Kai Tuuri

I work as a senior researcher and a teacher in the Department of Music (University of Jyväskylä). I have strong interest in sound-related issues of communication and interaction. The subjects of my recent research include epistemology of listening, embodiment of sound and music, and sound in multimodal human-technology interaction. Recently I partook in SmartHand project, in which we are building new musical interfaces. Earlier I also have worked in an interdisciplinary research project named CHORUS (Choreography of user-interfaces: Body, movement and space in interaction design). In this project choreography was introduced as a focal theme for future interaction design. Both projects are funded by TEKES (Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation).

I hold a PhD in musicology and a MA in music education. In my PhD thesis I outlined a method for utilising embodied meanings of gestural communication in designing user interface sounds. My dissertation is cross-disciplinary, strongly leaning towards the studies of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I did my PhD while participating in research projects (GEAR2 & GEAR3, funded by TEKES) concerning user interface design from the perspectives of non-speech sounds and haptics. In these projects, research was done in the context of case studies – in close interaction with the industrial partners.

In case you are interested, you can find more information on my PhD thesis by [following this link]. You can also take a look at my other academic writings [see the list of publications].

During the past years (2007-2010), I have worked as a project-researcher at the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems. Earlier I have worked as a lecturer for multimedia studies and project-based learning in Departments of Computer Science and Information Systems (2000-2004) and Arts and Culture Studies (2004-2006).