News ZKM GLOBALE tion with the 4DSOUND spatial non-linear distortion effects pedals. sound group, showcased immersive The conference organizers awarded GLOBALE, a festival on contem- sonic works for 16 omnidirectional the best paper prize to Roman Geb- porary musical instruments and loudspeaker columns, composed by hardt, Matthew Davies, and Bernhard interfaces, took place 5–7 February 15 artists throughout the three days Seeber for their paper “Harmonic 2016 in Karlsruhe, Germany, hosted of the festival. Mixing Based on Roughness and by Zentrum fur¨ Kunst und Medien- Web: zkm.de/event/2016/02 Pitch Commonality.” The poster ses- technologie Karlsruhe (ZKM). The /globale-performing-sound-playing sions included work on estimating festival included five concerts and -technology the amount of rhythmic swing in a three sessions of research presen- musical recording, a new method for tations, whose stated goal was the determining the optimal pitch shift critical examination of contempo- DAFx 2015 for harmonic mixing of two audio rary musical instruments and the recordings, and GPU-based acoustic simulation, among others. reciprocal influence of music and The 18th International Conference on Web: www.ntnu.edu/web/dafx15 technology. GLOBALE was part of Digital Audio Effects (DAFx) was held /dafx15 the ongoing Design, Development, 30 November–3 December 2015 in and Dissemination of New Musical Trondheim, Norway, encompassing Instruments (3DMIN) project, a joint four days of research presentations, research initiative between Techni- tutorials, and a concert. DAFx 2015 MusicAcoustica-Beijing 2015 cal University of Berlin and Berlin was co-hosted by the Department of University of the Arts in Germany. Electronics and Telecommunications The 22nd annual MusicAcoustica- The event’s research symposium and the Department of Music’s Music Beijing electroacoustic music festival covered improvisational strategies Technology group at the Norwegian was held 26–31 October 2015. Hosted appropriate to the digital performer, University of Science and Technology, by the Central Conservatory of Mu- the use of the human body as a and included keynote presentations sic in Beijing, China, the festival musical instrument, using inter- by Marije Baalman, Kurt Werner and consisted of an extensive series of ference of WiFi signals to detect Julius Smith, and Franz Zotter. The talks related to contemporary and bodily presence and movement, and first day of the conference included historical electroacoustic music and other topics. The concert series in- tutorials by Peter Svensson on sound concerts of both new and historical cluded a range of works for new field modeling for virtual acoustics, works. Its theme was “Akousma,” instrument designs and practices. by Øyvind Brandtsegg and Trond focusing on the history and con- Artist and instrument-builder Peter Engum on cross-adaptive audio effects cepts of acousmatic music and its Blasser performed several pieces for and their real-time use for creative relationship to electroacoustic and a drum machine and an organ, both purposes, and by Xavier Serra on the computer music as a whole. One of his own creation; and Dominik Audio Commons Initiative, an effort concert focused on recent works Hildebrand Marques Lopes, Amelie to promote and facilitate the use of by composer Daniel Teruggi; the Hinrichsen, and Till Bovermann’s freely distributable audio content in composer also gave a series of talks PushPull/WaveSetter was performed the creative industries. on the history of the Institut Na- using the composers’ unique Push- The conference’s oral presen- tional de l’Audiovisuel Groupe de Pull accordion-like instrument. In tations were organized by subject Recherches Musicales (INA-GRM), Myogram Atau Tanaka’s ,foursensors matter, including virtual analog on composing for electronics and affixed to the composer’s forearms synthesis, sound synthesis, audio instruments, and on acousmatic mu- translated muscle and nerve activity analysis, physical modeling, spatial sic. Another concert presented works into sound in real time. One concert audio, audio coding, speech appli- by a variety of composers associ- ˆ featured live-coding ensemble Benoıt cations, and audio effects. Among ated with GRM, including Arc, pour and the Mandelbrots, who developed, the research efforts presented were a Gerard´ Grisey (1999) by Franc¸ois executed, and evolved the software new model of nonlinearities in bowed Bayle, A battuta (2015) by Christian for their full-length audiovisual per- string synthesis, a harmonizer effect Eloy, and Dedans – dehors (1977) by formance in real time. GLOBALE’s using short-time time-reversal, a Bernard Parmegiani. Other concerts final concert, organized in conjunc- study of distance perception of multi- featured works for traditional