The Art of Engaging: Implications for Computer Music Systems

The art of engaging with computer music systems is multifaceted. This paper will provide an overview of the issues of interface between musician and computer, cognitive aspects of engagement as involvement, and metaphysical understandings of engagement as proximity. Finally, this paper will examine implications for the design of computer music systems when these issues are taken into account

On the analysis of musical performance by computer

Existing automatic methods of analysing musical performance can generally be described as music-oriented DSP analysis. However, this merely identifies attributes, or artefacts which can be found within the performance. This information, though invaluable, is not an analysis of the performance process. The process of performance first involves an analysis of the score (whether from a printed sheet or from memory), and through this analysis, the performer decides how to perform the piece. Thus, an analysis of the performance process requires an analysis of the performance attributes and artefacts in the context of the musical score. With this type analysis it is possible to ask profound questions such as “why or when does a performer use this technique”. The work presented in this thesis provides the tools which are required to investigate these performance issues. A new computer representation, Performance Markup Language (PML) is presented which combines the domains of the musical score, performance information and analytical structures. This representation provides the framework with which information within these domains can be cross-referenced internally, and the markup of information in external files. Most importantly, the rep resentation defines the relationship between performance events and the corresponding objects within the score, thus facilitating analysis of performance information in the context of the score and analyses of the score. To evaluate the correspondences between performance notes and notes within the score, the performance must be analysed using a score-performance matching algorithm. A new score-performance matching algorithm is presented in this document which is based on Dynamic Programming. In score-performance matching there are situations where dynamic programming alone is not sufficient to accurately identify correspondences. The algorithm presented here makes use of analyses of both the score and the performance to overcome the inherent shortcomings of the DP method and to improve the accuracy and robustness of DP matching in the presence of performance errors and expressive timing. Together with the musical score and performance markup, the correspondences identified by the matching algorithm provide the minimum information required to investigate musical performance, and forms the foundation of a PML representation. The Microtonalism project investigated the issues surrounding the performance of microtonal music on conventional (i.e. non microtonal specific) instruments, namely voice. This included the automatic analysis of vocal performances to extract information regarding pitch accuracy. This was possible using tools developed using the performance representation and the matching algorithm

Technological undercurrents and global information circulation

pp. 217-23

Semantic Federation of Musical and Music-Related Information for Establishing a Personal Music Knowledge Base

