Echochroma V Concert

Yesterday members of the Leeds Met Innovation North Music and Sound Processing (MSP) Group performed a concert of electro-acoustic music in the Jubilee Room of the James Graham Building, Headingley. A new set of surround speakers provided the adequate sound level for enjoying the electro-acoustic compositions that were performed in multi-channel surround sound.

The first half of the program contained music by staff and students from Leeds Met and the Leeds College of Music:
Nikos Stavropoulos: Nyctinasty
Stephen Kilpatrick: Oceana
Alasdair Auchincloss: Untitled 1
Adam Stansbie: Parenthesis
Dale Perkins: Cuckoo-borough

The second half of the concert was performed at the mixing desk by guest composer Manuella Blackburn:
Manuella Blackburn: Vista Points
Sam Salem: Poor but sexy in Berlin
Diana Simpson: Papyrus
David Berezan: Frosty

Echochroma Concert: 14.Dec., 17:00

Echochroma is proud to present an evening of electroacoustic music on Monday the 14th of December at 17.00pm in the Jubilee room (JG G06), James Graham, Headingley Campus.

The concert will feature special guests: Manuella Blackburn (MANTIS, Manchester University) and Dale Perkins (Leeds College of Music). The evening will also feature music by: Adam Stansbie, Nikos Stavropoulos and Stephen Kilpatrick (Innovation North).

All music will be performed using a 16-channel surround-sound diffusion system.

Please arrive early as there will be a limited number of available seats for this event.

The MSP group from Innovation North is looking forward to welcoming you.

Digital Libraries and Digital Preservation: EU Funding

On 24.November 2009 the European Commission has released the 6th Call in the Seventh Framework Programm (FP7)in the ICT Challenge #4 (Digital Libraries and Content). The topic of this call is: Digital Libraries and Digital Preservation.

Deadline for proposal submissions is 10.April 2010. A total of 69 M Euro will be distributed through this call.

Overall information about the objectives is available in the Digital Libraries Initiative.

Additional documents for submission and procedures are also available online.

Nokia Developer Event: 17.11., 5pm

Screen Yorkshire and Nokia are organising an event about software development for mobile phones. The event takes place at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday, 17.November, 17:00 - 21:00.

Registration and further details are here: http://screenyorkshire.eventbrite.com/

First Innovation North Newsletter

Ash Mann from the Marketing Team in our faculty has just published the First Innovation North Newsletter, highlighting events and activities thorughout the faculty.

Nikos Stavropolous' Composition "Nyctinasty" Won First Prize!

The electro-acoustic composition "Nytcinasty" by our staff member Nikos Stavropoulos won the first prize at the First "Punto de Encuentro Canarias International Composition Competition" in Spain.

Congratulations, Nikos!

MScape no longer supported by HP

As I have learned through "inofficial channels", Hewlett-Packard has made redundant the group that developed the MScape platform for Windows Mobile. This is really a pity, because now there is no further support for this very nice mobile geolocation platform. You may remember that in summer 2008 our Leeds Met staff won funding for developing the Our City, Our Music application.

I am not yet aware about how future support of MSCAPE will be made available. It would be great if the software for MSCAPE would be released as OpenSource, so that the Mscape community can continue to develop it.

My best wishes go out to the former members of that now redundant group! You have done a great job developing the MSCAPE platform and making it publicly available.

Adam Stansbie's Music Composition Accepted at EMM 2009

Adam Stansbie from Innovation North has been selected to perform at the Electronic Music Midwest Festival (EMM) which is held in Kansas City 5.-6. November 2009. Over the last 9 years, EMM has programmed over 250 new electroacoustic compositions to audiences in the United States. Due to its success and reputation of excellence, EMM attracts participation from a number of high-profile composers from around the world. Adam's composition, Point of Departure, a 23-minute acousmatic piece, was selected from a pool of over 200 submissions through peer-juried selection process.

Adam's selection for EMM follows a number of high profile international performances, including appearances at: the Bourges International Music Festival Synthèse, France (2009), selection for the International Computer Music Conference, Canada (2009), Los Angeles Sonic Odyssey, USA (2008), Seoul International Computer Music Festival, South Korea (2009), FILE Electronic Language Festival, Brazil, (2009), International Electroacoustic and Polymedia Art Festival, Serbia (2009). In addition to these international performances, Adam's works continue to be performed regularly in the UK, including a recent performance at the Glastonbury Festival (2009).

Richard Stevens is Appointed Chair of IASIG Game Audio Education Working Group

Senior lecturer Richards Stevens from our faculty Innovation North has been appointed chair of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) Game Audio Education Working Group. In this role he is to coordinate an international team of academics and industry representatives in developing guidelines for a curriculum for teaching audio for games.

The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) exists to allow developers of audio software, hardware, and content to freely exchange ideas about 'interactive audio'. The goal of the group is to improve the performance of interactive applications by influencing hardware and software design, as well as leveraging the combined skills of the audio community to make better tools.

Congratulations, Richard!

Music and Media Educators Conference

On Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 September 2009 Leeds Metropolitan University in partnership with JAMES (Joint Audio Media Education Services) will be holding the second annual Music & Media Educators Conference at our Headingley Campus, home to our £2million recording studio complex. JAMES is the educational arm of the Association of Professional Recording Services and the Music Producers Guild. Leeds Met has long and successful working relation with JAMES.

This exciting two-day event will include master-classes, seminars, workshops, product demonstrations, lectures and networking opportunities and is open to industry professionals, music educators and students, but anyone with an interest in music technology education can attend.

Keynotes addresses will be delivered by Dennis Weinreich (Managing Director Post Production for the Pinewood Group) and Steve Lawson.