Chi- channel auralizations in reverberant nese instruments and electronics, doi:10.1162/COMJ e 00365 spaces, and a model for identifying works by composers from the Groupe 4 Computer Music Journal Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/COMJ_e_00365 by guest on 28 September 2021 de Recherche en Acoustique et en of imitation and autonomy as a basis certs, talks, and technology demon- Musique Electronique (GRAME), for musical agency, and 3-D printed strations. The event featured keynote and works by European and North microtonal flutes. The conference presentations by the theremin player American composers. The lecture also held a demonstration of the UTS and technologist Pamelia Stickney series contained a number of reflec- Data Arena, a multimedia facility for and scholar Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner. tive talks by composers discussing interactive data visualization con- The symposium’s concert program- their compositional practice and his- sisting of six 3-D video projectors ming included W[O]RK by duo Love torical work, including Chengbi An, arranged in a 360-degree panorama. Gasoline (Carmina Escobar and Grace Phill Niblock, and Elzbieta˙ Sikora. ACMC 2015’s concert program- Hansmeyer), in which simple actions Other talks examined issues such as ming featured a number of computer- by performers on stage were trans- computer characterization of gesture based and electroacoustic works lated by sensors and a camera into in improvised music, live network across four concerts. Roger Alsop and light, image, and sound, and Judy music performance, and the cine- Brigid Burke’s Flow used a calculation Dunaway’s Hommage a` Kenneth matics of musical performance. Also of the Reynolds number to generate Noland, a work for mechanical trans- part of the festival was the Twelfth a dynamic score for a flute perfor- ducers and giant balloon whose drone MusicAcoustica-Beijing Composition mance based on fluid mechanics, sounds were further transformed to Competition, whose finalists were and Cat Hope’s Dynamic Architec- synthetic sound and visuals by an presented in concerts for each of the ture 1 was composed for a unique interactive computer program. The competition’s four categories (electro- integration of double bass and a trans- lectures given at the symposium acoustic music, electroacoustic with ducer, in which electronic signals presented such subjects as Techne, acoustic instrumentation and/or were sounded through the double an educational organization offer- voice, multimedia work, and MIDI bass by the transducer. In Andrew ing a set of workshops for digital compositions). Brown’s Ripples, a software system arts, Harmonibots, a set of inflatable Web: musicacoustica.cn/en2015 designed by the composer generated mechatronic harmonica instruments, chords and arpeggios in response to and improvisation with digitally an analysis of the sound produced by augmented acoustic instruments. ACMC 2015 a live performer, and Colin Black’s Web: music.arts.uci.edu/icit A Disembodied Voice in [5.1 Sur- /symposium16 The 2015 Australasian Computer Mu- round Sound Radio] Space arranged sic Conference (ACMC) took place spoken text, music, and sound ef- 18–21 November 2015 at the Univer- fects in surround-sound to create a Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) sity of Technology Sydney (UTS) in sonic world based on both reality Sydney, Australia. The conference, and the fantastical. The conference Marvin Minsky (see Figure 1), a held annually since 1993, comprised a concluded with a concert of computer prominent pioneer in artificial intelli- variety of oral presentations, demon- music works broadcasted live over gence research, died 24 January 2016 strations, artist talks, and musical Australian national radio. at the age of 88. Minsky was born in performances related to computer Web: acmc2015.net New York City on 9 August 1927. music. ACMC 2015’s theme was After serving in the United States “MAKE!,” focusing on aspects of Navy from 1944–1945, he studied creation in computer music as well ICIT Symposium 2016 mathematics at Harvard University as the influence of identity, gender, and Princeton University, receiving and institutions on the culture and The 2016 University of California, his doctorate from the latter in 1954. practice of creative technology. The Irvine, Integrated Composition, Im- Minsky joined the faculty of the keynote presenter was musician, provisation, and Technology (ICIT) Massachusetts Institute of Technol- composer, and performance artist Cat Symposium was held 5–6 February ogy (MIT) in 1958, and in 1959 with Hope. Topics for oral presentations 2016 in Irvine, California. With a John McCarthy he cofounded the Ar- included a study of eye movement theme of “New Expressions: Women tificial