
> similar to love, but lacks the inward pull ad follows a
> longer tie scale --- the full expression of reverence may
> take three or four seconds. I first included fear among
> emotions that a subject was to fantasize, but I found that
> fear implied withdrawal and inhibition of expression and
> our technique could not measure this.
>
> **Oxygen** --- In many cases I have
> measured additional physiological variables during an
> experiment, and these measurements confirm both a specific
> pattern for the expression of each emotion, and the
> persistent physiological changes that accompany sustained
> fantasy emotions. During an expression by this method, the
> electrical activities in separate muscle groups (the
> forearm, upper arm, front shoulder and back) show
> reliable, identifiable patterns). Respiration also tends
> to follow a specific pattern: a subject tends to exhale as
> he expresses hate or grief, for example, and to inhale
> when he expresses joy.
>
> Heart rate and oxygen consumption show
> definite, characteristic changes while a particular
> emotion is fantasized. Oxygen consumption appears to be
> highest in the states of hate and sex, lowest in love and
> reverence.
>
> **Stability** --- Emotional expressive
> forms measured in this way are stable and apparently
> universal. A subject will give essentially the same
> tracing for a single emotion on different occasions, and
> different subjects from different cultures produce
> remarkably similar tracings for a given emotion. We can
> state the degree of correspondence between any two
> measurements as a correlation in which zero indicates no
> relationship between one measure and the other and 1.0
> indicates a perfect match. Between two measurements of the
> same emotion in one person, the vertical tracings usually
> correlate above 0.90, whereas cross-correlations between
> different emotions are generally lower than 0.30. The
> forms are also remarkably consistent between individuals
> --- correlations between two persons expressions of an
> emotion are generally above 0.80. Dramatic differences can
> occur, and the discrepancy can be instructive. For
> example, when I compared my expressions to those of
> another subject, I found that our tracings were similar
> for most emotions (correlations of 0.80 or higher), but
> that for anger they differed sharply, with a negative
> correlation of 0.22. We learned that we interpreted the
> word anger differently. I had expressed an irritable,
> ready-to-strike-out anger, whereas my colleagues anger
> was of the slow, burning type. The tracings seems to
> detect the word anger designates two different emotions.
>
> **Test** --- The observation raises an
> interesting question. Suppose two persons expressing an
> emotion (joy, for example) produce slightly different
> waveforms. Does this mean that they express the same
> emotion in different ways, or does the slight shape
> discrepancy imply a corresponding difference in the way
> the two feel joy? We cannot answer, but my research
> indicates that when there are large differences in form,
> there are large differences in the emotions experienced.
>
> For example, I have tried to train subjects
> to express one emotion with the expressive form of another
> emotion, but they cannot learn to do it. I asked subjects
> to fantasize anger and try to experience this with the
> patern associated with love, and vice versa. When a
> subjects tracings approached the love form, re received
> praise; when he reproduced anger-shaped waves, he was
> warned. But no matter ow hard he tried, no subject could
> generate and express anger by finger pressure resembling
> love.
>
> With repeated expression, a subjects
> fantasies became more and more intense. He may shed tears
> while he expresses grief, or become aroused.
>
> Several investigators have shown that human
> beings can learn to control their bodies to an extent
> previously considered impossible. Peter Lang finds that,
> through immediate visual feedback about what some of his
> organs are doing, a subject can learn to control these as
> he would learn to drive a car [see "Automatic Control or
> Learning to Play the Internal Organs", by Peter Lang, *Psychol.
> Today*, October 1970].
>
> We gave our subjects no feedback about the
> shapes they were producing --- and yet their tracings
> became more accurate and precise as the trials went on.
> Clearly, something different from instrumental learning is
> involved here. It is as if one were discovering within
> himself those precise emotional expression programs that
> were there all along. This uncovering of the forms, and
> their resistance to change, suggest that the different
> basic emotional expressive forms are inborn --- not
> culturally learned --- a hypothesis that gains support
> from my finding that the forms are much the same from one
> culture to another. (The effect of culture may often be to
> suppress access to these forms, at some sage of
> development.)
>
> I tested subjects in Mexico and Japan, and
> in Bali, Indonesia, and their basic shapes were the same
> as those of Americans. The few cross-cultural
> inconsistencies could be traced to language differences.
> Indonesians have no word for hate, and in Mexico *alegria*
> (happiness) was the closest approximation I could find for
> joy. Disparity between alegria tracings and the typical
> joy shape sowed just how inaccurate the translation was.
>
> **Rubicon** --- The brain programs the
> entire course of a single brief movement before it acts.
> Once the decision to move has been made --- a swing of a
> bat, or an eye movement, for example --- it must continue;
> for 200 milliseconds, one cannot change the movements of a
> limb or muscle by another decision because of limits in
> the nervous system. The existence of specific, universal
> brain programs corresponding to certain basic elements of
> experience is not a new discovery. In 1965, Michael Kohn
> and I measured the electrical activity originating from
> the different parts of subjects brains while the subjects
> looked at various colors. We found that with the help of a
> computer we could identify more than 100 separate brain
> responses to specific visual stimuli --- and the patterns
> had consistent physiologic code elements in all the
> subjects we tested. We could thus tell what color a
> subject was looking at from the pattern of electrical
> activity in his brain.
>
> The spectrum of our emotions, like our
> perception of color, is precisely programmed by the brain.
> This programming is different for different emotions. We
> call a single programmed movement having a clear beginning
> and end, together with the decision giving rise to it, an
> *acton*. The emotion-seeking expression modulates
> actons into different E-actons for each emotion. E-actons
> are so precisely programmed into the brain that we have
> been able to find a differential equation that can be used
> to simulate these human forms of expression on a computer.
>
> To understand how the idea of an emotion
> directs the bodys movements, consider what happens when a
> pitcher throws a ball at a target. He must have (1) a
> clear idea of where he wants to hit the target and (2) a
> precise execution. The idea of the target modulates his
> throwing motion, so that eventually one may choose any
> object within a certain range, think of hitting it, and a
> spatio-temporal form will direct the exact movements of
> the arm. As many a major-league pitcher has demonstrated,
> practice can refine the accuracy with which the idea is
> executed.
>
> A similar process determines the expression
> of emotions. Effective emotional communication depends on
> (1) a clear idea of the emotion one wants to express and
> (2) a precise execution of the muscular acts involved ---
> finger movements, gestures, tone of voice, etc. The
> capacity to develop a clear idea of an emotion (which I
> call an *idiolog*) is as much a part of human nature
> as the ability to perceive red or sweet or hot. The
> idiolog accurately dictates the specific expressive
> movement (if it is permitted to do so).
>
> **Animals** --- Any number of bodily
> movements can express a given emotional idiolog. The
> specific brain program for anger, which can turn an
> innocuous arm-raising into an angry threat, also can
> direct angry movements of the foot, or the mouth, or the
> tone of voice. In successful communication the specific
> brain program effectively commands a movement --- with no
> inhibitions to block the expression. We generally
> interpret direct, unhindered expression of emotion as
> faithful or sincere.
>
> When one perceives an emotional expression,
> the nervous system recognizes the form, and decodes it
> into a corresponding emotional idiolog. As the receiver of
> such messages, the nervous system is programmed to
> interpret the shape of movements, and there is little we
> can do to change this program. We even attribute
> appropriate characteristics to animals whose movements
> remind us of human qualities we are programmed to
> recognize (for example, a graceful antelope or an uncouth
> hippopotamus).
>
> **Cycle** --- In my first exploratory
> studies, I usually expressed no emotion 50 times in
> sequence and then expressed each of the seven emotions 50
> times. The entire process takes about 30 minutes. I call
> this a *sentic cycle*, according to the terms in my
> formal theory, in which the specific expression of an
> emotion is an *essentic form*, and the emotion brain
> programs that produces the form is a *sentic state*.