Music is perceived and described very subjectively by every individual. Nowadays, people often get lost in their steadily growing, multi-placed, digital music collection. Existing music player and management applications get in trouble when dealing with poor metadata that is predominant in personal music collections. There are several music information services available that assist users by providing tools for precisely organising their music collection, or for presenting them new insights into their own music library and listening habits. However, it is still not the case that music consumers can seamlessly interact with all these auxiliary services directly from the place where they access their music individually. To profit from the manifold music and music-related knowledge that is or can be available via various information services, this information has to be gathered up, semantically federated, and integrated into a uniform knowledge base that can personalised represent this data in an appropriate visualisation to the users. This personalised semantic aggregation of music metadata from several sources is the gist of this thesis. The outlined solution particularly concentrates on users’ needs regarding music collection management which can strongly alternate between single human beings. The author’s proposal, the personal music knowledge base (PMKB), consists of a client-server architecture with uniform communication endpoints and an ontological knowledge representation model format that is able to represent the versatile information of its use cases. The PMKB concept is appropriate to cover the complete information flow life cycle, including the processes of user account initialisation, information service choice, individual information extraction, and proactive update notification. The PMKB implementation makes use of SemanticWeb technologies. Particularly the knowledge representation part of the PMKB vision is explained in this work. Several new Semantic Web ontologies are defined or existing ones are massively modified to meet the requirements of a personalised semantic federation of music and music-related data for managing personal music collections. The outcome is, amongst others, • a new vocabulary for describing the play back domain, • another one for representing information service categorisations and quality ratings, and • one that unites the beneficial parts of the existing advanced user modelling ontologies. The introduced vocabularies can be perfectly utilised in conjunction with the existing Music Ontology framework. Some RDFizers that also make use of the outlined ontologies in their mapping definitions, illustrate the fitness in practise of these specifications. A social evaluation method is applied to carry out an examination dealing with the reutilisation, application and feedback of the vocabularies that are explained in this work. This analysis shows that it is a good practise to properly publish Semantic Web ontologies with the help of some Linked Data principles and further basic SEO techniques to easily reach the searching audience, to avoid duplicates of such KR specifications, and, last but not least, to directly establish a \"shared understanding\". Due to their project-independence, the proposed vocabularies can be deployed in every knowledge representation model that needs their knowledge representation capacities. This thesis added its value to make the vision of a personal music knowledge base come true.:1 Introduction and Background 11 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.2 Personal Music Collection Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2 Music Information Management 17 2.1 Knowledge Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.1.1 Knowledge Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.1.1.1 Knowledge Representation Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.1.1.2 Semantic Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.1.1.3 Ontologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1.1.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1.2 Knowledge Management Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1.2.1 Information Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.1.2.2 Ontology-based Distributed Knowledge Management Systems . . 20 2.1.2.3 Knowledge Management System Design Guideline . . . . . . . . 21 2.1.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.2 Semantic Web Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.2.1 The Evolution of the World Wide Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Personal Music Knowledge Base Contents 2.2.1.1 The Hypertext Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.2.1.2 The Normative Principles of Web Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.2.1.3 The Semantic Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.2.2 Common Semantic Web Knowledge Representation Languages . . . . . . 25 2.2.3 Resource Description Levels and their Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.2.4 Semantic Web Knowledge Representation Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 2.2.4.1 Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.2.4.2 Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.2.4.3 Context Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.2.4.4 Storing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.2.4.5 Providing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.2.4.6 Consuming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 2.3 Music Content and Context Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 2.3.1 Categories of Musical Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 2.3.2 Music Metadata Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.3.3 Music Metadata Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.3.3.1 Audio Signal Carrier Indexing Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2.3.3.2 Music Recommendation and Discovery Services . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.3.3.3 Music Content and Context Analysis Services . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.4 Personalisation and Environmental Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 2.4.1 User Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 2.4.2 Context Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2.4.3 Stereotype Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3 The Personal Music Knowledge Base 48 3.1 Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.1.1 Knowledge Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.1.2 Knowledge Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.2 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3.3 Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.3.1 User Account Initialisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.3.2 Individual Information Extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.3.3 Information Service Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 3.3.4 Proactive Update Notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3.3.5 Information Exploration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3.3.6 Personal Associations and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 4 A Personal Music Knowledge Base 57 4.1 Knowledge Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 4.1.1 The Info Service Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 4.1.2 The Play Back Ontology and related Ontologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.1.2.1 The Ordered List Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.1.2.2 The Counter Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 4.1.2.3 The Association Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.1.2.4 The Play Back Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 4.1.3 The Recommendation Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 4.1.4 The Cognitive Characteristics Ontology and related Vocabularies . . . . . . 72 4.1.4.1 The Weighting Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 4.1.4.2 The Cognitive Characteristics Ontology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.1.4.3 The Property Reification Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 4.1.5 The Media Types Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.1.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 4.2 Knowledge Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 4.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 5 Personal Music Knowledge Base in Practice 87 5.1 Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.1.1 AudioScrobbler RDF Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.1.2 PMKB ID3 Tag Extractor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 5.2 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 5.2.1 Reutilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 5.2.2 Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.2.3 Reviews and Mentions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.2.4 Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 6 Conclusion and Future Work 93 6.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 6.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Analysis of Visualisation and Interaction Tools Authors

