Category: Events

This week I’ll be in Berlin attending CIM 14, the 9th Conference of Interdisciplinary Musicology. 
I’ll be presenting a new scientific paper about new developments of Unfolding | Clusters, a music and visual media installation about ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).

Unfolding | Clusters was made in collaboration with Duncan Williams and Giovanni Dothel. It was first presented at the UCLA Art|Sci Center in Los Angeles in June 2014  and will be presented at the Pensinsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival in Plymouth in February 2015.

My presentation is scheduled for Saturday 6 December at 14.30 in the Curt-Sachs-Saal at the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung. The paper can be downloaded here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qkovmkclda341gh/cim14_submission_72.pdf?dl=0

Our paper “Effects of different bow stroke styles on body movements of a viola player: an exploratory study” was presented at The joint ICMC|SMC|2014 Conference Athens, Greece, on September 18th 2014. Download the full PDF file.

Abstract

This paper describes an exploratory study of different gestures and body movements of a viola player resulting from the variation of bow strokes length and quantity. Within the theoretical framework of embodied music cognition and the study of musical gestures, we aim to observe how the variation of a musical feature within the piece affects the body movements of the performer. Two brief pieces were performed in four different versions, each one with different directions regarding the bow strokes. The performances were recorded using a multimodal recording platform that included audio, video and motion capture data obtained from high-speed tracking of reflective markers placed on the body of the performer and on the instrument. We extracted measurements of quantity of motion and velocity of different parts of the body, the bow and the viola. Results indicate that an increased activity in sound-producing and instrumental gestures does not always resonate proportionally in the rest of the body and the outcome in terms of ancillary gestures may vary across upper body and lower body.

A full paper about Unfolding | Cluster (an installation about ALS) was presented at the SoniHED Conference in York.
You can download the full PDF here.

Abstract

Unfolding | Clusters is a music and visual media installation modeled from published scientific data related to the pathophysiology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The work aims to create an engaging multimodal experience useful for raising awareness in the greater public about the disease and its scientific process. This paper describes the motivation behind the adoption of a musification approach and the musical criteria applied to the data mapping process. Details regarding the mapping structure are illustrated in relation to the different phases of the progress of the disease. The results are then discussed, noting that adopting a musification approach not only helped in obtaining a more engaging audience experience but also in providing expressive solutions that would be useful for modeling other complex biomedical data and processes.

From June 30 to July 3 I’ll be at NIME, the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, which is taking place at Goldsmiths, University of London.

On thursday I’ll be presenting with Rodrigo Schramm a poster entitled “Use of Body Motion to Enhance Traditional Musical Instruments: A Multimodal Embodied Approach to Gesture Mapping, Composition and Performance”

The whole programme is really good this year, see you there!

On 16th and 17th I’ll be at Ircam in Paris for MOCO’14 – International Workshop on Movement and Computing.

I’m presenting a paper co-written with Rodrigo Schramm entitled Gesture in performance with traditional musical instruments and electronics – Use of embodied music cognition and multimodal motion capture to design gestural mapping strategies, which will be soon available for download through the ACM Conference Proceedings Series.

UPDATE: you can now find it in the ACM Digital Library. Here’s the bibtex entry.

Unfolding | Clusters: a music and visual media model of ALS pathophysiology at UCLA Art | Sci Center

Federico Visi, Giovanni Dothel, Duncan Williams

June 3rd, 5pm, UCLA Art | Sci Center, CNSI building, Room 5419  Info: (+1) 3102661557

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most common of the five motor neuron diseases, it is characterized by progressive degeneration of the upper and lower motor neurons of the spinal cord.

This interdisciplinary project presents a way of employing music and immersive media in order to illustrate the biomolecular processes behind the progress of ALS and thus help raise awareness in the greater public.

This work is an international collaboration between the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, the Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Chirurgiche, Università di Bologna, Italy, and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research, Plymouth University, UK.

Supported by the Santander Postgraduate Internationalisation Scholarship.

Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) – Plymouth University – http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk

UCLA Art | Sci Center – http://artsci.ucla.edu

I’m co-leading CrAcK, a one-month exchange project with the Middle East organized by In_Ocula, a contemporary theatre company based in Faenza.

The project started on the 15th September when two artists from Beirut (Rabee Kiwan, painter and Ayman Nahle, video maker) arrived in Faenza to work with us on a live multimedia performance.

My role in it is to design the sound of the performance and to find ways of interaction across the different media involved.

This Saturday, 5th October, the results of the first three weeks of work will debut at MIC –  Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza with two shows, at 19.00 and 20.00.

Following that, In_Ocula will hold workshops for the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and perform CrAcK once again there.

Check CrAcK’s FB page

I’ll be playing at Moog in Ravenna on Sunday 22/9/2013 for CHORDOPHONICA, a night dedicated to experimental guitar playing.

I will share the stage with two friends, Sharif Sehnaoui (pictured) and Luca Baldini.

See you there!

This weekend I’m going to present a new live set at WAM! Festival. My gig will be on Sunday night, h 23.

I’ll be there also with in_Ocula for Mind Bombing. Check out the program!

This weekend I’ll be attending the Wireless sensing for music, environments, and performance with Sense/Stage workshop at STEIM in Amsterdam.

Sense/Stage is a low cost, open source wireless sensor infrastructure for live performance and interactive, real-time environments.

STEIM is the STudio for Electro-Instrumental Music, an independent electronic music center unique in its dedication to live performance. The foundation’s artistic and technical departments support an international community of performers, musicians, and visual artists, to develop unique instruments for their work.