Unlike the previous three editions (2020, 2021, 2022), the 2023 challenge is focused on generating an artificial music tradition rather than generating a particular form of existing traditional music.
What is the challenge?
Use any kind of artificial intelligence (one system or many different systems) in any way to generate an artificial music tradition. This could entail symbolic music, audio recordings, lyrics, dances, imagery, costumes, myths, instruments, ephemera, websites, ethnomusicological or anthropological studies, and so on. To make this more concrete some possibilities could be:
Instrumental music from an imaginary country
Teetotaler songs of a Nordic community
Music to accompany royal visits to medieval garderobes
Alien music practices resulting from the discovery and “decoding” of the record on Voyager 1
Particular inspirations for the 2023 challenge include:
By SEPTEMBER 4, register your intent to participate by notifying the organizer.
Start generating documentary evidence of your artificial music tradition.
Write a document describing your team and technical process, as well as reflecting on issues surrounding cultural appropriation in the submitted work, and clarity regarding its use of data and its intentions.
a link to download the documentary evidence of your artificial music tradition.
your document (pdf).
Evaluation
One can see this challenge as a call for work to be considered for a future festival. The judges are “curators”, who are looking to create a compelling program of “music traditions” generated entirely by, or with the assistance of, artificial intelligence. This future festival aims to delve deep into theoretical and practical questions of the application of artificial intelligence to culture, raising awareness of the many issues and dilemmas involved, from the economic and political to the technological and (post)humanistic. The curators seek to programme works showcasing a diversity of approaches and outcomes, and are especially interested in multi-layered work crossing material boundaries, all the while using artificial intelligence in some way or another. The curators are not necessarily looking for finished or complete work, but instead work that has a clear connection to the theme of the festival, showing evidence of deep reflection on the associated issues, and that can contribute to engaging and productive discussion.
The curators retain the right to not programme submitted work for a variety of reasons, including a lack of transparency, a lack of consideration of the use of data from existing cultures, and so on.
Assistant Professor, Kıvanç Tatar (Chalmers), and colleagues are looking for candidates for the position, Postdoc in Interactive AI for Interdisciplinary Artistic Practices at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. The deadline for applications is May 1st, 2023.
Description for the Position (provided by Dr. Tatar)
We are excited to share this position as a part of a new research group that I am initiating within my WASP-HS project. The focus of this Post-doctoral Fellowship is researching and understanding interactivity in the applications of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in interdisciplinary art and technology practices. The position responsibilities include research and development of novel interactive systems using machine learning and artificial intelligence for artistic applications such as live performances, artwork installations, tools for artistic practices etc. The research methodologies cover exciting approaches such as research through design, soma design, and post-phenomenology. The research perspective takes a multidisciplinary position to pursue discussions in aesthetics, ethics, and societal aspects of Artificial Intelligence. The candidate is expected to work closely with the current research group members while actively engaging with the development and establishment of the new research group.
We encourage candidates with a background in interdisciplinary Art and Technology topics, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, computational creativity, co-creativity and augmented creativity with machines, embodied performance with technology, robotics, bio-art, music technology, sound synthesis, live coding, new interfaces for musical expression, musical performance, musical improvisation, virtual reality, augmented/extended reality, music-dance practices, cognitive science, cognitive and psychological computational models, human-computer interaction, soma-design, somaesthetics, etc.
This postdoc position is a full-time temporary employment for three years, and the expected start date is September 1st, 2023.
We are looking forward to receiving your applications. The full details of this position and the link to the application portal can be found at the official call.
Välkomna till visning av den prisbelönta kortfilmen GUILTY NOT GUILTY med tillhörande forskarsamtal och dialog.
Vad händer när juridiken inte går jämna steg med tekniken?
Hur ska ansvar utkrävas när det inte längre är en människa som ligger bakom besluten?
Hur förhåller sig lagen till ”Deep fake” och andra exempel på kreativ AI?
Filmen Guilty Not Guilty är en 5 min kort, fri fiktionsfilm som twistar komplexa frågor och där filmskaparna utmanar känslor och tankar kring etiska och filosofiska aspekter av autonoma system och artificiell intelligens. Här ser vi filmen tillsammans med Karin Wegsjö, regissör och filmskapare, Eva Krutmeijer, forskningskommunikatör och forskarna Gregor Noll, vars forskning inspirerat till filmen, och Katja de Vries.
Vi träffas i Filmhusets restaurang för ett glas bubbel kl 17.30. Filmvisningen startar kl 18 i Bio Victor.
