Creating creative processes: a workshop demonstrating a methodological approach for subjects between the sciences and the arts.

There is a lack of ‘explicit education’ of different modes of creativity and different methodologies for initiating creative processes. The awareness of creative methodology is not only important for professionals in the creative arts (composers, performing artists and art practitioners) but also for developers of tools that support creative processes. This article discusses the background and context of the more general issues of creativity in higher education and then moves on how a hands-on workshop was developed specifically for the computer music / music technology related degrees enabling experiential learning of a wide variety of creative methodology. It discusses the pedagogical methodologies behind the workshop, the running of the workshop itself and examples of the specific exercises and the different contexts in which it has been integrated

Chapter 31 The End of a Golden Era of British Music?

The creative industries, and particularly our UK Music industry, are perceived as healthy, resilient and strong. However, with the ongoing policy changes in secondary and higher education, as well as the continued cuts to council budgets and the ongoing lack of commitment to wealth distribution and even investment in the whole nation, this golden era of the creative industries in the UK may not last. In my latest articles, I explore critical themes relevant for the UK Music industry and the UK creative sector as a whole. Current national policy expressions often omit to address these themes, which are necessary to safeguard our future creative resilience. In writing this article, much relevance will be drawn from making connections to recent public debates on what universities are for and what their role is within the creative economy. Attention is given to considering current governmental industry strategies critically and their relevance for the music industry, together with their sector responses

University 1.0 to 3.0: Towards creative interfaces between the university and the knowledge economy

In these Universities, many of us have become in-betweeners. Interconnectors. Third culture practitioners. We now live, breathe and work between arts and technology, between practice and theory, between research and enterprise. But how we do this has shifted substantially over the last 20 years. In this presentation, I will explore a new conceptualisation of an evolutionary journey from University 1.0 (largely owners of knowledge), to University 2.0 (largely curators of knowledge in an expanding and increasingly fragmented set of multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge fields), to University 3.0 (being curators of learner interfaces to knowledge domains all around us). My focus will be on the creative aspects of this journey, and in this paper I connect the subject of some of my past talks (Culture 3.0, Innovation 2.0) to some newer concepts that make sense of current debates around the industry strategy and governmental agendas for the UK Higher Education sector

Instrument Design and Mimetic Theory

This paper will explore mimetic principles relevant for music performance and instrument design. It will describe elements important for understanding basic interaction between visual, sounding and gestural aspects of experiencing instrument performance and illustrate how music controllers may be enhanced through devising specific design concepts based on mimetic theory. Example instruments designed according to these principles will be presented, specifically the BazerBow and its various prototypes

… Or does it actually tell time? Time-related methodological directions for music information systems

After having been involved in music information management design for 14 years, I am still searching for the ultimate design. Thus, presently, my work has involved looking at the methodologies used for designing systems and data structures. Obviously the central question before starting to design any music application is how to represent music internally and furthermore, how to represent time. In order to understand the complexity of these questions, it can be helpful to initially look at music representation schemes outside of the digital world: music notations or text encoding in the pre-computer age. A look at current available schemes will show how much of this functionality is presently supported and functional and timing aspects of music representation schemes are defined. The pros and cons of specific design choices and methodologies are outlined. This paper is part of this work and looks specifically at issues around temporal aspects of music representation

Weeds in the Cracks, Interdisciplinarity and Music Technology in Higher Education

This article discusses how we can better facilitate interdisciplinarity in our Higher Education systems, specifically looking at “Music Technology” or “Computer Music”, and considering the term in its widest meaning. It reflects on current practices for the future, focussing on interdisciplinarity as such, and the contextualised interdisciplinary challenges relevant specifically for the subjects of music technology

Between Technology and Creativity, Challenges and Opportunities for Music Technology in Higher Education

A presentation at Bath Spa College University in June 2001 gave me the occasion to rethink the existing Challenges and Opportunities of Music Technology within Higher Education today. To integrate an interdisciplinary field, such as Music Technology, into an academic discipline-segregated structure, such as that existing in our Universities, provides, in many ways, more challenges than opportunities: in research as well as teaching and administration. This report will present an overview of this situation, fed by my personal and professional experiences working with or in various academic institutions. Several working groups and workshops, such as the EC funded CIRCUS project (Content Integrated Research into Creative User Systems), the invited EPSRC Music Technology workshop as well as the invited EC "creativity and technology", have addressed relating issues of teaching creative and music technology courses in HE, with the result of giving it an even broader perspective. Although this is within a European context, most issues are possibly restricted to the British continent. In this light, this report tries to provide a deeper understanding into the inherent problems and the immense potential in which this discipline is currently standing: a potential which many universities are managing to exploit to a great academic benefit. The report will cover an initial attempt of defining the area of "music technology" within a realistic academic context, and subsequently look at some challenges of teaching this discipline within HE institutions. The changing face of research funding opportunities are sketched and described, and a conclusion based on this discussion is given

