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20 June 2024
Aaron Einbond will present an invited talk on Monday 24th June at the event “Critical & Creative Digital Dynamics: A Symposium on AI & Digital Innovations for Inter-art Chamber Music Practices” organised in collaboration with the Institute of Languages, Cultures, and Societies (ILCS) at the University of London. The talk “Material Engagement with Machine Learning in Prestidigitation for percussion and 3-D electronics” will examine Aaron’s autoethnographic study of composing with AI from the MusAI project WP3c “Permeable Interdisciplinarity: Algorithmic Composition, Subverted”. For more information, see the link below:
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11 June 2024
On June 20, Rebecca Fiebrink will give a talk at Machine Teaching Commons Symposium organized by Critical Media Lab, Basel. For more information see the link: https://criticalmedialab.ch/machine-teaching-commons-teaching-machine-co...
4 June 2024
Rebecca Fiebrink is set to join the Sonar+D Panel "AI: Generating Panic?" in Barcelona next week on June 13. In this forum, experts will discuss the upcoming realities on AI in arts and culture. For more information about the panel, visit https://sonar.es/en/activity/ai-generating-panic-weduard-alarcon.https://sonar.es/en/activity/ai-generating-panic-weduard-alarcon
23 May 2024
Tomorrow at the University of Music Trossingen (Germany), from research team Artemi Gioti will give an ML workshop and a guest lecture on “Questions of the Aesthetic in Compositional Applications of ML”
21 May 2024
PI Georgina Born and Advisory Board member Tobias Blanke are now putting together the members of the Editorial Collective and Editorial Board for the new open access journal Cambridge Forum on Artificial Intelligence: Culture and Society, published by Cambridge University Press. The journal will publish the first 4 issues in 2025, and a further 4 issues in 2026. An open call will go out in summer 2024 for proposals for themed issues and Guest Editors to curate them.
21 May 2024
Oliver Bown's paper has been accepted for Sound and Music Computing 2024 in Porto. Details will be coming later. For more information: https://smcnetwork.org/smc2024/
17 May 2024
Submissions for the 2024 Workshop on the Study of Commercial Creative AI (ComCAI) close today. Co-chaired by Oliver Bown, Rebecca Fiebrink, Georgina Born, and Bob Sturm, the workshop aims to engage the computational creativity community in interdisciplinary discussions. For more information, please visit: https://blogs.unsw.edu.au/iml/workshop-on-the-study-of-commercial-creati...
15 May 2024
City, University of London announces that PI Professor Georgina Born will give the Worshipful Company of Musicians Annual Lecture on May 15 from 6.30 pm to 7.45 pm BST. Born will present her lecture entitled "Music Transformed: How Digitisation and Artificial Intelligence are Changing Music’" at the Bayes Business School.
During her 45-minute presentation, Georgina Born will discuss her findings as an anthropologist, employing recent research by the MusAI research team, regarding the integration of music into digital media and its growing involvement in advances in artificial intelligence. Her presentation focuses on significant transformations in the nature of music and musical experience, and how they are linked to the commercial and technological strategies driving AI’s development around music.
The lecture is open to alumni and the public, and registration is available online from this link: https://cityunilondon.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_82jI25X3pMiTkwK
8 May 2024
Oliver Bown will be talking at LOGIN conference, Vilnius, Lithuania which will be held on May 30-31. Find more details about the conference and ticket details from: https://konferencija.login.lt/en
8 May 2024
Oliver Bown has put out a new Conversation piece “AI can now generate entire songs on demand. What does this mean for music as we know it?“. The article analyzes effects of new AI platforms such as Udio and Suno on music cultures and how it analyzes how music cultures. https://theconversation.com/ai-can-now-generate-entire-songs-on-demand-what-does-this-mean-for-music-as-we-know-it-228937?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton
1 May 2024
Oliver Bown‘s journal article “Blind search and flexible product visions: the sociotechnical shaping of generative music engines” is published by AI & Society Journal. This article is now open access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-024-01862-x
1 May 2024
PI Georgina Born will deliver a keynote at the RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group conference, held at Kings College London on July 11-12th.
