Touch screen ensemble music: collaborative interaction for older people with dementia

This paper presents new touch-screen collaborative interaction models for people with dementia. The authors argue that dementia technology has yet to focus on group musical interactions. The project aims to contribute to dementia care while addressing a significant gap in current literature. Research includes observations and two system trials exploring contrasting musical scenarios: the performance of abstract electronic music and the distributed performance of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Findings presented in this paper suggest that dementia people are able to successfully perform and engage in collaborative music performance activities with little or no scaffolded instruction.