The Feral Cello: A Philosophically Informed Approach to an Actuated Instrument

There have been many NIME papers over the years on augmented or actuated instruments [2][10][19][22]. Many of these papers have focused on the technical description of how these instruments have been produced, or as in the case of Machover’s ‘Hyperinstruments’ [19], on producing instruments over which performers have ‘absolute control’ and emphasise ‘learnability. perfectibility and repeatability’ [19]. In contrast to this approach, this paper outlines a philosophical position concerning the relationship between instruments and performers in improvisational contexts that recognises the agency of the instrument within the performance process. It builds on a post-phenomenological understanding of the human/instrument relationship in which the human and the instrument are understood as co-defining entities without fixed boundaries; an approach that actively challenges notions of instrumental mastery and ‘absolute control’. This paper then takes a practice-based approach to outline how such philosophical concerns have fed into the design of an augmented actuated cello system, The Feral Cello, that has been designed to explicitly explore these concerns through practice

(WP 2016-01) Transformation without Paternalism

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people’s lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent, and the principle of democratic development

Towards a Relational Understanding of the Performance Ecosystem

This article seeks to form a deeper understanding of the performance ecosystem by drawing parallels with Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics and Guattari's conception of subjectivity as outlined in Chaosmosis. Through an examination of participation within performance, and a recognition of the mutability of the roles of performer, listener, instrument and environment in the creation of the music event, this article examines the place of subjectivity, the capacity for self-creation, in the formation of a group aesthetic. Such a concept places the creation of meaning not within the individual participant but rather within the relationship between participants in a situation, a relationship that recognises the interaction between individuals, societies and institutions in its production. Such a discussion helps further our understanding of the performance ecosystem as a conceptual tool

A visual approach to sketched symbol recognition

There is increasing interest in building systems that can automatically interpret hand-drawn sketches. However, many challenges remain in terms of recognition accuracy, robustness to different drawing styles, and ability to generalize across multiple domains. To address these challenges, we propose a new approach to sketched symbol recognition that focuses on the visual appearance of the symbols. This allows us to better handle the range of visual and stroke-level variations found in freehand drawings. We also present a new symbol classifier that is computationally efficient and invariant to rotation and local deformations. We show that our method exceeds state-of-the-art performance on all three domains we evaluated, including handwritten digits, PowerPoint shapes, and electrical circuit symbols

Design Considerations for Instruments for Users with Complex Needs in SEN Settings.

Music technology can provide unique opportunities to allow access to music making for those with complex needs in special educational needs (SEN) settings. Whilst there is a growing trend of research in this area, technology has been shown to face a variety of issues leading to underuse in this context. This paper reviews issues raised in literature and in practice for the use of music technology in SEN settings. The paper then reviews existing principles and frameworks for designing digital musical instruments (DMIs.) The reviews of literature and current frameworks are then used to inform a set of design considerations for instruments for users with complex needs, and in SEN settings. 18 design considerations are presented with connections to literature and practice. An implementation example including future work is presented, and finally a conclusion is then offered

Cost-efficient manufacturing of composite structures

The Advanced Composites Technology (ACT) program is seeking research breakthroughs that will allow structures made of graphite epoxy materials to replace metals in the wings and fuselages of future aircrafts. NASA's goals are to reduce acquisition cost by 20 to 25 percent, structural weight for a resized aircraft by 40 to 50 percent, and the number of parts by half compared to current production aluminum aircraft. The innovative structural concepts, materials, and fabrication techniques emerging from the ACT program are described, and the relationship between aerospace developments and industrial, commercial, and sporting goods applications are discussed