News

Brazil Symposium

The eleventh Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music was convened in São Paulo 1–3 September 2007. The Brazilian Symposia are organized by the Computer Music branch of the Brazilian Computing Society, and is hosted by the University of São Paulo. The Symposium consists of technical and music paper sessions, discussion panels, and concerts. Roger Dannenberg delivered the keynote, and Mikhail Malt delivered an invited address for the Symposium.

Web: gsd.ime.usp.br/sbcm/2007/english/ index.html

Musical Acoustics in Barcelona

The 2007 International Symposium on Musical Acoustics took place in Barcelona 9–12 September 2007. Single-track sessions focused on specific classes of instruments, the singing voice, electronic musical instruments, and perception, and one afternoon was entirely devoted to physical modeling. The conference coincided with the opening of the new Barcelona Museum of Music.

Web: isma2007bcn.org

Musical Semantics in Genova

The second international conference on Semantics and Digital Media Technology (SAMT) was held in Genova, Italy, on 5 December 2007. The workshop brings together researchers interested in understanding the mapping between low-level audio features and contextual interpretations of music. The focus was on models of musical perception, methods for the extraction, analysis, and representation of linguistic descriptions of music. On the other side of the semantic gap, low-level audio features and analysis of music structure were also discussed.

Web: irgroup.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/lsas2007

Ars Electronica 2007: Goodbye Privacy

The 2007 Ars Electronica festival, Goodbye Privacy, took place during September in Linz, Austria. Ars Electronica attracted over 30,000 visitors this year for a rich variety of seminars and presentations in addition to media art exhibitions in the form of performances, installations, and networked and participatory events. Computational and innovative means of generating and using sound play a significant role in many of the media works presented at Ars Electronica (see Figure 1).

Web: www.aec.at

Music Communication Science

The inaugural International Conference on Music Communication Science (ICOMCS) was held 5–7 December 2007 in Sydney, Australia. The objective of ICOMCS is to develop an interdisciplinary understanding or application of music cognition, perception, and performance. A broad range of session topics was covered including the psychology of performance, phrase structure reconstruction from performance data, data sonification, bio-signal interfaces, measuring audience reactions, and rhythmic pattern learning.

Web: marcs.uws.edu.au/links/ICoMusic/program.html

Music and the Brain

The Music, Brain, and Cognition Workshop took place 7–8 December 2007 in Whistler, Canada, as part of the Neural and Information Processing Systems Conference (NIPS). The conference recognizes music as "organized sound" and spans topics from signal processing and musical structure to the cognition of music and sound. The conference supports interaction between the machine learning and the neuroscience/brain imaging communities with the goal of fostering breakthroughs in various areas of music technology such as music information retrieval, expressive music synthesis, interactive music making, and sound design.

Web: homepage.mac.com/davidrh/MBCworkshop07/Workshop.html

Score Space in Norway

Yolande Harris hosted a workshop on Score Spaces 19–24 November 2007 in Maastricht. Score Space explores a spatial approach to musical composition in an electronically extended environment. It focuses investigation and experimentation on issues such as how an expanded notion of musical score can support new practices of electronic instrumental music and media art, and how the score can be used to incorporate motion, location, and environmental data into interaction with sound. Guest speakers for the workshop included Jacob Kirkegaard and Hilary Jeffery.

Web: introinsitu.nl/workshop

Figure 1.

Siren, Ray Lee at Ars Electronica. Siren is a whirling, spinning spectacle of mechanical movement, electronic sound, and light. Source: rubra.

The Brussels-Paris-Geneva Spectrum

The second edition of the International Edition of Spectral Music, Spectrum XXI (II), took place 29 October– 7 November 2007 across venues in Brussels, Paris, and Geneva. Art Directors Ancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram organized a program that included concerts of acousmatic music, live electronic music and diffusion, and mixed performances with traditional instruments, as well as conference participation from musicologists.

Web: festivalspectrum21.tripod.com/spectrum.pdf

Mass Digitization

The British...