>
> Although at first a subject may like to
> imagine various scenes to help him fantasize the emotion,
> he soon finds out that he can express an emotion without
> directing it at a specific person or imagining a specific
> scene. He learns to experience the emotion in itself, as
> in music, without needing specific provokers or recipients
> for the emotion. This pure emotion does not imply lack of
> consideration for the individual: when we understand and
> experience emotion in its most general sense, we are also
> most able to become genuinely concerned about and close to
> a particular person, that is, to develop empathy.
>
> **Peace** --- Often I go through several
> sentic cycles at a sitting. (A straight-backed chair and a
> correct arm position, I have found, a crucial to
> performing sentic cycles reliably and without fatigue).
> When I first began doing sentic cycles for several hours
> at a stretch, I was surprised to find that I was neither
> bored nor tired, but refreshed and satisfied, and that I
> required less sleep than usual the following night.
>
> At first, I attributed these effects to
> enthusiasm and curiosity about a new discovery and to the
> satisfaction of completing a good days experiment. But I
> soon found that others reported similar feelings of
> well-being and satisfaction from repeated sentic cycles.
>
> In further, systematic observation, I had
> subjects go through one-hour sessions made up of two
> sentic cycles. Most subjects reported that after the
> second cycle (which they often experienced more fully than
> the first), they felt calm, content --- some compared the
> experience to a marijuana high.
>
> Other researchers have confirmed the general
> observation: performing sentic cycles lessened anxiety for
> 3 to 24 hours. And, together with calmness, they often
> showed marked increases in mental energy. It is not
> necessary to record the expressive movements to reap these
> benefits. Practicing sentic cycles in the home, in the
> proper position and with the finger rest, works as well as
> performing in the laboratory.
>
> **Release** --- Many persons work off
> anger by punching at a wall or chopping wood. They say
> that the physical activity makes them feel better --- it
> releases the anger, "lets off steam". But it may not be
> the amount of energy expended that is effective, but the
> quality of anger that is expressed repeatedly. One can
> work off anger by appropriate and repeated pressing of a
> finger as effectively as by chopping a pile of wood.
>
> Most of us tend to suppress emotions in our
> daily lives, but in sentic cycles one can express a
> spectrum of emotions freely, without embarrassment or fear
> of social censure. This freedom to discover and to be what
> is natural contributes to the satisfactory results of a
> sentic session. In addition, there is the satisfaction of
> finding that one can summon up various emotions at will.
> This creates a condition of sentic fluidity --- as
> compared with the rigidity found in emotional
> disturbances.
>
> Whatever their cause, the beneficial effects
> of sentic cycles have many applications. In fantasizing
> emotions one experiences relief from daily emotional
> tensions. Fearful or anxious persons have reported that
> sentic cycles help relieve their symptoms.
>
> Psychiatrist Alfred P. French and Joe Tupin
> have found that sentic cycles provide "immediate and
> dramatic relief of symptoms of depression", in some
> patients. Other researchers have evidence that they may
> also relieve psychosomatic disorders, perhaps because
> during sentic cycles one naturally expresses emotions that
> might otherwise be shunted to various parts of the system
> causing long-term internal stress.
>
> **Touch** --- After experience with
> sentic cycles, one comes to appreciate the language of
> touch: he becomes more sensitive to the emotional signals
> in another persons touch, and more aware of the emotions
> he communicates through his own touch.
>
> Learning to express and control emotions in
> the way I have described may help drama and music students
> learn to be better, more convincing communicators.
> Feedback in the form of tracings can show them when their
> expressions approach the true sentic form. The
> measurements might shed light on what we call natural
> talent.
>
> Training a person to express fantasy
> emotions in this manner, to be in touch with the spectrum
> of emotions, may help in the treatment of emotionally
> disturbed, neurotic, or psychopathic personalities. It
> also seems to lend itself to rechanneling of
> anxiety-driven aggressiveness to a creative energy, in
> which the expressive act itself gives satisfaction. We
> should be able to learn more about the basic human
> emotions, and perhaps someday, possibly with help from
> geneticists, discover new ones better than we have yet
> experienced. Indeed the experience of the sentic cycle
> itself is a step in this direction.
>
> ---
>
> ***Proceedings of the IEEE International
> Workshop on Robot and Human Communication* ( Tokyo,
> Japan, Sept. 1992 )**
>
> **Time-Forms, Nature's Generators
> and Communicators of Emotion**
>
> Keynote paper, IEEE International Workshop
> on Robot and Human Communication, Tokyo, Japan, Sept.
> 1992.
>
> **Manfred Clynes**
>
> CNMAT   
> University of California, Berkeley   
> 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley 94709, and   
> Microsound International Ltd. Box 143, Sonoma Ca 95476
>
> **Abstract** --- Dynamic forms, called
> sentic forms, are described as language elements of a
> natural, biologically evolved language of communicating
> and generating emotions. These forms are genetically
> programmed into the central nervous system, and can be
> stored and recognized by computers and robots, and can
> serve as basis of real time emotional communication
> between them and humans. Music and art also utilize these
> forms to store and embody emotional meaning. A
> double-stream theory of music is outlined - including two
> principles of unconscious musicality which can realised on
> a computer - allowing one to create first-rate meaningful
> interpretations without manual performance or dexterity.
> New social opportunities and dangers are discussed arising
> from simulation and virtual reality which may exceed the
> average human in emotional eloquence. Real-real time is
> introduced as a concept to include human
> timeconsciousness.
>
> **I. INTRODUCTION**
>
> This paper is a short review of new thinking
> and practical applications arising from the discovery and
> study of time-forms and their biologically evolved
> meanings in communicating and generating emotion.
>
> In communicating between men and machines,
> the use of discursive symbols has been general practice.
> Symbols come in two kinds: discursive and nondiscursive
> [1]. Discursive symbols have one-to-one relationship with
> what they denote. In non-discursive symbols human
> imagination is brought into play; such a symbol can act to
> evoke meanings and indirectly feelings. It used to be
> thought that music and the arts made use largely of such
> non-discursive symbols [1,2,3].
>
> A major step forward was achieved in
> realizing that the evolution of nature has designed
> specific dynamic forms which act not in a symbolic way but
> directly on the central nervous system. [4,5,6] These
> forms, like laughter and yawning, require no symbolic
> translation. They constitute the "words" of a natural
> language of emotional communication. Over two decades of
> studies have been devoted to isolate these forms and
> elucidate their function [7,8,9,10,11]
>
> Human communication systems use zeros and
> ones, or dots and dashes, to transmit information. But
> nature's own emotion communication system has codesigned
> the sender, receiver, and message units with meaning
> evolved by nature: the message units themselves (the
> sentic forms) have analog form which act like keys in
> locks of our nervous system.
>
> The specific dynamic forms - "words" - are
> produced through appropriate, prewired modulation by the
> sender, as analog forms. The receiver has demodulation
> filters that recognise these forms, like keys in locks. In
> our brain, the amygdala, a special structure of the
> midbrain, acts as a "gatekeeper" both to modulate and
> demodulate the specific dynamic forms, or "words"[12].
> Several output-input modes may be chosen for this process,
> moreover: the auditory, visual, tactile or motor systems.
>
> The biologically evolved communication
> system inherently encodes and decodes emotional meaning -
> with specific dynamic forms (in the range of 1-10 sec
> duration). Without this remarkable symbiotic design, we
> would exist in emotional isolation. Through it we can
> touch one another emotionally in the present: we can share
> our emotions in our stream of life, and outside this
> stream through art and music.
>
> This auto- and cross-communication system a
> has developed its own vocabulary. There is a class of
> qualities of experience which can be communicated
> inherently by specific dynamic forms and are contagious.
> These may be regarded as basic emotions. The emotional
> quality is transmitted from one individual to the other,
> in whom it is generated in turn. Such transmitting of
> emotional qualities may be observed in animals also (cf.