Find more information about the conference and the tickets at this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/royal-musical-association-music-philosophy-study-group-conference-2024-tickets-840027202977
Posted 30 April 2024
The Editorial Collective and Editorial Board for the new CUP journal, Cambridge Forum on Artificial Intelligence: Culture and Society (AICuSoc), for which PI Georgina Born and Advisory Board member Tobias Blanke are Co-Editors-in-Chief, are now in process of being formed. The first four issues of the journal will be published in 2025.
Posted 30 April 2024
MusAI’s research project ‘WP4b: ‘Interdisciplinary Interventions in the Design of Music Recommender Systems’, led by Fernando Diaz and PI Georgina Born, has now reached a second stage of its work and is entering into research collaborations with two public media organisations: the BBC and Radio Canada in Quebec. The ‘commonality’ metric conceptualised and designed in the project’s first stage will be tested out. WP4b recently published its first stage findings here:
Andreas Ferraro, Gustavo Ferreira, Fernando Diaz and Georgina Born. 2024. ‘Measuring Commonality in Recommendation of Cultural Content to Strengthen Cultural Citizenship’, ACM Transactions of Recommender Systems, 33 (February). https://doi.org/10.1145/3643138
Posted 24 April 2024
On April 19, Artemi Gioti gave a talk at Klangmanifeste in Vienna, about “AI und pataphysics – Art & Philosophy Speed dating & Lecture performances” and answered the questions of arts and science enthusiasts. This session allows experts in the sciences and arts fields to come together and see the parallels between different disciplines. https://www.klangmanifeste.at/index_en.html#SpeedDating
Posted 23 April 2024
On April 16, Artemi-Maria Gioti has performed Bias II by Magda Mayas at the AI Congress of the State of Saxony, Chemnitz. Follow the link for more information about the congress https://scads.ai/saechsischer-ki-kongress-2024/
Posted 22 April 2024
The latest issue of the Computer Music Journal features research from the MusAI team on the cover, in the Sound Anthology, and in two articles. The cover image shows Prestidigitation for percussion and 3D electronics by Aaron Einbond, while it is being workshopped during an artistic research residency at IRCAM supported by MusAI research programme. The work is also featured in the issue’s Sound and Video Anthology along with Bias II for piano and interactive music system by Artemi-Maria Gioti, also created as part of her research for the MusAI project. Inside the issue, both works are the subjects of two major articles by the MusAI team: “Composing the Assemblage: Probing Aesthetic and Technical Dimensions of Artistic Creation with Machine Learning” by Gioti, Einbond, and MusAI PI Georgina Born, and “Embodying Spatial Sound Synthesis with AI in Two Compositions for Instruments and 3-D Electronics” by Einbond et al.
You can find the links to each articles below:
1- Issue page: https://direct.mit.edu/comj/issue/46/4
2- Artemi-Maria Gioti, Aaron Einbond, Georgina Born; Composing the Assemblage: Probing Aesthetic and Technical Dimensions of Artistic Creation with Machine Learning. Computer Music Journal 2022; 46 (4): 62–80. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00658
3- Aaron Einbond, Thibaut Carpentier, Diemo Schwarz, Jean Bresson; Embodying Spatial Sound Synthesis with AI in Two Compositions for Instruments and 3-D Electronics. Computer Music Journal 2022; 46 (4): 43–61. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00664
4- Ken Déguernel, Bob L. T. Sturm, Artemi-Maria Gioti, Georgina Born; Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes. Computer Music Journal 2022; 46 (4): 112–116. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_e_00660
5- Ken Déguernel, Bob L. T. Sturm, Artemi-Maria Gioti, Georgina Born, Oded Ben-Tal, Joëlle Léandre, Aaron Einbond, Artemi-Maria Gioti, Iván Paz, Nao Tokui; Sound Anthology: Content. Computer Music Journal 2022; 46 (4): 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00661
6- Artemi-Maria Gioti, Aaron Einbond, Georgina Born; Composing the Assemblage: Probing Aesthetic and Technical Dimensions of Artistic Creation with Machine Learning. Computer Music Journal 2022; 46 (4): 62–80. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00658
Posted 22 April 2024
On April 4, Artemi Gioti performed Bias II by Magda Mayas at the annual Conference of the Institute of New Music and Music Education Darmstadt. The performance was followed up with a listening lab on Bias II in collaboration with Magda Mayas.