Creating Creative Processes Workshop

Summary short paper outlining the comissioned workshop held at the 2010 ICMC (International Music Computer Conference) in New York. (4 pages

CIRCUS 2001 Conference Proceedings: New Synergies in Digital Creativity. Conference for Content Integrated Research in Creative User Systems

CIRCUS (Content Integrated Research For Creative User Systems) was an ESPRIT Working Group, originally set up in 1988 as one of the very last additional actions in Framework 4, under DG III. Its purpose was to develop models for collaborative work between artists (the term here used in its widest sense) and technologists (ditto) and to promote these models by whatever means available. While some have criticised this aim as implicitly promoting a 1950s agenda of building bridges across C.P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’, there is no such intention here, rather that technology, particularly computer and communications technology (ICT) , is irresistibly intruding into what is normally thought of as creative work (and so practised by artists) and that, like any new technique, this has to be understood by its potential practitioners in terms of its true strengths and limitations. The specific problem that computer technology poses is that it is in principle malleable to such an extent that the limitations on its form and functionality are still barely understood, yet the people charged with the task of making the technology available have little or no understanding of the needs of creative users. What the artist usually sees is a tool which is in principle capable of being harnessed to creative ends but in practice resists being so applied. Quite often the tool is shaped more by blind economic forces than by a clear response to a specific, here creative, need. CIRCUS came into existence as a forum in which both artists and technologists could work out how best to play to the strengths of ICT and how to apply both creative and technological solutions (possibly both together) to its limitations. In particular the then new Framework V programme invited projects in such areas as new media but required them to be addressed in essentially the same old way, by technologists working towards commercialisation. The only obvious exception to this was in the area of cultural heritage which, incidentally, CIRCUS was also capable of reviewing. The scope for effective participation by artists was thus limited by an essentially technological agenda although everybody at the time, the participants of CIRCUS and programme managers in DG III, believed that we could do far better than this, and to develop new models of working which could inform the nature of Framework VI or even the later stages of F V. It is fair to say that everyone involved was excited by the idea of doing something quite new (and iconoclastic), not least the expanding of the expertise base on which future Frameworks could draw. It is also fair to say that, while not ultimately wholly original, the CIRCUS agenda was an ambitious one and the WG has had a chequered history peppered with misunderstandings perpetrated by the very people who might have thought would give the WG their strongest support. The CIRCUS idea has been aired before, specifically at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, the MIT Media Lab (and its imitators), and a recent IEEE forum. However a near total change in participation, fuelled by natural migration and a switch to DG XIII, has resulted in the CIRCUS agenda being restarted on at least one occasion and a fairly regular questioning of the principles on whose elucidation we are engaged. While this is no bad thing in principle, in practice we haven’t learned anything new from these periodic bouts of self-examination other than a reinforcement of the values our goals. On the other hand it is evident that we have made progress and have moved on a long way from where we started. A recent experience of a workshop whose agenda appeared to be to form another version of CIRCUS, this time with an overwhelmingly technological (DG III) membership, demonstrates they have a CIRCUS-worth of work to do before they will have reached where we are now. (Foreword of CIRCUS for Beginners

Between Technology and Creativity, Challenges and Opportunities for Music Technology in Higher Education

A presentation at Bath Spa College University in June 2001 gave me the occasion to rethink the existing Challenges and Opportunities of Music Technology within Higher Education today. To integrate an interdisciplinary field, such as Music Technology, into an academic discipline-segregated structure, such as that existing in our Universities, provides, in many ways, more challenges than opportunities: in research as well as teaching and administration. This report will present an overview of this situation, fed by my personal and professional experiences working with or in various academic institutions. Several working groups and workshops, such as the EC funded CIRCUS project (Content Integrated Research into Creative User Systems), the invited EPSRC Music Technology workshop as well as the invited EC "creativity and technology", have addressed relating issues of teaching creative and music technology courses in HE, with the result of giving it an even broader perspective. Although this is within a European context, most issues are possibly restricted to the British continent. In this light, this report tries to provide a deeper understanding into the inherent problems and the immense potential in which this discipline is currently standing: a potential which many universities are managing to exploit to a great academic benefit. The report will cover an initial attempt of defining the area of "music technology" within a realistic academic context, and subsequently look at some challenges of teaching this discipline within HE institutions. The changing face of research funding opportunities are sketched and described, and a conclusion based on this discussion is given