Summer 2011 Keynotes by MTI Staff

MTI staff will be presenting keynote addresses at the following events: Simon Emmerson NZEMS/ACMA 2011 (Auckland, July) & ICMC 2011 (Huddersfield, July/Aug.); Leigh Landy “Technology and Aesthetics” Conference (Oslo, May), Forum for Innovation in Music Production and Composition (Leeds, May), EMS2011 (New York, June).

EU Culture Grant: "Composing with Sounds"

The MTI has been awarded an EU Culture grant. “Composing with Sounds” is a project in which the Sound Organiser creative software will be made available primarily for children aged 11-14 (but also to interested people of all ages). Its web environment will host the software, composed works and sessions (for remixing) as well as a social networking area. The MTI and the project partners — INA/GRM (Paris), ZKM (Karlsruhe), NOTAM (Oslo), Miso Music (Parede, Lisbon), and EPHMEE/Ionian University (Corfu) — will hold schools workshops and then two children per country will be paired with a professional composer to create works with the same sound material for performances in public concerts in all six countries. The project runs from May 2011 to April 2013.

Full House for Symposium on Form in Electroacoustic Music

Though it was held on a Sunday, we had a full house for the Symposium on Form in Electroacoustic Music, organised by Prof John Young. Our distinguished roster of presenters included Stephen McAdams (McGill University, Montreal), John Young (De Montfort University, Leicester), Bill Brunson (Royal College of Music, Stockholm), John Dack (Middlesex University), Jonty Harrison (University of Birmingham), Sean Ferguson (McGill University, Montreal), Simon Emmerson (De Montfort University, Leicester). The session concluded with summary and reflection from Georgina Born (University of Oxford), Jøran Rudi (NOTAM, Oslo), and Denis Smalley (City University, London).

NOTAM Visit Launches International Exchange Performance Series

On January 27th, MTI launched the 2011 part of its public events programme with the first of a new series of international exchange performances. Jøran Rudi is Artistic and Scientific Director of NOTAM, the Norwegian Centre for Technology in Music and the Arts. MTI has a memorandum of research exchange and Rudi is keen to collaborate with MTI on a wide range of developments, including software, conference & symposia and performances. The well attended concert in Pace 1 presented electroacoustic and audio-visual pieces by Jøran Rudi himself and by NOTAM visiting composers Natasha Barrett, Anders Vinjar and Risto Holopainen.

John Young Awarded the Euphonie D'or

John Young has been awarded a prestigious Euphonie d’Or by the International Competition for Electroacoustic Music of Bourges. The award was made for his electroacoustic radio documentary Ricordiamo Forlì, which gained first prize in the competition on 2007. The competition, which ran between 1973 and 2009, was one of the world’s most significant forums for electroacoustic music until the closing of the Centre which hosted it—the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB). Euphonies d’Or awards have been made on two past occasions and are selected from the works previously awarded prizes in the competition. 35 in total have been awarded over the years, representing one work for each year of the competition’s history, which, in the words of the IMEB, “represent particularly brilliant moments in the history of electroacoustic music.” Ricordiamo Forlì  is published by Montréal-based empreintes DIGITALes and Mnémosyne.

The first outcome of the collaborative agreement between the MTI and the CEPSA Research Group at the National University of Argentina, Lanús UNLa) is the publication of the very first edition of their publication series, jointly edited by Raúl Minsburg and Leigh Landy. “En el Límite” includes four MTI articles (in Spanish) and can be downloaded here.

AHRC Grant for "New Multimedia Tools for Electroacoustic Music Analysis" Project

DMU's Music Technology and Innovation Research Centre has been awarded just under £300,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the 'New Multimedia Tools for Electroacoustic Music Analysis' project. This three-year research project will develop an analysis software package and an analytical toolbox relevant to the breadth of electroacoustic genres. This will draw together existing methods, engage the latest interactive and hypermedia tools, and apply them to a range of works to compare their strengths and weaknesses. This aims to illuminate both the procedures and the works. We will be better able to judge what analytical approach (or approaches) would be best suited to gain an insight and understanding of a particular genre of the music. The research will be undertaken by DMU Professors Simon Emmerson and Leigh Landy with musicologist and programmer Dr Pierre Couprie and doctoral student Mike Gatt. A number of new extensions, developments and refinements will result in a newly developed software application ('E-Analyse' derived from Pierre Couprie's iAnalyse) which can apply a range of possible approaches. (Image: Pierre Couprie's "iAnalyse 3")