Posted 21 March 2024
Join Dr. Christopher Haworth as he navigates the intricate landscape of ‘deepfake’ pop music at Hay Festival 2024 at the University of Birmingham. Haworth will delve into the ethical and cultural implications, pondering the future of artistic ownership in the digital age.
For more information: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/deepfake-pop-the-legacy-of-civil-war-the-impact-of-terror-attacks-all-at-hay-festival-2024
Posted 21 March 2024
RNCM has shared an informative article on our research team’s visit to Manchester to give two seminars on ongoing research projects as part of our public seminar series in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute. Please read more about it from the link below.
Posted 18 March 2024
We are delighted to share that Rebecca Fiebrink is the Co-I on a newly funded project titled “Responsible AI international community to reduce bias in AI music generation and analysis” , funded by the Responsible AI UK International Partnerships scheme (https://www.rai.ac.uk/). Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns (UAL) is the PI.
This project aims to construct and international community that stresses on the challenges and biases on Responsible AI (RAI) in the terms of music generation and examination.
Please find more information on the newly-launched project website: musicrai.org
Posted 11 March 2024
The First International Conference in AI Music Studies now accepts applications for presentations, panels, and workshops. This year’s theme will be “Prospects, Challenges and Methodologies of Studying AI Music in the Humanities and Social Sciences” and the conference will be held in Dec 10-12, 2024 Stockholm, Sweden.
Abstract
“AI music” (music generated by or with artificial intelligence technologies) is now part of established music ecosystems. While only a few years ago such music was “on the fringe”, it is quickly becoming more present and moving into the mainstream due in large part to the commercial exploitability of the technology, what it produces for what it costs, and its growing public accessibility (complete with claims of “democratizing” music production and composition). The development and application of AI to music creation is attracting significant sums of money from private circles, not to mention considerable efforts in academic engineering circles; yet, perhaps with the exception of intellectual property (e.g., legal ownership) and ethics (e.g., responsible use), many topics of AI music remain by and large under-explored by critical examination and reflection in the humanities and social sciences. This motivates several key questions for critical analysis and reflection:
1. How can the AI music ecosystem and its components be formally studied, and what considerations must be made to make sense of it?
2. What challenges arise in the application of established disciplines, such as musicology or ethnomusicology?
3. What are the prospects and challenges for AI Music Studies for the Humanities and Social Sciences in general?
4. What is needed in terms of new methodologies for this area of study, and what interdisciplinary connections are required?
5. How are copyright, and intellectual property more generally, being challenged by the emergent music ecosystem being populated by AI music?
6. What are the implications of AI Music in terms of economic, environmental and sociocultural sustainability?
7. What are perspectives from music ecosystems other than the hegemonial popular music ecosystem of the Global North?
8. What are the positions of music cultures that so far remained largely outside of the digitalization of cultural data?
The First International Conference in AI Music Studies explores the prospects, challenges and new methodologies required for the study of AI music within the Humanities and Social Sciences. It aims to bring into conversation scholars working in music computing, musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, science and technology studies, philosophy, ethics, economics, feminist and posthumanist studies to help define and develop, or even challenge the need for, a discipline of AI music studies. The three-day conference will feature papers, panels, workshops, a keynote address, and a concert. The keynote address of the conference will be delivered by Georgina Born (PI of MusAI), Professor of Anthropology and Music at University College London.
We are seeking presentations, panels and workshops for the conference.
Each presentation will be given 20 minutes in a session, and each session will conclude with a podium discussion of its presented works.
Each panel will have 3-5 participants, and last at least 60 minutes with audience discussion. A workshop consists of two hours of directed work and discussion around a topic. To submit a presentation, please write an abstract of no more than 300 words about your work and how it relates to the core themes of the conference. For panels, please write a description of the topics to be discussed and composition of the panel.
For workshops, please write a description of the topics to be worked with, a schedule, and information on the workshop leaders. Email these to aimusicstudies2024@kth.se by the date below.
Important Dates:
– Presentation/Panel/Workshop Submission: March 28 2024
– Decision Notification: April 26 2024
– Early Conference Registration: August 30 2024
– Conference: December 10-12 2024
Other information:
The conference registration fee, and the exact location in Stockholm, have yet to be decided. Please see the conference website for the most current information https://boblsturm.github.io/aimusicstudies2024.
Please send questions or comments to aimusicstudies2024@kth.se.