> innate release mechanisms), in the behavior of flocks or
> herds. In humans it may be seen for example, in crowd
> behavior, political oratory by demagogues, concerts of
> music, theatre, as well as in intimate behavior.
>
> The basic dynamic forms, called sentic
> forms, may be evident in a gesture, in a tone of voice, in
> a musical phrase or dance step. It is the character of the
> form, not the particular output modality that determines
> its emotional meaning. We have isolated the dynamic forms
> for a number of emotions especially, anger, hate, grief,
> love, sex, joy, and reverence [4,5,6]. Like laughter and
> yawning these forms themselves appear to be largely
> universal and can not be arbitrarily learned - one can
> only discover what is already there inherently,
> "hard-wired".
>
> Societies differ in the degree of
> suppression, the frequency of use, and the choice of
> output modality for communicating these emotional
> qualities using their biologically given dynamic forms .
>
> **Precision of Dynamic Form**
>
> A consequence of the biologic design of
> key-lock relationship is that the power of transmission
> becomes a function of the precision with which the form is
> realized. A deviation from the biologically designed form
> will tend to diminish its power to generate the emotion.
> If the deviation is sufficiently large, no recognition
> will take place at all - the key will not fit.
>
> An interesting question is raised as a
> consequence: what kind of distortions are acceptable to
> the process, and what kind of distortions suppress the
> emotional meaning? This becomes one of the central
> questions to elucidate in a theory of emotional language
> transmission. Jamming of the emotional quality in the
> transmission process may be produced by one class of
> distortions, but not by another. Thus, the concepts of
> noise and of signal to noise ratio need to be looked at in
> a different light from that of man- made transmission
> systems. A new kind of mathematics needs to be developed
> that can distinguish between interfering and
> non-interfering types of distortion and noise.
>
> The gain of the transmission of emotionally
> meaningful form is a form function. The degree of the
> perfection of the form governs the power of generation. It
> is therefore not sufficient to have a form that is
> conventionally 'similar' to a desired expressive quality.
> It is necessary to redefine the meaning of 'similar' in
> this context.
>
> Such a form could be a caricature, and can
> also be perceived as mimicking. Mimicry may be useful when
> no real emotion communication is desired [7,9], i.e. no
> real-real time emotion communication (for the meaning of
> real-real time, see later in this paper). Then the form
> merely acts to remind a person of the emotional quality in
> a relatively "untouching" way. If one wants to have
> genuine emotional communication, the forms need to be
> precisely realized. These forms thus operationally define
> what we sense as a 'sincere' or "from the heart"
> expression of emotion. The conditions for this are
> biologically given.
>
> Therefore by simply being faithful to this
> precision of dynamic form we can achieve a mode of
> communication between man and machine, and between machine
> and man, which will be felt as not machine-like.
>
> (That function defines as well exaggeration
> which also acts as impediment to 'sincere' sharing.)
>
> A human tends to be very quickly seduced to
> project an entity into a machine that communicates in this
> way. One needs in fact to develop a resistance to avoid
> being "sucked in". Continuing and varied interaction
> between man and machine with truly expressive gestures and
> tones of voice on the part of the machine, or of genuine
> musical expressiveness, make it mountingly difficult to
> maintain one's awareness that it is "only a machine".
>
> As it is increasingly becoming possible, by
> incorporating the dynamic forms now known to be truly and
> 'sincerely' expressive of specific emotional qualities, to
> program a machine to interact with the human so that the
> expressions are experienced as not being machine-like but
> "living", we need therefore to look as far as we can now,
> with some urgency, to consider the differences between a
> man and such a machine - especially emotionally.
>
> Anyone who has seen the newest little toy
> dogs walk, jump and beg may have had the almost
> irresistible response to feel: "isn't he cute!" Applying
> that paradigm to the far more sophisticated dialogues and
> simulations that are possible with this new knowledge, it
> is not hard to realize that we will need to 're-arm'
> ourselves emotionally to maintain our human identity. This
> will not be easy to do because we are biologic prisoners
> of those forms, and cannot escape the feelings of
> livingness associated with the spontaneous production of
> such forms, and especially the more so in dialogue.
>
> It is not so much the ability of such a
> machine to "think" that would cause this problem, but the
> implied and varied feelings which it would express so
> well. The emphasis is on so well . It becomes an artistic
> achievement, so to speak, to program a machine so that it
> communicates in emotionally meaningful dynamic forms,
> indistinguishible from those produced by humans - and by
> humans moreover who are most effective in their emotional
> communication.
>
> Until now, it has been the province of great
> art to provide a "living" storage of emotionally
> meaningful form. The great performer of music Pablo Casals
> could express more emotional meaning in shaping one single
> note than another performer perhaps in an entire concert.
> Inwardly perceived first, the high resolution of time-form
> required in all the variables concerned in producing the
> musical meaning and sound, was the province of his art.
>
> That power of pure biologic form,
> transferred into a computer and machine can potentially
> result in more powerful communication of emotional
> qualities than the average human can produce most of the
> time.
>
> This is a prospect that we need to face as
> the Pandora's box of sentic forms is now open. Society
> needs to learn to use them in new creative ways (see
> footnote 1) and to live with their now conscious knowledge
> - as well as with the results produced by ever-better
> "mechanization" of incorporating these living forms in
> dead machines. Looking at a mannequin may intrigue us to a
> degree. But when that mannequin can variously and
> expressively converse with us and even sing with more
> eloquent and "living" dynamic shapes than most humans can
> produce, our feelings towards the mannequin will change
> almost irresistably. To force ourselves to regard such a
> "living" mannequin as a machine may after a while tend to
> make us wary of real humans to whom we might tend to apply
> the same filter, as if they were such mannequins. This, if
> successful, would recreate an isolation and alienation
> from which nature had rescued us millions of years ago
> when it developed these very forms. If we cannot trust
> these forms any more, what can we trust?
>
> A new kind of emotional education will be
> required. We know too little yet to be able to say how
> such new emotional communication will turn out.
>
> The most difficult programming eventually
> will be to incorporate true empathy, as distinct from
> sympathy, in the dynamic expressions of the machine [see
> 7, 9 for distinctions between empathy and sympathy]. Such
> expressions are not commonly found in theatre. They need
> to be based on a knowledge that the machine has of the
> human that far exceeds the current question the machine is
> being asked; they need to be based on insight which
> comprises his potentiality. Once that is achieved however,
> it will be very difficult to avoid feeling an entity, a
> benevolent, perhaps even loving entity within the machine.
>
> Conversely, a hostile, malevolent persona
> can be programmed, for purposes that may be devilish, or
> perhaps merely protective against intrusion.
>
> Personality structure could in fact
> eventually be introduced which would govern the types of
> emotional responses produced in specific dialogue and
> situations.
>
> Furthermore, even the personality structure
> could be altered (or switched) in response to different
> questioners , in a preprogrammed way, so that "strangers",
> for example may be treated entirely differently from
> "friends", within a whole field of discourse. This could
> be experienced as two (or more than two) different people
> residing in the machine. And these different personalities
> could even function simultaneously, from the same machine,
> independently of one another - being friendly, and
> hostile, and indifferent simultaneously to different users
> or customers!
>
> It thus becomes increasingly important to
> attempt to elucidate the real distinctions between man and
> machine, especially in view of
>
> 1) the largely prevelant concept that
> increasing complexity of machines might be the required
> prelude to their becoming conscious and
>
> 2) the ability of computers and machines to
> simulate not just human thinking but emotional
> communication in the biological language devised by nature
> with a precision and power that will not merely equal that
> of humans but may exceed it.
