Understanding Optical Music Recognition

For over 50 years, researchers have been trying to teach computers to read music notation, referred to as Optical Music Recognition (OMR). However, this field is still difficult to access for new researchers, especially those without a significant musical background: Few introductory materials are available, and, furthermore, the field has struggled with defining itself and building a shared terminology. In this work, we address these shortcomings by (1) providing a robust definition of OMR and its relationship to related fields, (2) analyzing how OMR inverts the music encoding process to recover the musical notation and the musical semantics from documents, and (3) proposing a taxonomy of OMR, with most notably a novel taxonomy of applications. Additionally, we discuss how deep learning affects modern OMR research, as opposed to the traditional pipeline. Based on this work, the reader should be able to attain a basic understanding of OMR: its objectives, its inherent structure, its relationship to other fields, the state of the art, and the research opportunities it affords

Music Encoding Conference Proceedings 2021, 19–22 July, 2021 University of Alicante (Spain): Onsite & Online

Este documento incluye los artículos y pósters presentados en el Music Encoding Conference 2021 realizado en Alicante entre el 19 y el 22 de julio de 2022.Funded by project Multiscore, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103

Ashitaka: an audiovisual instrument

This thesis looks at how sound and visuals may be linked in a musical instrument, with a view to creating such an instrument. Though it appears to be an area of significant interest, at the time of writing there is very little existing - written, or theoretical - research available in this domain. Therefore, based on Michel Chion’s notion of synchresis in film, the concept of a fused, inseparable audiovisual material is presented. The thesis then looks at how such a material may be created and manipulated in a performance situation. A software environment named Heilan was developed in order to provide a base for experimenting with different approaches to the creation of audiovisual instruments. The software and a number of experimental instruments are discussed prior to a discussion and evaluation of the final ‘Ashitaka’ instrument. This instrument represents the culmination of the work carried out for this thesis, and is intended as a first step in identifying the issues and complications involved in the creation of such an instrument

TRANSMISSION & THE INTERNET: THE CONTEMPORARY RESPONSE OF A TRADITIONAL MUSICAL COMMUNITY

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2385 on 14.03.2017 by CS (TIS)This thesis is a study of the performance, interpretation and transmission practices of traditional instrumental musicians in Scotland and Ireland. Extensive original research was undertaken over a period of four years including a survey of current transmission practices amongst traditional musicians from Britain and Ireland. Both preservation and the study of change are vital elements in maintaining a flourishing oral culture. However, my focus is on definition. The study is an attempt to clarify the many contemporary and often conflicting expressions of musical experience that constitute part of the oral tradition in Scotland and Ireland. By examining the work of the practitioners of this music it is possible to see that innovative and diverse approaches to arrangement, performance, education, transmission and reception are generating clearer ways of defining cultural values within the community. The emergence of a clearer set of definitions will help practitioners establish a grammar from which interactions with other cultural and socio-economic models can be undertaken. This in turn may help reduce perceived threats and alleviate the fears of some members of the traditional music community and clarify for those from other musical, academic and economic cultural groups the importance of acknowledging differences between the values of disparate systems of exchange. In terms of research methodology it is clear that, in the case of a subject area whose very existence depends on the conscious experience of individuals, we must accept the role that our specific and subjective contact with the world plays in the study of oral transmission. We must also reassess the value of oral traditions in their own right, away from textual analyses. Within an academic setting this approach must be validated as part of a system that is geared towards the understanding of all aspects of western cultural practices

‘wall sandwich’ - The architectural gesture in art practice from destruction to non-construction

This project uses and researches a particular art practice and its works. In it political and critical architectural strategies converge—convergences currently researched, generally, in cultural fields as modes of countering dominant techniques of governance. It investigates and, crucially, enacts and embodies such architectural art practice as a mode of having knowledge through the figure of non-construction. As ‘creative work’ and ‘text’, in a confluent screening of films and live broadcasts in the Cinema Car as the base of encounter and conversation, and in a confluent writing of quotations and comments along practical, philosophical, and theoretical positions, it addresses and makes the gesture and term of non-construction, now employed in new locations and formulations, available for uses and debates on and in current practices and works of art. The work draws on diverse fields spanning prehistoric life and art, the relation between art and life since the 1970s, discursive art practice, documentation, cinematographic and theatrical practices, curatorial practices, the relation between ideology, infrastructure and architecture, continental philosophy, and current practices of theory. Particular attention has been paid to the work of Georges Bataille and Walter Benjamin, accompanied by modern and contemporary thinkers and practitioners in art and architecture, often set in unexpected dialogue. The work is a reflection on praxis. The Study performs a reduction of architectural art practice to discursive practice, supposedly the legitimate contender of contemporary art, revealing the architectural typology of the study as a spatial and material factor of discourse, applicable to the current problematic. A Voiding draws back such practice to architectural art practice probing the strategy of voiding as the discursive architectural gesture of encounter. Building Cinema, finally, actually building films and cinemas, reclaims the practice of filmic documentation as such a discursive architectural art practice. Maintained in an economy of overspending, whose aim is not production but an understanding beyond it, the material offers artists the possibility of encounter along architectural strategies of non-construction. It also contributes to architectural discourse offering new possibilities for engaging with architecture through the work of art’s transgression of construction’s ideological constrains

