The Third Symposium of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD) Study Group on Sound, Movement, and the Sciences (SoMoS) took place in a hybrid format from 18 to 20 September 2024, hosted by RITMO, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, at the University of Oslo.

The aim of the ICTMD SoMoS Study Group is to bring together and support scholars whose work combines methods and approaches from ethnomusicology and/or ethnochoreology with those from the sciences to explore sound and movement in music and dance contexts. Here, the sciences are broadly defined, including but not limited to disciplines such as cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, computer science, statistics, mathematics, biology, physics, and medical science. For this third symposium, we welcomed proposals on any topic that aligns with the aims and themes of the Study Group: namely, contributions that either combine ethnographic and science-based approaches, explore the issues involved in such endeavors, or present reflective discussions on relevant theories and methodologies. As hoped, the event brought together scholars of diverse backgrounds and approaches and resulted in productive exchanges of perspectives.

From the 36 submitted abstracts, the Program Committee selected 25 through a single-blind peer-review process and then published them online prior to the symposium. The oral presentations took place over three days, interspersed with other events. Our symposium keynote was given by Anne Danielsen on “Interdisciplinary music research: gains and challenges”, providing much of interest for us to reflect on over the following days. For the first time in our Study Group history, the meeting included workshops for participants offered by RITMO: Alexander Jensenius held a workshop on the VideoAnalysis toolbox and Olivier Lartillot held another on the Miningsuite toolbox, both of which were well-attended and greatly appreciated by participants. As was the case with previous symposia, we also held an open session where participants shared details and sought feedback on projects that were planned and/or in progress. Similar to a poster session, participants were able to move around the room and meet the colleagues wishing to share their ideas, data or doubts, providing a productive format for scholarly exchange. Finally, there were also two social events: a dinner and a visit to the Edvard Munch museum.

On behalf of the executive committee, I would like to thank the local organizing committee for all of their work in ensuring the success of the symposium. This notably included both the provision of lunch for attendees, supporting the embodied dimension, and excellent technical support from Eirik Karlsen (RITMO), enabling the hybrid aspect of the symposium to run extremely smoothly.

The final symposium session included discussion of plans for publishing the proceedings. Among the various possible formats, we chose to publish a collection of extended abstracts (approx. 1500 words) and short abstracts (approx. 300 words). This mixed format is the same as that used in our previous proceedings for the First and Second Symposia.

The following pages provide readers with the symposium program and 23 abstracts (14 of which are “extended”, and 9 “short”). All of the extended abstracts submitted to these proceedings underwent a single- blind peer-review process. The short abstracts are published in their original version as submitted to the symposium, in some cases with minor revisions made by the authors. I would like to warmly thank the authors and reviewers, all of whom worked towards ensuring the high quality of this publication.

Cologne, August 2026

Lara Pearson (Program Chair)

Pearson, L., S. Horlor, and R. Caro Repetto. 2026. Proceedings of the Third Symposium of the ICTMD Study Group on Sound, Movement, and the Sciences (SoMoS). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21895079.