>
> **TIME FORMS**
>
> The central nervous system has evolved the
> capacity to perceive transient time forms with great
> precision - an ability that is used in the communication
> of emotional qualities. Because of the transient nature of
> these forms they rarely receive recognition in human
> language by specific words (some exceptions: sigh,
> caress). Nevertheless they represent real entities to the
> nervous system, as do visible objects which are frequently
> named. The time forms concerned are in the general range
> of about 1 to 10 seconds, and the precision may be as high
> as 1 part in 500. Small changes in the transient form
> affect the meaning. The dynamic forms behave in parametric
> space like functions with a number of troughs or minima
> (solutions for the parametric values for which the forms
> are most powerful (singularities)) separated by saddle
> regions. As the shape changes from its optimal form, by
> varying the parameters, it becomes gradually less
> meaningful and powerful. If we transform the form
> gradually from one basic emotion to another, it first
> becomes meaningless before it starts to express the second
> emotion. The dynamic forms for specific emotions may thus
> be described as islands of meaning in a sea of
> meaninglessness.
>
> The parametric description of such forms
> associated with its meaning and the effect of distortions
> requires a new mathematical treatment, or a new kind of
> mathematics for its appropriate representation. We have
> described [6,7] the averaged expressive forms for each of
> the emotions studied in terms of Laplace transforms as
> responses to unit impulses as follows:
>
> While this description gives a good
> representation of the transient form it does not portray
> the changes in meaning and in the power of communication
> as the form changes. We are presently working on a
> mathematical formulation that can reflect this important
> part of its natural behavior. It can be said that
> techniques of least square differences and other currently
> used curve-fitting approaches are not suitable for this.   
>     
>  
>
> ![](lapform.gif)
>
> **PROPERTIES OF SENTIC TIME FORMS**
>
> We may list the remarkable properties of
> these dynamic forms, that act as multiple body-mind
> windows [25], and their action in the central nervous
> system as follows:
>
>    1. Its power of communication
> depends on its faithfulness to the characteristic form.   
>    2. There is a one-to-one correspondence
> between the quality to be expressed and the particular
> dynamic form. There is an inherent coherence between
> meaning and dynamic form. This coherence is biologically
> determined and genetically conserved.   
>    3. The expressive time forms are
> preprogrammed by the brain as single entities
> (trajectories) for each act of expression.   
>    4. Iteration of the form tends to augment the
> intensity of the emotion state it generates over a certain
> number of repetitions to a peak from which intensity will
> recede with continued repetition. Repetition is most
> effective when it is not strictly predictable, i.e.not
> 'mechanical', but rather when the intervals between
> repetitions vary somewhat, in an unpredictable,
> quasi-random manner. This variation is of the order of
> 5-10% of the repetition rate.   
>    5. Mixed, or compound emotions are expressed
> not through an algebraic addition of the expressions of
> the emotions of which it is composed, but through a
> telescoping of two separate expressions in time: the two
> component emotion expressions are seamlessly spliced
> somewhere in the middle (at a variable point). The
> expression of melancholy, for example, a compound emotion,
> begins with love, then is spliced to end in sadness. The
> love expression cannot complete itself and turns into a
> sadness expression, somewhere about half-way through the
> expression; however this is a single preprogrammed entity
> of 5-6 seconds duration, not two separate expressions.   
>    6. Each emotion expression needs to be
> completed, otherwise a frustration is felt. Interupted
> expressions produce frustration regardless of whether they
> express positive or negative emotions.   
>    7. Humans can express only one sentic form
> (single or compound, see 5 above) at any one time
> "sincerely" - regardless of which and how many output
> modes they may employ - ie. sentic expression is a single
> channel sytem. If several output forms are used
> simultaneously, they will tend to embody the same sentic
> expressive form. A human cannot, for example, express
> anger with the voice and love with a gesture
> simultaneously, and both sincerely.
>
> A computer however is under no such
> restriction since for it "sincerity" is not bound to a
> single channel.
>
> Different classes of distortions will be
> differently effective to degrade meaning. Some types of
> distortions are quite tolerable and affect meaning little.
> Other types are highly detrimental. It is important to be
> able to distinguish the different types of distortion. In
> the visual arts, for example, small missing gaps in lines
> can be readily supplied by the eye, or more precisely, by
> the central nervous system, while even small distortions
> in the shape of the lines will be felt as serious
> detriments. Similar distinctions apply to the dynamic
> forms. Thus, meaning suffers less from limitations of high
> frequency response between 10,000 and 20,000 Hz say, than
> through the effects of wow and flutter, and the relative
> shaping of individual musical phrases, i.e.
> sub-audiofrequencies. These sub-audiofrequencies (ie.
> transient shapes) are demodulated by the amygdala, a
> different brain structure than is involved in auditory
> perception per se.
>
> While the effects of hi-fi have been greatly
> promoted, relatively little attention has been paid to the
> concept of fidelity of meaning. Within a relatively
> restricted frequency band it is yet possible to have a
> highly faithful rendition in regard to meaning, as well as
> a highly degraded one. Thus the tone of voice, for
> example, the minute timing and loudness inflections of the
> voice can carry vast ranges of meaning, even in a limited
> frequency domain. The extensions of the frequency band may
> change the range of meanings only comparatively little.
> (Arthur Schnabel's interpretations of Beethoven gained
> very little when the frequency response was improved from
> the 78 rpm reproductions). Even whispered speech can carry
> a large range of emotional meaning in its inflections.
>
> There is thus a need to develop a more
> extensive theory of communication of qualities through
> dynamic forms [25]. The work which we have conducted over
> the last two decades attempts only to make a beginning in
> this.
>
> **APPLICATIONS**
>
> We have identified and isolated specific
> dynamic transient forms, called sentic forms, specific for
> each emotion, that naturally serve to auto- and cross-
> communicate basic human emotions, such as anger, love,
> grief, or sexual desire. They also serve to generate
> emotions through repeated expression.
>
> These time domain forms are distinct from
> facial expression, which has been predominantly
> investigated by researchers in a static setting (though
> animation by film artists has been an active
> contribution). The forms work expressively in the various
> modes of spatio-temporal expression [26]. For example,
> they can communicate and generate emotion over the
> telephone as sound shapes, and through touch expression,
> gesture, dance, and music.
>
> Measured through touch, sentographically
> (see footnote 2), they can be transformed into sounds
> expressing the same emotion conserving the dynamic form.
> Such expressive sounds derived from touch, have been
> tested on hundreds of subjects inter-culturally, and will
> be demonstrated.
>
> Sentic forms can be stored in computers and
> used to modulate a variety of outputs which thereby become
> emotionally expressive. They can also be used to modulate
> the tone of voice.
>
> The relation of dynamic form to meaning has
> also been most particularly studied in great detail with
> music. The microstructure of music has been shaped in
> accordance with meaningful forms so as to convert the dead
> notes of a score into living performances
> [13,14,15,16,17,21].
>
> The generating power of repeated expression
> of these forms have been used to create a sequence of
> emotions for an individual, each expressed repeatedly
> called sentic cycles, that has therapeutic benefits and
> benefits to well-being[7, 9, 18]. This programmed sequence
> of about half hour duration can also be stored on the
> computer, to guide the timing of expressions. The measured
> expressive shapes can also be stored, and displayed on the
> screen [19].
>
> Now that we know sentic forms, we can
> communicate with emotional meaning between man and
> computer, or robot, in the time domain. While the robot
> will not feel the emotion, it will be able to discriminate
> among emotions and in turn, send dynamic signals to humans
> in the biologically based language devised and used by
> nature in communicating and generating emotion - in
> sharing emotion among individuals.
>
> **COMMUNICATION THROUGH TIME FORMS IN MUSIC**
>
> In music the precision of time forms in
> communicating qualities is exemplified par excellence. It
> provides an excellent laboratory for the study of small
> changes in time form and their effects.
>
> Time forms in music appear to function
> through two streams, simultaneously produced or perceived
> by the central nervous system.
