Are you a Music Information researcher or technologist who would like to collaborate more closely with a creative practitioner?
Or are you a creative practitioner who would like to learn more about Music Information research and technology?
Or, do you happen to know interesting people meeting either of these profiles?
Then join us!
Music information technology has the potential to transform creative and artistic practice. Many technologists working in music information retrieval also at least are music lovers (if not skilled players), and as such have strong commitment to having their tools and technologies being useful in practice. At the same time, are these technologists indeed sufficiently aligning to musical and creative practice? Are the needs and interests of relevant real-life music stakeholders (players, composers, producers, other types of practitioners) who never heard about ‘music information retrieval’ sufficiently identified and recognized in technological research and development?
As Creative Practice chairs, considering ISMIR 2024’s special focus on ‘Bridging Technology and Musical Creativity’, we want to stimulate more awareness of (and joint learning on) these questions. In order to do this, we wish to facilitate dialogues and collaborations on this topic between technologists and creatives.
Phase 1 (until September 15, 2024)
We solicit open questions and ideas, either from technologists wanting to interact more with creative practice, or the other way around. Submit your short proposal or idea of 500 words maximum by August 31, 2024 through this form. We will regularly update submitted proposals and ideas here, viewable to everyone interested.
Phase 2 (from submission until November 8, 2024)
Matching phase. Check on the regularly updated overview of submitted proposals, find people you may want to work with, and tell us as creative practice chairs at ismir2024-creativepractice@ismir.net. We will then connect you.
As soon as you are connected, please learn about one another’s interests, and start a dialogue on what you would need to work together. Report from both the technologists’ and the creatives’ side on what you learn through this dialogue (we will provide templates for this, and present joint learnings at the ISMIR 2024 conference). In the ideal case, you may even get concrete ideas on collaborations already, and start working together.
Phase 3 (November 9 and at ISMIR main conference)
On November 9, the day before the ISMIR conference’s main programme, we will host a hybrid Creative Practice Workshop day (location TBA). With this, we wish to give possible collaborators synchronized room to discuss and work together.
Throughout the main conference, we will further highlight the theme of ‘Bridging Technology and Musical Creativity’ in different ways. First of all, during each of the conference days, we will have a bridging session, featuring inspirational examples and exchanging lessons learnt.
As a final conclusion to these activities, we will publish an online joint manifesto on ways in which MIR technology and musical creativity can better connect, and start an online community on this so the dialogues and collaborations will continue beyond the conference.
Help! I would love to work with a technologist / a creative, but have no clue where to start or what to propose!
As creative practice chairs, we ourselves already identified a few topics and questions on which we think interesting dialogues and collaborations may be started:
- How can MIR technology enhance and/or support musical performance?
- Can MIR technology be used as a way to improve the musical skills of professionals and/or amateurs?
- How to deal with both professional/institutional and personal archives and collections of compositions / musical ideas / rehearsals / performances? What may a creative practitioner wish to retrieve from these archives and collections? Is MIR technology up for this?
- Can MIR technology enhance or elaborate on the creativity of a practitioner, while leaving sufficient room for human creativity and ownership?
- What human creative qualities are lacking in current MIR technology setups?
- How large is the gap between creative human end-user expectations of MIR applications and experiences, and the research done within MIR? What are potential indicators of successful applications and experiences?
- Authorship, data and consent: what do we find acceptable in terms of (re)use?
- Ethics: is it possible to create and use large AI models in an ethical way?
- Can we identify any misconceptions and vocabulary clashes in the dialogue between creative practice and MIR technology?
- How is MIR technology used or tools applied/incorporated into the creative workflow? Where/how to get access to them?