Precast concrete panels for industrial architecture: knowledge, upgrade and transformation

Research on industrial spaces at national and international level highlights some general topics of particular interest: the current scenario of brownfield sites, the reuse and renovation of factories, the issues of degradation and of the life cycle of building, the focus on industrial heritage as a subject of conservation and valorisation. The study is developed around these topics, aimed at examining them as regards the large industrial spaces made with the use of prefabricated concrete panels, focusing on the industrial architecture that, in Italy, between the \u201850s and \u201880s, represented the greatest occasion to experiment with prefabrication for designers and construction companies, often leading to notable outcomes, which are now objects of studies and protection. The knowledge of this heritage from the recent past start from the analysis and documentation - between architecture and technology - of the evolution and the current issues related to the use of precast concrete building systems for \u2018large spaces\u2019. The understanding of those dynamics allow to identify emergent architecture, meant as works of special values and meanings, which are worthy protection and may assume a central role in the redesign of the territory. In an industrial territory which continuously changes, these production spaces have to find new uses, in a perspective of reuse and renovation through a transformation process which must be respectful of values, restrictions and specific issues. The first phase of the research involves the issue of the knowledge of this particular built heritage, focusing - within the wide context of industrial architecture from the late twentieth century, on the most significant examples of the use of precast concrete panels for the building envelope. This investigation lead to the creation - as the main outcome - of a catalogue, in the form of a database and a website, about Concrete industrial architecture in Italy 1950-1980. The database is conceived as a tool for contextualising, documenting and evaluating the phenomenon of prefabricated industrial architecture in Italy; it could be extended and favours the analysis of technical aspects as well as issues of preservation, upgrade and transformation. The catalogue consists of a collection of industrial architectures characteristic of the period and includes detailed information about relevant prefabricated buildings. The second phase of the study involves the examination of the aspects related to quality and performance of industrial buildings. On the one hand, the issue of protection and preservation of the modern and contemporary industrial heritage emerges; on the other hand, the possibilities for reusing and upgrading it to current requirements are considered. In this sense, prefabricated industrial building are a significant sample of the Italian industrial building stock, which requires upgrade and refurbishment, considering specific architectural features as well as functional, structural, and environmental aspects. The study has focused especially on the issues of environmental quality and, taking into account the regional area, a general framework on the possible methodologies of assessment and strategies of energy retrofit has been discussed. In the final and third phase the study addresses the design aspects related to the transformation of industrial spaces, with an investigation on the form and the building envelope implemented for a significant piece of architecture: the Seleco building, designed in the \u201860s by the architect Gino Valle for the Zanussi Industries and characterised by an original fa\ue7ade system, which connoted it as a significant case in the context of prefabricated architecture for industry. The purpose of reuse and refurbishment of the building become thus the opportunity for proposing upgrade and transformation solutions for the building envelope, taking into account the issues of conservation, functional upgrade and energy retrofit, however respecting the formal and architectural values of the work. As regards the topics addressed by the study, the case-study building shows many elements of interest related to the Italian building tradition for industrial architecture, which combined the techniques and building systems of precast concrete with an aesthetic and architectural research oriented to experimentation, aesthetic and architectural approach oriented towards experimentation, modern architectural languages and the expression of the corporate identity through the workplace. In the current changing context of the spaces linked to the industry, these aspects have, on the one hand, directed policies towards the protection, and, on the other, pointed out new issues regarding the reuse and transformation of buildings. The development of proposals for the case-study is intended, in this sense, as the application of an approach and a series of solutions that are also portable to other buildings of the type under investigation