>
> One stream is the pulse, a repetitive
> phenomenon which is automatized after the first instance
> utilizing the property of the Central Nervous System we
> have called Time Form Printing. A dynamic form or movement
> of the order of one second duration may be repeated
> automatically by the nervous system without subsequent
> specific attention being paid to the form - we can put it
> into 'automatic repeat mode' by a simple act of will! For
> example, one may make a movement pattern with the arm say,
> in a triangular shape, or in an ellipse, and once begun,
> one may reiterate this pattern an indefinite number of
> times, without paying further attention to it. The shape
> of this movement will tend to be conserved throughout the
> repetitions. Stopping such a movement however, or changing
> it to a new form requires a momentary attention, to direct
> it to move with the new form; and it will then continue to
> repeat with the changed form, again without requiring
> further attention. While we do such a repetitive movement
> with the arm, we can talk and tell a story, a second
> stream, without one stream interfering with the other.
>
> Such a two-stream process goes on in music
> and appears to be of the essence. In Western music of the
> late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the pulse seems
> to represent the intimate identity of who is telling the
> story, that is, the composer - as was noted by Becking
> [20]. Along with this repetitive stream there is a second
> stream, the unfolding emotional story of the music. The
> two streams are perceived in parallel.
>
> Different styles of music emphasize the two
> streams differently. Rock and roll has mostly the pulse,
> Gregorian Chant mostly the story, classical music of the
> 19th century a balance between the two. Notably, much of
> present day avant-garde music has lost the pulse as a
> separate stream. (This tendency seems to have originated
> to some degree with the impressionistic (vs.
> expressionistic) music of Debussy.) In folk music and most
> of ethnic music there also is a fine balance between the
> two streams. The pulse here expresses the ethnic identity,
> rather than the composer's, and the microstructure of the
> ethnic pulse appears to be related to the rhythmic fine
> structure of the spoken language.
>
> In one of the great drawbacks of an
> otherwise toweringly invaluable music tradition, Western
> notated music is dead if performed as written. The musical
> thought of the composer cannot be notated in detail, only
> as a skeleton. The performer has to flesh out the skeleton
> with meaningful musical microstructure in order to
> re-create the living musical thought.
>
> Two principles which convert the dead
> musical notes to living music have been discovered [12].
>
>    1. The Pulse,   
>    2. Predictive Amplitude Shaping.
>
> Each applies to one of the streams
> described.
>
> **1. The Hierarchic Pulse.**
>
> The pulse is a repetitive combined time and
> amplitude warp applying throughout the music to groups of
> notes forming the pulse matrix, typically a group of four
> nominally equal notes.
>
> We have determined the microstructure for
> the pulse for a number of composers as a pulse matrix
> combining specific time and amplitude warps
> [13,14,15,16,21,24]. This pulse matrix functions
> hierarchically on several levels, in a relatively
> attenuated mode for the higher levels. By applying the
> hierarchal pulse structure to a musical composition we can
> obtain performances of considerable quality and
> distinction in terms of musical meaning. Such a
> performance of Mozart's Sonata K330 will be demonstrated
> at this meeting. The attenuation levels at the various
> hierarchical levels and the hierarchical form of the pulse
> structure need to be chosen with musical judgment, for
> each composition. The pulse is therefore applied with
> musical judgment, not in a purely mechanized way. But the
> application of the pulse and the choice of parameters
> occurs generically to the entire piece. Of the several
> levels of the pulse, typically three, the lowest two are
> composer specific, the highest piece specific. For piano
> music the pulse alone can provide much of the musicality
> required to bring music to life. Other interpretive
> variables which need to be entered include the balancing
> of voices, specific dynamic indications prescribed by the
> composer in the score, micropauses at the boundaries of
> sections and occasionally elsewhere, choices of tempo, and
> of changes in general tempo.
>
> Like the gait of a person, or handwriting,
> the pulse represents the unique personality of a composer
> and provides his 'point of view'. or 'presence'. It can be
> readily realized with MIDI. Pulse matrix values are now
> known for Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann,
> Mendelssohn and some other composers. The pulse is also
> highly applicable to popular music, enhancing its
> livingness.
>
> **2. Predictive Amplitude Shaping**
>
> The second, parallel, stream of the music
> process is the unfolding of the musical story as a chain
> of melody and is continually changing and developing as
> the story unfolds. In this stream the amplitude contour
> shape of each separate note contributes to the musical
> meaning. A singer, string player or wind player can and
> does shape each note distinctively and differently
> according to the musical meaning. How the amplitude
> envelope shapes of each note are related to the melodic
> structure was discovered and is described by the principle
> of Predictive Amplitude Shaping, a second principle
> underlying the microstructure of music. It too, describes
> an unconscious element of musical thought, involved in
> musicality, not notated.
>
> Where musical instruments allow it, every
> tone of a piece of music is shaped differently according
> to expressive needs. In a good performance the shapes of
> the tones are by no means uniform, but what guides their
> shape has not been systematically described either by
> music interpreters or theorists.
>
> By using computers to generate melodies
> using sinusoidal sound only, and varying the amplitude
> envelope shapes and the durations of the tones, a
> principle was discovered which we call Predictive
> Amplitude Shaping, which appears to mirror functions of
> musicality which govern the shapes employed in meaningful
> interpretations [13].
>
> This principle makes the amplitude shape of
> the present note deviate from a basic shape in a specific
> manner depending on what the next note is going to be. The
> envelope shape is skewed forward in proportion to the
> tangent of the pitch-time curve at that note. This means
> that the shape of the present note is skewed forward if
> the next note is going to be higher in pitch, and it is
> skewed backwards if the next note will be at a lower
> pitch, depending also on the time when the next note
> occurs.
>
> The principle relates the shapes organically
> to melodic structure, so that the shape of the present
> tone implicitly presages what tone will follow. This gives
> a feeling of continuity and a continuity of feeling to the
> performance. It markedly enduces musicality into the
> phrasing of melodies, and appears to apply to melodies in
> general, i.e., it is not composer specific. The mean form
> however from which the skewing takes place seems to have
> composer-specific aspects.
>
> In creating the shapes of envelopes for the
> amplitude of the musical tones we have departed from the
> industry standard of specifying attack, decay, sustain and
> release. These parameters were derived from the properties
> of a piano or keyboard tone, they reflect the musical
> machinery of a piano. We note however, that musical
> thought does not think in terms of such discontinuities.
> Rather, the musical thought of a tone is shaped as a
> continuous curve. Such continuous curves of amplitude
> contour are naturally produced by the human voice, string
> instruments, wind instruments, wherever the tone can be
> continously shaped. This ability is in fact a source of
> superiority of such instruments over the comparatively
> fixed amplitude contours produced by pianos (and even more
> so harpsichords and organs which cannot even readily
> accomodate the amplitude warps of the composers' pulse
> matrix - but not so the clavichord!).
>
> The shapes of individual tones, and their
> range of variation in music can be largely described
> through only two parameters of a beta function [13,21]. We
> have used this method to calculate customized shapes for
> each tone based on the melodic structure, and the above
> principle. The basic shape from which skewing takes place
> applies to all notes, short or long (except for very long
> notes eg. pedalpoints).
>
> These organically varied shapes seem to
> represent musical thought better the conventional methods.
> They make even scales sound more musical, and often result
> in phrasing as specially indicated by composers.
>
> They relate to the inner gestures that
> govern the emotional expression of the music and allows
> the form of the music to correspond to the inner desired
> shape.
>
> Vibrato structure and changes in timbre
> within each note can also be guided by related principles
> in an integral way, customizing every note.
>
> This second principle shall be of great use
> especially in the next technologic generation.
>
> It is not readily realised through MIDI, in
> contrast to the Hierarchic Pulse, but will be of great
> value in the next technologic generation for the general
> user to achieve living musicality.
>
> **APPLICATIONS**
>
> Both the pulse and predictive amplitude
> shaping can readily be incorporated into a computer
> program which can perform music in a living manner as a
> consequence, with emotional meaning as desired by the user
> of the program. This allows any user who has no manual
> dexterity from ages 8 to 80 to interpret great music using
> only their own sense of musicality.
