News

NIME '05 in Vancouver

The International Conference on New Interface for Musical Expression (NIME '05) was held 26–28 May 2005 in Vancouver, Canada. NIME is a venue for the latest developments in musical interface design and musical expression presented in papers, performances, demos, and installations.

New this year was an Interactive Sound Installations track in a recently completed high-tech atrium at the University of British Columbia containing a multichannel sound and videoscape platform designed to house interactive sound and video installation works.

Also new in 2005 were semi-organized improvisation sessions where scientists, engineers, artists, and performers interact with one another. Different configurations and groups were put together based on types of sensors used for gesture recognition, genre of sound-mapping, ethnomusicological controllers, rhythm versus soundscape controllers, interfaces with motors, etc. The schedule included three improvisation sessions in the afternoons and a final jam-concert party on the final night.

Further information about NIME 2005 can be found at hct.ece.ubc.ca/ nime/2005/.

JIM 2005 in Paris

The Journées d'Informatique Musicale (JIM) took place 2–4 June 2005 at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris Nord. The conference joins together computer music researchers, scientists, and professionals of the musical stage from around the world who use the computer as a tool for musical expression and composition. The themes for the 2005 conference included sound space, spatialization and electroacoustic music, sound visualization, computing and formalized music, and interactivity.

The conference was supported by the Direction de la Musique, de la Danse, du Théâtre et des Spectacles—Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication and is hosted by the Centre de Recherche en Informatique et Création Musicale. More information on Journées d'Informatique Musicale is available at jim2005.mshparisnord.net.

International Conference on Auditory Display 2005

The International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD '05) took place in Ireland 6–9 July 2005 at the University of Limerick. ICAD topics include aesthetics of auditory displays, accessibility, design theory, human factors, interaction, mapping from data to sound, psychology, cognition, perception, and psychoacoustics. Presentations included auditory display models, examples, and software and hardware applications of interest to musicians, computer scientists, engineers, and psychologists. The Conference was sponsored by the Plassey Campus Center, and supported by the University of Limerick.

The ICAD '05 website is www.idc.ul.ie/icad2005/.

Music, Mind, and Brain

There have been two recently scheduled events related to the perception of music.

The Neurosciences and Perception II conference was held 5–8 May 2005 in Leipzig, Austria. This conference, entitled "From Perception to Performance," was conceived as the follow-up to two previous meetings on the relation between Music and the Neurosciences: "The Biological Foundations of Music," New York Academy of Sciences, May 2000, and "The Neurosciences and Music," Venice, October 2002. See www.fondazione-mariani.org/inglese/ main_en.html.

The Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC) held their workshop on 5–7 August 2005 at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California. The following five workshops were organized: Music and Dynamical Systems, Multimodal Feedback in Retraining Piano Performance, Teaching Music Cognition, Evaluating Musical Cognitive Disorders, and Music and Language. See www.musicperception.org/.

Real, Electronic, Virtual Festival in Australia

The Real, Electronic, Virtual (REV '05) Festival was convened 16–17 July 2005 at the new Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Creative Industries Precinct in Brisbane, Australia. REV is a unique festival of international experimental musical instrument makers, sound artists and designers, composers, and musicians who span all realms of sound: real, electronic, and virtual. For more information, visit rev05.org/.

In and Out of the Sound Studio Conference

The In and Out of the Sound Studio conference was held 25–29 July 2005 at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. Papers, presentations, performances, and concert works focused on gender and sound technologies. Artists, scholars, and producers in such areas as museum and theater sound, film, video, digital media and video game sound design, electroacoustic music, radio art, sound documentary, performance, music recording, and other areas of sound practice were invited to participate.

The conference was also the venue for initial production on...