RITMO

Today, we will have a workshop with the MishMash work package leaders, and for that I thought it would be useful to run a new version of the RITMO coauthorship exercise. The goal is to make contribution expectations explicit early, and to practice making fair decisions when contributions differ in type, timing, and visibility. Since MishMash embraces both artistic and scientific research and development, this version is designed for teams working across arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, design, and engineering. ...

I have previously explored how NotebookLM can generate ERC-style CVs based on publicly available research information. Now, I was curious to see whether it could also make a complete CV following the guidelines of the Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM). The NOR-CAM principles Creating a CV that follows the NOR-CAM principles is less about listing dates and more about telling the story of an academic career through a balance of quantitative data and qualitative reflection. If you are interested in learning more about NOR-CAM, have a look at the full report. Here is a 4-minute video introduction to the system: ...

While part of the group that developed the Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM), I strongly advocated for the development of an “automagic” CV system. This was based on the fact that I (and many other researchers) spend too much time working on formatting our CVs for new templates. All funders have their own CV templates, which often change from year to year. Copying and formatting the same information over and over is (literally) a waste of time, so there is room for improvement. ...

Today, we had an engaging fNIRS workshop at RITMO. One of the tasks we explored was “hyperscanning,” a term that confused several of the non-psychology people present. I was also bewildered when I encountered this term for the first time, so here is a short blog post to explain what it is. What is Hyperscanning? The short answer is that hyperscanning is the simultaneous recording of neural or physiological activity from two or more people to study interpersonal brain dynamics. ...

I am excited to announce the publication of a new paper that explores several themes I have been interested in recently: inverse and indirect mappings, embodied AI, and indoor environments. The paper, titled Inverse and indirect mappings in embodied AI systems in everyday environments, is written by PhD fellow Maham Riaz together with my former PhD fellow Cagri Erdem and myself. Embodied AI The paper is written for a special issue on “embodied AI”, a topic I have been interested in for many years. AI research has long focused largely on the “brain” of machines. While that has been successful, we will not be able to progress unless we also consider that machines need to have a body that can sense and act. ...

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: ...

I started the year with a trip to Portugal, where I had been invited to give an open lecture at CEIS20, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Coimbra. The lecture, titled “Soft” and “Hard” research? Experiences from running a radically interdisciplinary research centre, was part of their series Eixos do Conhecimento Interdisciplinar (Axes of Interdisciplinary Knowledge) and connected to their new ERA Chair project MusicAnalytica. Given that I wrote about transitioning into new roles this year, it felt fitting to spend a couple of days reflecting on what I have learned from nearly a decade of directing RITMO and what I bring into MishMash. ...

Yesterday, I wrote about some reflections I had during Olgerta Asko’s PhD defence. Today, while chopping up the video recording to put on the RITMO web page, I thought that it might help to use a videogram to assist with segmentation. Videograms A videogram is similar to a motiongram, the main difference being that the videogram uses the regular video image as input to the “compression” instead of a motion video. Both give an impression of what is in a video file over time. We have functions for creating both videograms and motiongrams in the Musical Gestures Toolbox, but they are optimised for using other functions in the toolbox. ...

Today, we had the PhD defence of Olgerta Asko at RITMO. Her research is super interesting in itself (check out this feature story for an overview). This blog post is following up on one of the points she made during her trial lecture that I hadn’t thought about before: the difference between generalisation, inference, and deliberation. Towards deliberation Olga argued that current AI—here understood as large language models (LLMs)—are based on generalisation. They extract patterns from a lot of data and apply them broadly. As we have seen with recent commercial products and as I have explored in many ways on this blog, LLMs excel at this task. ...

Due to MishMash, I am nowadays lecturing on AI, music, and creativity several times a week. I usually include a brief overview of machine learning history, mainly to explain that ChatGPT didn’t come out of nowhere but was the result of decades of research. To check that my story holds and to get a few more critical years and names in place. This blog post summarizes the brief history of AI to date. ...