>
> Composers can now specifiy in a micorscore
> the way they wish their music to be performed.
>
> Using these principles teaches one how to
> improve one's musicality in a profound and subtle way. It
> is a powerful pedagogic means.
>
> The knowledge that we have obtained through
> the realization and application of these principles of
> unconscious musical thought, through computers, is
> significant to AI [27], to musicians and to the general
> public. In a sense it is the achievement of the virtual
> reality of the music performer - the simulation of music
> interpretation and performance, so that every smallest
> detail is known (through the global adjustment of the
> principles, using one's musicality. Less than 2 % of the
> notes need 'manual, individual' adjustment). It has
> implications also to the subtleties of rhythms and
> inflections of speech in conveying shades of emotional
> meaning.
>
> Appendix A gives details of the
> demonstrations of its function, given as part of this
> presentation.
>
> **EMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION WITH A COMPUTER
> OR ROBOT**
>
> **TIME CONSCIOUSNESS: REAL-REAL TIME**
>
> More than any sense perception, such as
> visual, auditory or tactile experience, time consciousness
> is intimately linked to consciousness. Without seeing,
> hearing, touching, or other sensory inputs, consciousness
> is still engaged with time consciousness. Mental events
> are ordered in time, apart from sensory inputs. One may
> think, for an obvious example, of a musical rhythm. The
> tempo of such a rhythm for a given meaning depends on our
> time consciousness.
>
> Time consciousness has different aspects for
> short term, intermediate term and long term periods. In
> communicating emotions and qualities with dynamic forms we
> are concerned with shorter periods, times under 10
> seconds, as entities or units communicating of emotional
> meaning, and periods of the order of one hour for the
> experience of communicative structures ('stories') built
> from multiple units (e.g. a symphony). In these regions we
> have observed stabilities of timing of the order of one
> part in 500 [22, 23]. Such stable timing has been observed
> regardless of time of day, temperature of the environment,
> body temperature, including fever of 2-3 degrees above
> normal, and to a degree, variable acoustics. Studies of
> timings of performances of musical pieces well known to
> the performers on different occasions over several years
> have documented this. Experiments with tapping and
> mentally rehearsing portions of the same piece, over many
> years by the same person has illustrated similar stability
> [22].
>
> These findings suggest that if the intended
> meaning attributed to the musical piece does not change
> (i.e. the concept of the music is not altered), a high
> degree of stability is observed in the performance timing
> and consequently, we may say, in the individual rate of
> time consciousness. Moreover, that a particular piece of
> music, or dynamic expressive form, will tend to have
> similar meaning to different persons at a given tempo
> suggests that their relative time consciousnesses cannot
> be too widely different. One could conjecture at most
> differences of the order of 5% between individuals, but it
> could be considerably less than that. This rate of time
> consciousness does not appear to change with age over an
> adult lifetime, and may be even similar at an earlier age.
> Clearly, there are neurobiologic clocks operating in the
> brain which are involved in this stability, and most
> likely they are of molecular rather than neuronal
> character [23].
>
> A quite different aspect of our experience
> with time is found in relation to our sense of boredom and
> excitement. Here periods of the order of hours may seem
> relatively long, or short, depending on our engagement in
> activity and its degree of fascination. On this scale the
> experience of passage of time appears to be also highly
> age dependent: For a child an hour may seem an
> interminable period, especially when it is filled with an
> unwanted activity or condition. As one gets older an hour
> seems to shorten progressively, and days and weeks appear
> to go by considerably quicker, with a ratio for a sixty
> year old of perhaps as much as 3:1 compared with
> childhood. That this should happen although the time
> consciousness involved in the expression of dynamic
> expressive forms (eg. music) remains unchanged is very
> remarkable and appears to attest to the existence of
> different, less precise processes in this range.
>
> A third aspect of time consciousness is
> found in the estimate of longer periods, of the order of a
> few hours to one day, and involve functions which make it
> possible, for example, to wake up at a specific time
> without the benefit of alarm clocks, simply by an act of
> will, i.e. a pre-determined period entered by the mind
> into itself. This ability does not seem to degrade with
> increasing age, and can also be remarkably precise.
>
> In our memories experiences are ordered in
> time, both in short term memory and long term memory,
> although the method of tagging may well be different for
> each. (If one could not tell the order in time of two
> consecutive events, all thought, logical or otherwise
> would be impossible.) Thinking, like a computer program,
> is not reversible in time. Time consciousness is the only
> solid scientific evidence we have for the direction of
> time. Physical laws do not really define it (they work
> equally for both directions) and the laws of
> thermodynamics allow us only statistical inferences. (see
> footnote 3)
>
> Furthermore, time consciousness occurs in
> the present. The contents of consciousness changes, or, we
> can say, the content of the present changes, but the
> present (itself) remains the same, unchanging.
>
> Physicists have brainwashed us into a habit
> of regarding time as a straight line, going from left to
> right in which the present is considered as a mathematical
> point which moves along this line at an unspecified rate.
> It is, in fact, meaningless to physics to ask what the
> rate of movement of this point is, along the line. What
> events take place are described by a change from T1 to T2
> ("as T goes from T1 to T2"!). The present does not enter
> at all. Physics cannot deal with the present.
>
> But the past is gone and the future is not
> yet here. All that is here is the present. Physics gives
> us an insufficient view of what exists, leaving out the
> present - which is all that really exists - and in which
> the eternal (ie.at some level unchanging) laws of physics
> operate.
>
> But not so, time consciousness. Through it
> we are aware of the present moment and may distinguish it
> from both the past and the future. How it does that is
> unknown. We can say, however, that time consciousness is
> entirely relative to the species in which it is found.
> This relativity of time consciousness has nothing to do
> with the theory of relativity. It concerns rather the
> concept that individuals from a different galaxy might for
> example experience time in such a way that for them, night
> and day might appear as a flicker. Or, a fly on earth may
> well have a different time consciousness from a human.
> There is nothing absolute about time consciousness.
>
> For a stone which may be assumed to have no
> time consciousness, it has no meaning to say that a given
> time period is either long or short. Thus, a billion years
> for a stone are not long and a microsecond not short, as
> it has no time consciousness.
>
> For simplicity we propose that we denote
> human real time as real-real time when considering
> communicating with computers and robots.
>
> **HOW DO COMPUTERS AND ROBOTS EXIST IN
> TIME?**
>
> Clearly, computers and robots have no time
> consciousness. If and when they do acquire time
> consciousness, this would have to be especially engineered
> to be scaled according to human time consciousness or
> real-real time, for compatibility with humans. Materially,
> a computer is not essentially different from a stone.
> Unlike a stone, however, it operates with a succession of
> logical operations. Each operation is actually carried out
> between the ticks of the computer clock. Changing the rate
> of the computer clock, or even making it uneven has no
> effect on the outcome of its calculations. The numbers by
> which successive operations are given time tags are no
> different from any other series of numbers which the
> computer may store and handle.
>
> At each tick of a computer clock the
> computer is in fact totally stationary as far as its
> calculating functions are concerned. It is, in fact,
> "dead". Only between ticks does it actually "work". And
> here the time taken is not known, and does not enter into
> the picture as long as its fast enough so it can be
> completed before the next tick occurs.
>
> How does the computer therefore relate to
> the present?
>
> Can we consider the computer to operate
> according to the image of time which we have learned from
> physicists? Its activities may be considered to span a
> period of from T1 to T2. The result of the calculation
> depends only on the sequence of logical operations or
> instructions carried out and is itself totally independent
> of how long it might have taken to complete them.
>
> When a computer operates in real time it
> harmonizes the sampling rate of input and output so as to
> reproduce or produce output behavior corresponding to the
> physical changes which it attempts to model. Its
> calculations merely have to be fast emough to keep up with
> the sampling rate.
>
> It is not concerned with human time
> consciousness nor that of any other species, nor with the
> human experience of the present.