The Creative-Ai (AI and the Artistic Imaginary – WASP-HS) and MUSAiC project teams at KTH kindly welcome you to the first seminar in our series “dialogues: probing the future of creative technology” on Thursday 31 March, 10:00(sharp)-11:00.
In this seminar, we talk about “Interaction with generative music frameworks”, and have Dorien Herremans and Kıvanç Tatar as guests. We start with short presentations by both guests (more info below), followed by a discussion.
Read about Ai and the Artistic Imaginary – the Creative AI project
Read about MUSAiC project
Short biographies of the speakers:
Dorien Herremans: Controllable deep music generation with emotion
Abstract: In its more than 60-year history, music generation systems have never been more popular than today. While the number of music AI startups are rising, there are still a few issues with generated music.
Firstly, it is notoriously hard to enforce long-term structure (e.g.
earworms) in the music. Secondly, by making the systems controllable in terms of meta-attributes like emotion, they could become practically useful for music producers. In this talk, I will discuss several deep learning-based controllable music generation systems that have been developed over the last few years in our lab. These include TensionVAE, a music generation system guided by tonal tension; MusicFaderNets, a variational autoencoder model that allows for controllable arousal; and seq2seq a controllable lead sheet generator with Transformers. Finally, I will discuss some more recent projects by our AMAAI lab, including generating music that matches a video.
Bio: Dorien Herremans is an Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design, where she is also Director of Game Lab. At SUTD she teaches Computational Data Science, AI, and Applied Deep Learning. Before being at SUTD, she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Economics on the topic of Computer Generation and Classification of Music through Operations Research Methods, and graduated as a business engineer in management information systems at the University of Antwerp in 2005.
After that, she worked as a Drupal consultant and was an IT lecturer at the Les Roches University in Bluche, Switzerland. Dr. Herremans’research interests focus on AI for novel applications such as Music and Audio.
Kıvanç Tatar: Musical Artificial Intelligence Architectures with Unsupervised Learning in Improvisation, Audio-Visual Performance, Interactive Arts, Dance, and Live Coding
Abstract: Generalized conceptualization of music suggests that music is “nothing but organised sound”, involving multiple layers where any sound can be used to produce music, and strong connections exist between pitch, noise, timbre, and rhythm. This conceptualization indicates two kinds of organization of sound: 1- organization in latent space to relate one sound to another, 2- organization in time to model musical actions and form. This talk covers different Artificial Intelligence architectures that were developed with the perspective of generalized understanding of music. These architectures train on a dataset of audio recordings using unsupervised learning, which make these technologies to cover a wide range of aesthetic possibilities, and enable them to be incorporated into various musical practices. The example projects will span musical agents in live performances of musical improvisation and audiovisual performance, interactive arts and virtual reality installations, music-dance experiments, and live coding approaches.
Bio: Kıvanç Tatar works in the field of advanced Artificial Intelligence in Arts and Music, active both as a researcher (with important theoretical and technical contributions) and an artistic practitioner, as an experimental musician and audiovisual artist, often in artistic collaborations. His research has expanded to multimodal applications that combine music with movement computation, and visual arts, and his computational approaches have been integrated into musical performances, interactive artworks, and immersive environments including virtual reality. Tatar has a dual educational background in music and technology, with a PhD from Simon Fraser University in Canada (2019) and started as Assistant Professor in Interactive AI in Music and Art at Chalmers in 2021, funded by a WASP-HS grant until 2026.
Welcome to the Posthumanities Hub Seminar on ‘AI and the Posthumanities’ with an exciting list of speakers!
This event, engaging AI and non-AI researchers alike, aims to open up a space for the lively conversations on AI as a societal challenge for citizenship, the artistic imaginary, education, democracy, human and the more-than human, while mobilising various approaches, ranging from feminist and decolonial perspectives to sustainability and technology in society.
The seminar takes shape of a researchers’ ‘speed dating’ event, focused on exciting new perspectives on AI, where short (5 minute) presentations by each of the invited speakers will be followed by the joint discussion.
The session will be chaired by Lina Rahm, Adam Wickberg and Cecilia Åsberg, all from The Posthumanities Hub.
When: April 22, 2021, from 10:00-12:00 CEST.
Where: On zoom. In order to take part in the seminar, please register by sending an email to the.posthumanities.hub@gmail.com by 20th April 2021 at noon (CEST) the latest.
Please see more info below.