- Organising Committee
- Bob L. T. Sturm (KTH, Stockholm), chair
- Elin Kanhov (KTH, Stockholm)
- André Holzapfel (KTH, Stockholm)
- Steering Committee
- Toivo Burlin (Stockholm University)
- Jan-Olof Gullö (KMH, Stockholm)
- Hans Lindetorp (KMH, Stockholm)
- Georgina Born (University College London, UK)
- Oded Ben-Tal (Kingston University, UK)’
- Nick Collins (Durham University, UK)
Ken Déguernel (Univ. Lille, CNRS, France) Eric Drott (University of Texas, USA) Thomas Hodgson (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Jonathan Sterne (University of McGill, Canada) Rujing Stacy Huang (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) Ollie Bown (UNSW Sydney, Australia)
Posted 22 February
We are pleased and excited to announce an important new open access journal, co-edited by MusAI’s PI Georgina Born (UCL) and Tobias Blanke (University of Amsterdam), and published by Cambridge University Press, with the first issues in 2025:
Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society will be the first international journal to integrate critical social and cultural studies of AI with digital social science and humanities investigations using AI to analyse social and cultural data. The journal takes up a core challenge of our times: how to make sense of and intervene in our entanglement with the emerging regimes of smart machines in order to both harness their positive potentials and mitigate their harmful effects.
For more details please visit:
https://infogram.com/1tylx20rw79lezieg9798ooppque0k032o9
Posted 21 February 2024
Call for papers: Deadline May 17th
Oliver Bown is leading a workshop on the Study of Commercial Creative AI (ComCAI), which will be held in association with the 15th International Conference on Computational Creativity, a the University of Jönköping, Sweden, 17th-21st June 2024. From our research team, Georgina Born (PI), Rebecca Fiebrink and Bob Sturm will be active in the organising comittee.
The workshop aims to invite computational creativity community to deep dive in interdisciplinary scope in CC with researchers who are new to creative AI, or the CC literature. The workshops calls for contributing statements that will be part of the structured collaborative mapping session, which will either be a full-day or half day event.
For more information: https://blogs.unsw.edu.au/iml/workshop-on-the-study-of-commercial-creative-ai-comcai/
Posted 12 February 2024
Eric Drott’s book ‘Streaming Music, Streaming Capital’ has been recently published by Duke University Press. Link for access:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/streaming-music-streaming-capital
Posted 09 February 2024
Following a sold-out performance in Paris at IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Aaron Einbond’s new composition Prestidigitation II for Ensemble L’Instant Donné and 3D electronics will be broadcast by Radio France on February 14th at 8 pm CET alongside works by Gabriella Smith and Steve Reich performed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. The broadcast will include a binaural rendering of the concert’s immersive electronics, so high-definition headphones are recommended. The new composition builds on Prestidigitation for percussion and 3D electronics, produced in 2022 with support from MusAI. Both works stem from Aaron’s MusAI research project “Permeable Interdisciplinarity: Algorithmic Composition, Subverted”.
Posted 31 January 2024
Georgina Born and Owen Green will present at the research forum of https://www.rncm.ac.uk/, where they will introduce the MusAI programme and initial work on their Sonic Social Genre project. Join live stream on February 7, 4.15 pm GMT.
Posted 23 January 2024
From mid January to March 1st, the MusAI research programme (based at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies and UCL Anthropology) is collaborating with the ‘AI and the Arts’ group at The Alan Turing Institute on the delivery of four public seminars emerging from its research. MusAI is the ERC-funded programme “Music and AI: Building Critical Interdisciplinary Studies”, the first major research initiative to address the implications of AI for culture. It takes music as the medium through which to create a field of critical studies indicative of AI’s wider influence on culture, bringing together the social sciences and humanities, creative practice, computer science and engineering.
Here are the links for seminars 2, 3 and 4:
Date: 6 Feb, 4.30 pm
Title: Music and Copyright after Generative AI: Social, Ontological and Legal Perspectives
hosted by Inspace, Institute of Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Presenters:
*Eric Drott (University of Texas)
*Christopher Haworth (University of Birmingham).
**Featuring an electronic music performance by Owen Green (Max Planck Institute) and Jules Rawlinson (University of Edinburgh).
