Planar Refrains

My practice explores phenomenal poetic truths that exist in fissures between the sensual and physical qualities of material constructs. Magnifying this confounding interspace, my work activates specific instruments within mutable, relational systems of installation, movement, and documentation. The tools I fabricate function within variable orientations and are implemented as both physical barriers and thresholds into alternate, virtual domains. Intersecting fragments of sound and moving image build a nexus of superimposed spatialities, while material constructions are enveloped in ephemeral intensities. Within this compounded environment, both mind and body are charged as active sites through which durational, contemplative experiences can pass. Reverberation, the ghostly refrain of a sound calling back to our ears from a distant plane, can intensify our emotional experience of place. My project Planar Refrains utilizes four electro-mechanical reverb plates, analog audio filters designed to simulate expansive acoustic arenas. Historically these devices have provided emotive voicings to popular studio recordings, dislocating the performer from the commercial studio and into a simulated reverberant territory of mythic proportions. The material resonance of steel is used to filter a recorded signal, shaping the sound of a human performance into something more transformative, a sound embodying otherworldly dynamics. In subverting the designed utility of reverb plates, I am exploring their value as active surfaces extending across different spatial realities. The background of ephemeral sonic residue is collapsed into the foreground, a filter becomes sculpture, and this sculpture becomes an instrument in an evolving soundscape

Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Reading Music Systems

The International Workshop on Reading Music Systems (WoRMS) is a workshop that tries to connect researchers who develop systems for reading music, such as in the field of Optical Music Recognition, with other researchers and practitioners that could benefit from such systems, like librarians or musicologists. The relevant topics of interest for the workshop include, but are not limited to: Music reading systems; Optical music recognition; Datasets and performance evaluation; Image processing on music scores; Writer identification; Authoring, editing, storing and presentation systems for music scores; Multi-modal systems; Novel input-methods for music to produce written music; Web-based Music Information Retrieval services; Applications and projects; Use-cases related to written music. These are the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Reading Music Systems, held online on Nov. 18th 2022.Comment: Proceedings edited by Jorge Calvo-Zaragoza, Alexander Pacha and Elona Shatr

The composer as technologist : an investigation into compositional process

This work presents an investigation into compositional process. This is undertaken where a study of musical gesture, certain areas of cognitive musicology, computer vision technologies and object-orientated programming, provide the basis for a composer (author) to assume the role of a technologist and acquire knowledge and skills to that end. In particular, it focuses on the application and development of a video gesture recognition heuristic to the compositional problems posed. The result is the creation of an interactive musical work with score for violin and electronics that supports the research findings. In addition, the investigative approach into developing technology to solve musical problems that explores practical composition and aesthetic challenges is detailed

Towards Bridging the Gap between Sheet Music and Audio

Sheet music and audio recordings represent and describe music on different semantic levels. Sheet music describes abstract high-level parameters such as notes, keys, measures, or repeats in a visual form. Because of its explicitness and compactness, most musicologists discuss and analyze the meaning of music on the basis of sheet music. On the contrary, most people enjoy music by listening to audio recordings, which represent music in an acoustic form. In particular, the nuances and subtleties of musical performances, which are generally not written down in the score, make the music come alive. In this paper, we address the problem of bridging the gap between the sheet music domain and the audio domain. In particular, we discuss aspects on music representations, music synchronization, and optical music recognition, while indicating various strategies and open research problems