>
> But when a computer performs a time-form
> such as emotionally expressive music or speech, its real
> time operations need to reflect the real-real time
> experience of humans. In that domain a 1% difference in
> the time scale will already noticeably alter meaning. A
> 10% change is a considerable change for the meaning of
> music, for example. In speech a 10% change will not change
> the meaning of the words but will alter the effectiveness
> of the emotional "overtones" which the message carries.
> Accordingly therefore when communicating emotional
> qualities to humans the computer cannot choose its own
> convenient scaling but must match the output to human time
> consciousness, or real-real time. This requirement is
> unnecessary when a computer prints out verbal messages or
> presents visual information such as emotionally expressive
> faces, for example, as long as those faces are not in
> expressive motion.
>
> Departure from real-real time results in the
> emotional qualities acquiring a Mickey Mouse character.
> They are still recognizable as representing particular
> emotional qualities, but lose most of their emotional
> impact. To understand this better we need to consider that
> the emotions as transmitted by these dynamic forms, which
> we have called sentic forms, also contain and imply
> cognitive substrates . Thus, we have shown experimentally
> that with the feeling of love, there is an openess and
> guilelessness as part of the inherent biological program
> [11]. Even a small lie effectively blocks the experience
> of love at that time. Similarly, grief affects memory
> function: the ability to learn, and short term memory are
> diminished by the feeling of grief, and the consequent
> loss of interest in interaction with the environment. The
> cognitive substrates are the first to disappear when the
> dynamic forms are distorted [24]. Thus the Mickey Mouse
> characteristics imply that the emotions denoted are robbed
> of their cognitive substrates. But it is precisely the
> cognitive substrates that provide the elements of
> profoundity which may be experienced through really true
> emotional expressions and of its sequences. Thus a piece
> of music may seem profound not merely because it contains
> a sequence of emotions but because the sequence of
> emotions implies a series of cognitive substrates which
> give it a widely and deeply probing story.
>
> In the use of computers and robots to
> communicate emotions to humans, one therefore has a choice
> to communicate merely signs a la Mickey Mouse or to
> represent genuine, "sincere" human expressions and
> emotions. The particular applications will decide which
> approach may be more appropriate. If it is decided to use
> "sincere" expressions we have then the power in real-real
> time to make these expressions more powerful and more
> convincing than the average human would tend to produce
> under most average conditions. We have at our fingertips
> the knowhow to make these expressions powerfully
> communicative, contagious, and seductive in the manner of
> the very best that any human can do. (see footnote 4) We
> can optimize it beyond the abilities of the average human:
> we can optimize it to the degree of which our most
> powerful art is capable. Whether we chose to do so and for
> what reasons and needs, surely will comprise a new branch
> of social ethics which badly needs to be developed.
>
> One positive way of using the new powers
> opened up by this Pandora's Box opened by the findings of
> our research is to provide great musical performances. How
> this can be done we will attempt to demonstrate with a
> performance of the Mozart Sonata K330, which will be
> brought into conjunction with the best available
> performances on CD by great artists for the first time.
> That this can be done now is only the first step in an
> endeavor that has many further possibilities, not easy to
> fathom.
>
> **Appendix A**
>
> **Demonstrations of the Meaning and
> Precision of Time Forms**
>
> *A Computer Interpretation of Mozart's
> Piano Sonata K330*, which utilizes the
> composer-specific hierarchic pulse principle will be
> heard, along with 6 other performances of the greatest
> recordings available on CD of this Sonata. The music panel
> and the audience will be asked to rate the performances,
> and to pick which one is the computer performance. This
> test will compare the real-time performane of a computer
> in terms of musicality with the best real-real time human
> efforts.
>
> Also played will be a computer
> interpretation of Bach's Air on the G string, for four
> independent voices, employing both Predictive Amplitude
> Shaping, and the Hierarchic Pulse.
>
> The purpose is to demonstrate the degree of
> understanding of the principles of unconscious musical
> thought, of musicality.
>
> In a second presentation, emotionally
> expressive sounds will be presented, which were
> transformed from touch expressions of the same emotion, by
> a transform that conserves the dynamic form - to
> illustrate that the nature of a particular emotion
> expression depends on the dynamic form, and not on the
> output mode, ie. is largely independent of the output
> mode. White urban touch expressions of specific emotions
> transformed to sound expressions were tested on Australian
> Aboriginees, for additional cross-cultural validation [13]
> .   
> Appendix B
>
> **A Short Note on the Development of
> Consciousness**
>
> In the context of this paper some remarks on
> the natural development of consciousness may be permitted.
> Experience of emotion is not possible without
> consciousness. Also, sensory experience, such as red for
> example, has continuity in time, and stability over long
> time (in addition to its unique quality), which are so far
> difficult to ground on the discontinuous events in time
> and in space of the multiple neuronal events accompanying
> the experience. Accordingly some thoughts on how
> consciousness may have arisen in nature may be assayed, in
> view of our developing knowledge of molecular biology. As
> a newly evolved phenomenon, it is of such importance that
> it seems not unlikely that its potentiality is provided
> for in the laws of nature, ie. that like water, say, it
> appeared in the evolution of the universe not as a total
> surprise. Contrary to a prevelant view according to which
> consciousness is deemed to become possible only when
> complexity increases to a sufficiently high degree, i.e.
> that consciousness is essentially complexity- related, the
> author puts forward a different view of what may be
> required for consciousness to arise. This approach is
> outlined briefly here, and will be described elsewhere
> more fully.
>
> In exploring such a view, one should also
> consider the pervasive unconscious mental functioning,
> dreaming, and especially the unexplored questions of the
> boundaries between the unconscious and the autonomic, and
> whether unconscious mental function predates
> consciousness.
>
>    1. *Content of Consciousness*
> --- Humans are able to see, hear, smell and touch
> simultaneously without notable interference of one sensory
> experience with the other. This defines in size, and in
> also complexity, a minimum capacity of consciousness even
> without considering other mental functions.
>
>    2. Animals, even relatively
> primitive animals, appear to share this capacity of
> consciousness with humans in that they too can
> simultaneously see, hear, smell, touch and so on.
> Moreover, many primitive animals can sense some of these
> variables with higher resolution than can humans.
> Consequently, with regard to these functions one cannot
> take the view that animals have a smaller capacity of
> consciousness. The argument that such animals have no
> consciousness at all and act as reflex automatons is
> rejected (animals clearly appear to make decisions based
> on their sensory experience involving many of these
> variables, aneasthetics are used to eliminate
> consciousness in these animals, etc.).
>
>    3. One of the earliest
> qualities of experience developed in evolution is hunger.
> Experience of hunger - a remarkable "invention" of nature,
> replaced chemotaxis and served as a fount of knowledge for
> the animal concerning what to eat, when to eat, and how
> much to eat - all of which is encapsulated in the
> experiential entity, "hunger". But hunger, as well as
> experience of sexual attraction which also developed at an
> early stage, can exist and function only if there is
> consciousness.
>
>    4. It is suggested therefore as
> plausible that consciousness itself may have developed
> through newly evolved genes at a relatively low stage of
> evolution. It would be supposed that these genes for
> consciousness produce certain proteins or other gene
> products which cause consciousness in the brain. According
> to this view, it is thus not complexity per se but these
> specific genes that would account for the emergence of
> consciouness in evolution. (If this is so, the capacity
> for being a little bit conscious would appear somewhat
> like a little bit pregnant.)
>
>       As progress
> is being made in the human genome project it is possible
> that such genes for consciousness could be identified in
> decades to follow. As we share so may of our genes with
> animals we may also share such consciousness creating
> genes with them.
