NIME

One of my main goals while teaching MUS2640 – Sensing Sound and Music last semester was the integration of perspectives from musicology, psychology, and technology. The main point is to introduce the basics of music psychology and music technology, two disciplines that are quite distinct in most places, but which we at the University of Oslo have a tradition of combining. In this post, I explain the rationale. Three “logies” One of my main arguments is that we should consider the three “logies” involved in this course: ...

Peer review is the gold standard for scientific work. Some people argue that the fact that an article has been peer-reviewed is what makes it scientific. I would not go that far. In my opinion, research is scientific because it is conducted according to scientific standards, not because someone else has read it. However, having peers review your work is a quality mechanism that ensures that others agree that those scientific standards have been met. ...

Meeting some new bachelor’s students today, I had to explain that “music technology” is not a thing, it is a scientific discipline. Although many people think of a synthesizer as “a” music technology, I am trying to explain that it is based on music technology. Here, I briefly support this claim. Defining “technology” The word “technology” originates from the Greek techne (art, craft, skill) and logia (study). The term thus refers to tools, techniques, and systems humans create to solve problems or enhance capabilities. Technological development has been a cornerstone of human development since the beginning. This has been driven by the continuous development of knowledge in addition to the “things”. The invention of the wheel—to use a classic innovation example—wasn’t bound by the specific, physical wheel. The revolutionary aspect was figuring out how that physical, round object would enable faster transport. ...

I continue exploring how ChatGPT can be used meaningfully in my daily life. Today, I have looked at how it can help me rewrite my bio. Whenever I do some public speaking, I typically need to submit a bio for the event page. Often, the organizers ask about a particular number of words (60, 100, 200, etc.). This falls within the category of “publicazione con variazione”, and is mainly an annoying and time-consuming task. ...

Last week, my book was published by the MIT Press, and I am happy to announce that the source code is available on GitHub. Most people are probably mainly interested in the content of the book. If so, you should grab a free copy of the final version. This blog post explains why I have made the source code available. License I was fortunate to secure funding from the University of Oslo to make the book freely available, what is often referred to as Open Access. Hopefully, this will be the norm in the future of academic publishing, but it is still a case-by-case decision for books. MIT Press published my book with a CC-BY-NC-ND license. I would have preferred a less restrictive license, such as the CC-BY-SA license, but that is how it is. ...

I am happy to announce that my book Sound Actions - Conceptualizing Musical Instruments is now published! I am also thrilled that this is an open access book, meaning that is free to download and read. You are, of course, also welcome to pick up a paper copy! Here is a quick video summary of the book’s content: In the book, I combine perspectives from embodied music cognition and interactive music technology. The approach is what I call “embodied music technology”. ...

The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) gathers researchers and musicians worldwide to share their knowledge and late-breaking work on new musical interface design. There are four tracks at the conference: papers, music performances, installations, and workshops. Each of these four tracks is represented in different ways, through text, audio, video, and so on. Currently, only conference papers are systematically structured and archived. This list is based on BibTeX source files hosted on GitHub. PDF files of each paper are stored on Zenodo, with proper metadata and DOIs. The challenge with this approach is that the PDFs do not allow for embedding audio and video; hence they provide a suboptimal presentation of typical NIME contributions. ...

There are many ways to run conferences. Here is a summary of how we ran the Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop 2021 at RITMO this week. RPPW is called a workshop, but it is really a full-blown conference. Almost 200 participants enjoy 100 talks and posters, 2 keynote speeches, and 3 music performances spread across 4 days. A group photo of RPPW2021 participants, taken in a Zoom Room before the last poster session. ...

This week I presented the paper NIME and the Environment: Toward a More Sustainable NIME Practice at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) in Shanghai/online with Raul Masu, Adam Pultz Melbye, and John Sullivan. Below is our 3-minute video summary of the paper. And here is the abstract: This paper addresses environmental issues around NIME research and practice. We discuss the formulation of an environmental statement for the conference as well as the initiation of a NIME Eco Wiki containing information on environmental concerns related to the creation of new musical instruments. We outline a number of these concerns and, by systematically reviewing the proceedings of all previous NIME conferences, identify a general lack of reflection on the environmental impact of the research undertaken. Finally, we propose a framework for addressing the making, testing, using, and disposal of NIMEs in the hope that sustainability may become a central concern to researchers. ...

We presented the installation Strings On-Line at NIME 2020. It was supposed to be a physical installation at the conference to be held in Birmingham, UK. Due to the corona crisis, the conference went online, and we decided to redesign the proposed physical installation into an online installation instead. The installation ran continuously from 21-25 July last year, and hundreds of people “came by” to interact with it. I finally got around to edit a short (1-minute) video promo of the installation: ...