Image of dog created using Artificial Intelligence (Mark Breadon, CC0)
Invited speakers:
Johannes Bruder is a researcher at the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures and the Critical Media Lab Basel. Johannes’s research targets infrastructures, technologies, and media that support epistemologies & empiricisms in art, design, science and their (sub)cultural distortions. His current research interests include interactions between psychological research and computing / AI, narratives and dispositifs of creative practice, and media studies of psychic life.
Teresa Ceratto-Pargman is associate professor (docent) of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at Stockholm university. Her research is situated at the intersection of Educational Technology and HCI. It seeks to contribute to the study of the increasing digitalisation of everyday practices and mainly to reflect on the opportunities and challenges that this process brings to epistemic and social practices in education. She is the PI of the WASP-HS research project “Ethical and Legal Challenges in Relationship to AI-driven Practices in Higher Education”.
Katherine Harrison is senior lecturer at the Department of Thematic Studies (Gender Studies) at Linköping university. Her research explores how material technical constraints and social norms intersect in the design and development of digital media technologies. She is currently engaged in two large research projects: “Robotic care practices: Creating trust, empathy and accountability in human-robot encounters” and “Sustainability means inclusivity: engaging citizens in early stage smart city development”
André Holzapfel is associate professor at the Media Technology and Interaction Design Department at KTH. His research is within the area of Sound and Music Computing, broadly focusing on analysis of audio and symbolic data as well as the analysis of motion capture signals. He is currently the PI of the WASP-HS-funded project “AI and the Artistic Imaginary: Socio-cultural consequences and challenges of creative-AI technology”.
Åsa Johansson Palmkvist is a PhD student in Gender, Organisation and Technology in the Department of Industrial Economics and Management, KTH. Drawing on feminist theory, STS and organization studies, her PhD project aims at exploring how AI research links to the inclusion and exclusion of different people and enables and restricts specific ways of existing in this world.
Anne Kaun is professor in media and communication studies. Her research interests include media theory, mediated temporalities, algorithmic culture, automation and artificial intelligence from a humanistic social science perspective. She is currently leading the Swedish Network for Automated Decision-Making in the Public Sector, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. This network investigates the extensive implementation of automated decision-making in the welfare sector in Sweden to meet contemporary challenges including increasing costs and decreasing resources.
Cecilia Magnusson Sjöberg is Professor and Subject Director of Law and Information Technology at the Swedish Law & Informatics Research Institute, Stockholm University. In 1992 she was awarded a LL.D. degree, with a doctoral thesis addressing legal automation with special focus on digitalisation in public administration. She has many years of experience of legal system design and management, giving rise to issues around cyber security. As such, legal implications of e-government remain as one of her major fields of interest.
Simone Natale, is an Associate Professor at the University of Turin, Italy, and Assistant Editor of Media, Culture & Society. Natale’s research focuses broadly on media history, media theory and digital media. Simone is the author of the two monographs Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (Penn State University Press, 2016)
Jesper Olsson, is a Professor at Linköping University; his research explores the relationship between literature, art, and media – from phonographs to digital networks – and approaches media as ecologies and infrastructures in culture, society, and everyday life. Olsson is leading a number of research projects including the Linköping University-based research group Literature, Media Histories, and Information Cultures, covering questions of archives and databases, distribution and transmission, noise and meaning, inter- and trans-medial art, media technologies and cultural memory, media technologies and the history of the senses, bio-media, appropriation and remediation, trans- and post-literacy. Olsson is also the program director of the interdisciplinary research program The Seed Box.
Hannah Pelikan is a PhD Candidate at Linköping University. She won the graduation award of the faculty for electrical engineering, mathematics and computer science for her master thesis on the impact of robots on teamwork in the surgical operating room. Pelikan’s current projects involve Cozmo robots in family homes and autonomous buses in regular traffic. Hannah has previously published on the DaVinci surgical system and on the Nao robot. Her work contributes to the design of human-friendly robots that respect human interaction practices and thereby are more intuitive to interact with.
Bojana Romic, is an artist and media theorist. Romic is currently Marie Skłodowska Curie Seal of Excellence researcher and senior lecturer at Malmö University, working on a project The Robot as a Technocultural Icon. Her research is situated in the crossroads between audience studies, aesthetics of technology and image politics.
Jenny Sundén is Professor at Karlstad University. Sundén’s work is situated in the intersection of digital media studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist and queer theory, and affect theory. She currently works on questions of technological brokenness, disruption, and delay as a contribution to queer theory and queer lives, as well as on feminist uses of humour as forms of resistance in social media, focusing on how humour and laughter may rewire shame and acts of shaming.