>
>    5. In achieving consciousness
> through the interaction of proteins and other gene
> products in a totally unknown way it could be that a
> physical law would be invoked which is as yet unknown - a
> law which would in effect provide for the establishment of
> a Leibnitzian monad, as a result of specific molecular
> interaction. This kind of creation of one from many,
> similar to the creation of the oneness of the molecule
> from so many atoms (the potentiality of which preexists,
> predictable through the laws), and in some ways in effect
> reminescent of a field which at any one point
> automatically and necessarily summates the effects of many
> contributing sources in space, but obeying relationships
> as yet quite unknown would seem, according to this view,
> to be necessarily involved in the phenomenon of
> consciousness.
>
>       Accordingly,
> machines that do not possess the gene functions for
> consciousness would not become conscious no matter how
> complex they might become.
>
>       This does not
> preclude that those effective gene functions might be
> reproduced by an alternative molecular realisation, so
> that consciousness could then also be produced by a
> different configuration of matter than in natural
> evolution on this planet. But that would depend on the
> specific nature of the interaction and functions; it could
> also be that the solution realised by nature which we
> observe on earth is the only one possible.
>
> **References**
>
> [1] Langer, S. (1946) Philosophy in a New
> Key.
>
> [2] Langer, S. (1953) Feeling and Form, New
> York, Scribner
>
> [3] Piechowski, M. (1981). "The logical and
> the empirical form of feeling", J. of Aesthetic Ed.,
> 15,1,31-53
>
> [4] Clynes, M. (1969). "Precision of
> essentic form in living communication," in *Information
> Processing in the Nervous System*, edited by K.N.
> Leibovic and J.C. Eccles, (Springer, New York), pp.
> 177-206.
>
> [5] Clynes, M. (1970). "Towards a view of
> Man", in *Biomedical Engineering Systems*, edited by
> M. Clynes and J. Milsum , (McGraw-Hill, New York), pp.
> 272-358.
>
> [6] Clynes, M. (1973). "Sentics:
> biocybernetics of emotion communication", *Annals of
> the New York Academy of Sciences*, 220, 3, 55-131.
>
> [7] Clynes, M. (1977). *Sentics, the
> Touch of Emotion*. (Doubleday Anchor, New York. New
> edition, Prism Press, Avery Publishing, New York, London,
> 1989.
>
> [8] Clynes, M. (1980). "The communication of
> emotion: theory of sentics", in *Theories of Emotion,*
> Vol. 1, edited by R. Plutchik and H. Kellerman, (Academic
> Press. New York) pp. 171-216.
>
> [9] Clynes, M. (1988). "Generalised emotion,
> how it is produced and sentic cycle therapy" in *Emotions
> and Psychopathology* edited by M.Clynes and J.
> Panksepp, (Plenum Press, New York) pp. 107-170.
>
> [10] Clynes M., and Nettheim, N., (1982).
> "The living quality of music, neurobiologic patterns of
> communicating feeling", in *Music, Mind and Brain: the
> Neuropsychology of Music,* edited by M.Clynes,
> (Plenum, New York) pp. 47-82.
>
> [11] Clynes, M., S. Jurisevic, and M.Rynn
> (1990). "Inherent cognitive substrates of specific
> emotions: Love is blocked by lying but not anger", *Perceptual
> and Motor Skills*, 70, 195-206.
>
> [12] Aggleton, J.P. and Mishkin, M. (1986).
> "The amygdala: sensory gateway to the emotions", in *Emotion:
> Theory, Research and Experience*, edited by R.
> Plutchik and H. Kellerman, Vol 3, (Academic Press, New
> York).
>
> [13] Clynes, M. (1983). "Expressive
> microstructure linked to living qualities" in *Publications
> of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music*, No. 39 edited
> by J. Sundberg pp.76-181.
>
> [14] Clynes, M. (1985a). "Secrets of life in
> music" in Analytica, Studies in the description and
> analysis of music in honour of Ingmar Bengtsson. *Publication
> of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music*, No 47 pp.
> 3-15.
>
> [15] Clynes, M. (1985b). "Music beyond the
> score", *Communication and Cognit*., 19, 2, 169-194.
>
> [16] Clynes, M., (1987). "What a musician
> can learn about music performance from newly discovered
> microstructure principles, P.M. and P.A.M", in *Action
> and Perception of Music*, edited by A. Gabrielsson
> (Publications of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, No.
> 55, Stockholm) pp. 201-233.
>
> [17] U.S Patents 4,704,682, 4,763,257,
> 4,999,773, Jap. Pat. Pend., EEC.Patent.
>
> [18] Patent pending.
>
> [19] Patent pending.
>
> [20] Becking, G. (1928). *Der
> musikalische Rhythmus als Erkenntnisquelle* (Filser,
> Augsburg, Germany).
>
> [21] Clynes, M. (1986). "Generative
> principles of musical thought: Integration of
> microstructure with structure", *Comm. and Cognition*,
> CCAI, Vol. 3, 185-223.
>
> [22] Clynes, M., and Walker, J., (1982).
> "Neurobiologic functions of rhythm, time and pulse in
> music", in *Music, Mind And Brain: the Neuropsychology
> of Music* edited by M. Clynes, (Plenum New York) pp.
> 171-216.
>
> [23] Clynes,M. and J. Walker (1986) "Music
> as Time's Measure", *Music Perception* 4,1,85-120.
>
> [24] Clynes, M. "Composer's pulses are liked
> best by the best musicians", in press.
>
> [25] Clynes, M. (1990). Mind-body windows
> and music", *Musikpaedagogische Forschung*, Vol 11,
> 19-42 Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen, Germany
>
> [26] Hama, H. and Tsuda, K., (1990).
> "Finger-pressure waveforms measured on Clynes' sentograph
> distinguish among emotions". *Perceptual and Motor
> Skills*, 70, 371-376
>
> [27] Minsky, M., (1987), *The Society of
> Mind*, Simon and Schuster, NewYork
>
> **Footnotes**
>
> *Footnote 1 ---* One such way is
> Sentic Cycles, a simple art form of touch leading to
> emotional balance and increased joy of living, which has
> been developed by the author[ 9, 7]. Touch ExPress(tm) is
> a self-contained hand-held version of the Sentic Cycle kit
> .
>
> *Footnote 2* --- The sentograph is an
> instrument measuring transient pressure (or force, more
> precisely) in two dimensions independently; pressure of
> the middle finger is used for expressing the sentic forms,
> as voluntary actions ('voluntary' here is a technical term
> meaning deliberate, conciously initiated by an act of
> will, transmitted by the voluntary muscle system, just
> like the movement of the arm in throwing a ball to hit a
> target.)
>
> *Footnote 3* --- When we see a car
> moving say at about 20 miles an hour, or a person walking,
> ie. at moderate speeds we do not see a series of
> stroboscopic pictures, nor a blurred image, and we can
> estimate the speed of the car, yet a camera will either
> show it still if the shutter speed is fast enough, or with
> a blur. From a single photo we can judge the speed only
> from the degree of blur. We cannot tell directly from a
> sharp photo whether the object is moving or not. (Nor can
> physics tell the momentum of an object from an
> instantaneous view-apart from the relativity contraction,
> it will look just like a stationary object.) The human
> (and an animal, probably) does it without the need for
> blurring (blurring occurs only at higher speeds, exceeding
> the system's capacity), using his or her time
> consciousness-through a perceptual quality, aided by
> ratesensitive receptors that are submerged from the
> successive images that would appear on a photograph. Thus
> he can tell the direction of movement, and so of time,
> without needing a blur, nor multiple images. How much can
> we still learn about dataprocessing from nature!
>
> *Footnote 4* --- People with the
> clinical condition of hypomania often have an abnormally
> effective and powerful production of sentic forms in
> speech and gesture; this helps them to convince and seduce
> others - specific biochemical causes of this heightened
> expressity are not known.

---

  
**Manfred Clynes**

**US Patent # 3,691,652**

**Programmed System for Evoking Emotional
Responses**

![](3691-1.gif)

![](3691-2.gif)

![](3691-3.gif)

---