Date: 23 Feb, 3.30 pm
Title: AI and Practice-Based Research in Music and the Arts
hosted by PRiSM, Royal Northern College of Music & Manchester University
Presenters:
*Aaron Einbond (City University, London)
Seminar 4: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/towards-radically-interdisciplinary-ai-pedagogies-tickets-794321877117
Date: 1 March, 3 pm
Title: Towards Radically Interdisciplinary AI Pedagogies
hosted by The Alan Turing Institute, London
Presenters:
*Rebecca Fiebrink (University of Arts, London)
*Owen Green (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics; UCL)
*Oliver Bown (University of New South Wales, Sydney)
The seminar is free and open to the public, both in person and via Zoom. Registration is essential. Please join us for what promises to be a lively series of seminars, with considerable space for discussion and networking. A short description of each of the seminars follows.
Posted 12 January 2024
Generative AI is disrupting various industries, but we don’t know much about how it will affect the economies of extremely crowded markets. Check out one of our researchers Oliver Bown‘s article at 360:
The challenges ahead for generative AI
Posted 12 December 2023
On 15 December 2023, Artemi-Maria Gioti will deliver a keynote with the title “Deconstructing data: the compositional process as critical inquiry” at the online symposium “AI in Music – Agency, Performance, Production and Perception”, organised by the University of Music Trossingen.
Posted 12 December 2023
On 9 December 2023, one of our core researchers, Artemi-Maria Gioti gave a talk with the title “Artistic research as technological critique in Bias II for piano and interactive music system” at the Symposium “Artistic and Artificial? – Aktuelle Perspektiven auf künstliche Intelligenz und Musik” organised by DEGEM (German Association of Electroacoustic Music) in Lübeck.
Posted 12 December 2023
Call for papers for the first International Conference in AI Music Studies
December 10-12, 2024 | Stockholm, Sweden | KTH in the Snow
We are thrilled to announce the inaugural International Conference in AI Music Studies, set to take place from December 10-12, 2024, at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden. This event will delve into the “Prospects, Challenges, and Methodologies of Studying AI Music in the Humanities”.
Professor Georgina Born, PI of MusAI project will be the keynote speaker in this conference.
Call for Papers
Scholars across various domains, including music computing, musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, science and technology studies, philosophy, ethics, economics, feminist, and posthumanist studies, are encouraged to submit abstracts for consideration. Selected authors will have the opportunity to present and discuss their full papers during the conference.
Organizing Committee and Steering Committee
The conference is organized by a dedicated committee, with Bob L. T. Sturm (KTH, Stockholm, part of MusAI research) serving as the chair.
We look forward to your participation in this groundbreaking exploration of AI Music within the Humanities.
Posted 5 December 2023
At ICMC 2023 in Shenzhen, China, Christopher Haworth won the best paper award together with Esteban Gutierrez and Rodrigo Cadiz.
Their project is based on auditory distortion products used in musical sound synthesis, working on the creation of ‘phantom’ tones which is only hearable for the listener of the auditory distortion products. Learn more about the project.
Posted 5 December 2023
One of our core researchers, Christopher Haworth was the featured composer at Sound Junction Main Programme at the University of Sheffield on December 2.
Posted 24 November 2023
PI Georgina Born is giving a keynote lecture at an international symposium on ‘Interdisciplining Knowledge: Humanities, Science and Culture’ at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal, on Dec 6, 2023. The title is ‘Are there limits? Interdisciplinarities among the social sciences and humanities – and beyond’.
Posted 24 November 2023
Join the hybrid book launch and discussion of “Music and Digital Media: A Planetary Anthropology” on Tuesday, November 28 at 4 PM at Royal Anthropological Institute. The event will be hosted by PI Georgina Born, and Gavin Williams will participate in the discussion.
Posted 29 September 2023
The MusAI Iklektic performance videos have been uploaded to our new YouTube channel.
Posted 29 November 2022
Prepared piano, handmade percussion, new compositions, and electronic improvisations situate AI with the listener in a unique 3D sound environment. With the explosion in music technologies offering artificial intelligence, artists and musicians are exploring original and meaningful ways to adapt them to creative ends — often in ways that critique their underlying assumptions. Live performances explore themes of agency and performative creativity to find new ways to control spatial sound, compose algorithmic patterns, and respond to bodily gesture. The performances will be followed by open Q & A and discussion with the artists.
