Molino reminds us that the hypothesis that there is a 'single, well-defined item of information to be transmitted, all the rest being simply noise' is 'dangerously inaccurate and misleading as soon as we move from the artificial communication of information to a concrete act of human communication as a total social fact.' Music, according to him, is a product and not a transmission. Hence Molino suggests a model for symbolic analysis on three levels; 'the poietic, the esthesic and the 'neutral' analysis of the object'. Three modes all representing the same work of art. The poietic level is the constructive phase, the esthesic is the interpretative phase and the neutral is the trace left by the poietic (or esthesic) process [Molino, 1990]. The tripartite model for analysis has also been proposed by another of the most important advocates for musical semiology, Jean-Jaques Nattiez:
...recognizing, elaborating, and articulating the three relatively autonomous levels (poietic, neutral and esthesic) facilitates knowledge of all processes unleashed by the musical work, from the moment of the work's conception, passing through its 'writing down', to its performance. [Nattiez, 1990]In the first empirical study in Section 3.1 we focus mainly on the neutral level whereas in the second study (Section 3.2) we map the processes onto the poietic and esthesic levels of analysis.
The selected video clips were transcribed verbatim by Frisk and Östersjö together. This turned out to be a very useful tool for the sake of keeping a detached and relatively objective point of view on the material. The transcription in turn was used as material for a graph that became an important analytical tool in the study. It was only at the point when the graph was produced that the implications of the study on machine-musician interaction started to materialise.