Today at 1pm US Eastern (7 pm Berlin) I’m joining Roger Linn and Georgia Tech’s Raghavasimhan Sankaranarayanan and (brain music!) Grace Leslie looking into the future. Yeah, there totally still is one – it’s bright, even!
Against the background of the Guthman Musical Instrument competition, it’s an opportunity for us to talk both personally and broadly about how musical practice, collaboration, and instrument design intersect, now and projecting what may lie ahead.
Register in advance and ask questions:
https://arts.gatech.edu/content/path-forward-creativity-new-instruments
And watch live on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/ArtsAtTech/posts/10158890298708421
Roger Linn needs no introduction. (I might need an introduction, but you’re here, so – not as much. Hi – I’m me.) But it’s great we can cross a continent and an ocean to join with a conversation with two unique personalities from the Georgia Tech program, too.
Raghavasimhan Sankaranarayanan’s research imagines not only a robot that can play the violin, but one that can reproduce the nuances of the Carnatic music tradition of southern India. It’s as much about music information retrieval and musicology as it is robotics – it means the robot has to master Carnatic intonation and gamakas (the rough equivalent of glissandi in Italian). For us human players, that is, it’s a fascinating way to recenter our understanding of the instrument and expand beyond, say, 19th Century Germany or France or Italy as the bounds of our musical language. And I firmly believe all musicology is music technology and visa versa, so I’m excited.
It’s showing some progress:
Professor Grace Leslie who’s our moderator for today hosts the Brain Music Lab, and works across neurofeedback, the science of perception and cognition, the impact of music on mood, and far-reaching work in perception and the transformative power of sound, “affectively aware music systems.” So, in other words, I kind of want to not answer questions so much as ask her some. Check out her work.
I’ll embed the video after the fact in case you can’t tune in live; I know I’m excited to hear what the others have to say.