This document provides an in-depth analysis of visualization and interaction tools employed in the context of Virtual Museum. This analysis is required to identify and design the tools and the different components that will be part of the Common Implementation Framework (CIF). The CIF will be the base of the web-based services and tools to support the development of Virtual Museums with particular attention to online Virtual Museum.The main goal is to provide to the stakeholders and developers an useful platform to support and help them in the development of their projects, despite the nature of the project itself. The design of the Common Implementation Framework (CIF) is based on an analysis of the typical workflow ofthe V-MUST partners and their perceived limitations of current technologies. This document is based also on the results of the V-MUST technical questionnaire (presented in the Deliverable 4.1). Based on these two source of information, we have selected some important tools (mainly visualization tools) and services and we elaborate some first guidelines and ideas for the design and development of the CIF, that shall provide a technological foundation for the V-MUST Platform, together with the V-MUST repository/repositories and the additional services defined in the WP4. Two state of the art reports, one about user interface design and another one about visualization technologies have been also provided in this document

Predicting Health Impacts of the World Trade Center Disaster: 1. Halogenated hydrocarbons, symptom syndromes, secondary victimization, and the burdens of history

The recent attack on the World Trade Center, in addition to direct injury and psychological trauma, has exposed a vast population to dioxins, dibenzofurans, related endocrine disruptors, and a multitude of other physiologically active chemicals arising from the decomposition of the massive quantities of halogenated hydrocarbons and other plastics within the affected buildings. The impacts of these chemical species have been compounded by exposure to asbestos, fiberglass, crushed glass, concrete, plastic, and other irritating dusts. To address the manifold complexities of this incident we combine recent theoretical perspectives on immune, CNS, and sociocultural cognition with empirical studies on survivors of past large toxic fires, other community-scale chemical exposure incidents, and the aftereffects of war. Our analysis suggests the appearance of complex, but distinct and characteristic, spectra of synergistically linked social, psychosocial, psychological and physical symptoms among the 100,000 or so persons most directly affected by the WTC attack. The different 'eigenpatterns' should become increasingly comorbid as a function of exposure. The expected outcome greatly transcends a simple 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' model, and may resemble a particularly acute form of Gulf War Syndrome. We explore the role of external social factors in subsequent exacerbation of the syndrome -- secondary victimization -- and study the path-dependent influence of individual and community-level historical patterns of stress. We suggest that workplace and other organizations can act as ameliorating intermediaries. Those without acess to such buffering structures appear to face a particularly bleak future

Drawing Vignettes: ... perpetual becoming(s)

This practice-led research identifies parallels between drawing and writing as tools that wonder, articulate and remark experiences. The research devises a drawing/writing hybrid Drawing Vignettes that interweaves wonder and its articulation through various methods of remarking by bringing together four methods; drawing/writing, the use of sound, phenomenological bracketing and ekphrasis. In both theory and practice Drawing Vignettes unites drawn and written conventions, and appears in the thesis text as a drawing/writing hybrid. Through practice-led explorations the research questions the relationship between theory and practice, the nature of understanding and interpretation by fusing reading and looking activities through the Drawing Vignettes outputs. The research challenges writing and drawing conventions as distinct forms of theory and practice, and asks if by redrafting the boundaries of drawing and writing an original vocative poetic practice can emerge. The research aims to make explicit the relationships between the knower and the known by examining what is readable, understandable and how Drawing Vignettes is presented as a practice-led methodology that fosters the acquisition of knowledge through the participant s experience(s) and interpretation(s) allowing understanding to emerge via these exchanges. The research privileges Philip Fisher s (1998) wonder as a poetics of thought and Martin Heidegger s assertion of poetry as a projective utterance (1935) to examine how wonder impacts upon our observation(s), articulation(s) and interpretation(s) of experience(s) as a type of open-ended poetic dialogue. This investigation utilises debates from Nicolas Davey s theoria (2006) that revises the dualism of theory and practice, maintaining they are mutually engaged in dialogue. This research engages in various poetic dialogues to redraft theory practice boundaries, evaluating Drawing Vignettes as a critical revision that query s how philosphical exploartions can interpreate histories and contexts in various verbalised forms. Wonder is evaluated through this practice-led research as inherentley dialogic. It is reviewed as interweaving amongst hermenuitics, ambiguity, doubt and poetics. It is associated with knowledge generation through the hermeneutic circle , as a type of dialogue that circles back and forth between presumption and surprise and renders knowledge structures as incomplete. The research revises the embodied tacit knowledge generated through Drawing Vignettes, and philosophising is argued as an event that engages in wonder as both pensive and participatory. The embodied and autobiographical nature of inscribing, fundamental to a hybrid practice is employed as a method that allows the self to emerge, as a type of activity that traces life amplifying a sense of being in the act of viewing/speaking. The poetic attitude is a term developed by the research to describe a type of dialogic occurrence where an encounter with wonder takes place becomes projected using drawing/writing methods and relocated in the practice outcomes. The research asserts the four methods of Drawing Vignettes enables and perpetuates the poetic attitude where vocative practice outputs can be understood as a type of phenomenological text that revisits presuppositions by enveloping, documenting, analysing and perpetuating wonder. In turn Drawing Vignettes is reasoned as fostering understanding, as it articulates and traces experiences by describing and mapping their structures, empowering die sachen or matters to arise

