Claudia Fritz is a CNRS-researcher in Paris, a member of the Lutherie-Acoustics-Music team at the University Pierre & Marie Curie, and since 2010 a faculty member at the VSA-Oberlin Acoustics Workshop. She andCurtin have worked together in trying to better understand how players evaluate violins – work that bore fruit in the Indianapolis and Paris double-blind experiments.
Since completing post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge (UK), Fritz has investigated correlations between player/listener perceptions and measured acoustical properties. While at Cambridge, she used traditional psycho-physical tests. She is now collaborating with a cognitive psychologist in hopes of applying to the violin the kind of psycho-linguistic concepts that the food, automobile, and other industries have developed for understanding how end-users evaluate their products.
Photo credit: Stefan Avalos