Continuous Integration for Fast SoC Algorithm Development

Digital systems have become advanced, hard to design and optimize due to ever-growing technology. Integrated Circuits (ICs) have become more complicated due to complex computations in latest technologies. Communication systems such as mobile networks have evolved and become a part of our daily lives with the advancement in technology over the years. Hence, need of efficient, reusable and automated processes for System-on-a-Chip (SoC) development has been increased. Purpose of this thesis is to study and evaluate currently used SoC development processes and presents guidelines on how these processes can be streamlined. The thesis starts by evaluating currently used SoC development flows and their advantages and disadvantages. One important aspect is to identify step which cause duplication of work and unnecessary idle times in SoC development teams. A study is conducted and input from SoC development experts is taken in order to optimize SoC flows and use of Continuous Integration (CI) system. An algorithm model is implemented that can be used in multiple stages of SoC development at adequate complexity and is “easy enough” to be used for a person not mastering the topic. The thesis outcome is proposal for CI system in SoC development for accelerating the speed and reliability of implementing algorithms to RTL code and finally into product. CI system tool is also implemented to automate and test the model design so that it also remains up to date

When Mountain meets Road: Mfankind\u27s connection to nature through sublime theory in Shelley\u27s Mont Blanc and McCarthy\u27s The Road

Cormac McCarthy\u27s The Road (2005) is a strong example of how post-modern dystopian fiction has captivated the mass imagination. Contemporary scholars have discussed The Road thoroughly, commenting on the text\u27s redemptive journey, post-apocalyptic message or cauterized terrain. However, I argue that McCarthy\u27s novel is not merely a modern text with an alienating landscape. Rather, the story conveys a strongly sublime aesthetic, which is recognizable from nineteenth­century British Romantic works such as Percy Bysshe Shelley\u27s Mont Blanc (1817). These texts have a shared obsession vvith the fictional representation and investigation of the sublime aesthetic and humankind\u27s relationship with the natural world. Indeed, there is a fascinating correlation betvveen the tvvo texts, in terms of how the authors create a union betvveen humankind and nature. A1ont Blanc and The Road each have a functioning triad within, by which nature and humankind are balanced and reach equilibrium through the use of a third party. McCarthy\u27s and Shelley\u27s respective works show strong connections and are clearly connected. However, I do not propose that McCarthy drew directly from Romantic texts. Instead, I argue that the relationship betvveen The Road and Af ont Blanc can best be explained through l\Iichel Foucault\u27s theory of the episteme, and I thus argue that they share similar themes and concerns because both authors tap into the same societal, aesthetic and historical topio when producing their respective literary texts. I contend that issues that spurred on the Romantic poets to write, have resurfaced again in the tv:enty-first century, and are contributing to modern literature in new and excmng ways