Day 1 will cover issues concerning music technology and education in areas such as Mastering and ‘Long Distance Mixing’.
Day 2 will address issues relating to Film, TV and Post-Production with workshops from Foley Artists and Sound Design Editors.

For further information, or to book your free place, please email:
[Email]innevents_at_leedsmet.ac.uk[/Email]

Live from the Conference "Mathematics and Computation in Music" (MCM 2009, New Haven)

The conference Mathematics and Computing in Music has been held over this weekend since last Friday at Yale University. Today is the last session. This conference has been an excellent event, with very interesting approaches shown for music analysis and mathematical models of tonality. I purchased the proceedings band with the paper presentations. My own poster presentation which I showed on Saturday was well received. I received encouragement to publish this as a journal paper. I also implemented an MScape version of the Tonnetz on my mobile phone, allowing participants to walk around the Yale University campus and experiencing the Tonnetz as a walk-through, with consonant triads being created as one moves from "note to note".

This is the poster which I showed here at MCM 2009:

Launch of "Our City, Our Music" this weekend!

Our City, Our Music Launch Events - Leeds 2009!

Saturday 20 June
The Party! - Official video release and live music
Doors open at 7pm – FREE @ Leeds Met Students’ Union, Civic Quarter, Calverley Street, LS1 3HE

Breaking The Illusion
Ellen & the Escapades
Cari Flower

Sunday 21 June - 11:00 – 16:00
The Tour! Music videos made by Yorkshire’s best! Shot in top secret spaces around Leeds.
Come pick up a GPS device from us and follow an interactive musical map around Leeds or join one of our walking tours departing from NTI at 12:00 and at 14:00.
@ NTI Leeds – Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Lees, LS2 9EN

Musicians & Filmmakers featured include:

Breaking The Illusion & Patrick Garrigan

Cari Flower & Ben Waddleton

CHOPS & Ben Halsall & Dave Lynch

Ellen & the Escapades & Niki Naroz & James Rhodes

Eskimo Twins & Ben Waddleton

Gary Stewart Band & Ben Davis

Japanese Fighting Fish & Paul Emery

Superpowerless & Anna Palmujoki

TANK & Ben Waddleton & Ben Belmar

The French Defense & James Rhodes

Yonderboy & Tara Atkinson

Check out our site for more details.
http://www.OurCityOurMusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/ourcityourmusic

Prof. Nick Childs' Inaugural Lecture

On last Friday, 29.May 2009, the head of the Black Dyke Band, Prof. Nicholas Childs, gave his inaugural lecture as Visiting Professor at the Faculty Innovation North. His talk was titled "History of Brass Bands - The Golden Period". He did illustrate the points with life performances of selected works by the Black Dyke Band.

Innovation North: Annual Student Showcase

This Tuesday, the annual Innovation North Student Showcase was held in Gandhi Hall at the Leeds Met Headingley Campus. Students in their final year presented their group project, linking multimedia, internet, computing, and music together to a variety of interesting and impressive products. Several of those groups actually had clients outside of the university, who were very pleased with the professional results they got from the students' work.

Pictures from the Showcase event.

In autumn 2009, the annual networking event will link again external clients with the new last-year students cohort, for a new set of exciting projects.

Announcement: Innovation North: Annual Student Showcase

Tomorrow, on Tuesday, 12.May 2009, Innovation North hosts the Annual Showcase in which students present the results of their group project work. It is organised in a tradeshow style and will be held in the James Graham Building at the Leeds Met Headingley Campus. An evening reception is from 17:00 - 21:00, but the showcase is open for daytime viewing from 9:00 - 16:00.

More details are here at www.leedsmet.ac.uk/inn/news_innovation_north_showcase_2009.htm

Yorkshire Post Environmental Awards: Rivers Project

On 7.May 2009, the Yorkshire Post awarded the "Rivers Project" an Environmental Award in the category "Climate Change". The award trophy was handed out by Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, during the dinner celebration which was moderated by TV presenter Julia Bradbury.

The Rivers Project has been initiated and led by publisher, artist, and writer Brian Lewis (Pontefract Press). The goal of this project is to create awareness of climate change, through means of art and poetry. The project focusses on two regional areas in two different parts of the world, which have felt the effects of the changing climate in different ways: Yorkshire (UK) and Gujarat (India). The intended outcome of this project is a collection of paintings, poems, and other writings and artworks which are drawing on the individual and collective experience of the effects of climate change. A special focus has been on rivers: the river Aire (Yorkshire) and the rivers Sabarmati and Narmada have significant meaning to surrounding communities, which depend strongly on them. Flooding and drought have in recent years created headlines. This project intends to build a virtual link between these rivers, showing similarities and differences of those climatic effects.

Reinhold Behringer (Leeds Metropolitan University) has been involved in this project to provide technology components in capturing experiences and disseminating them through digital media: one aspect has been to track geographical locations for geo-centric interfaces and to integrate the art works with online multimedia distribution. He has participated in a travel to India, to the rural community of Vallabh Vidyanagar, where a set of workshops had been organised by the local academic and cultural partners of this project.

In June 2009, our project partners from India will visit Yorkshire, to learn about the issues and problems here in our region: a workshop is planned to be hosted at the Northern College Barnsley, and several site visits are being scheduled.

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The project seeks currently further funding for those activities and for reaching the envisioned goals.

Announcement: Echochroma IV Concert, 14.May

The EchoChroma IV concert will take place on 14.May 2009 in the Jubilee Room of the Leeds Met Headingley Campus, 17:00 - 19:00.

The concert features original works from Leeds Met Music Technology staff and students as well as work from the Arts and Society "Chris Watson Project". The programme includes live laptop improvisations by Kingsley Ash and Dave Raybould.

Seating is limited so please arrive early.

At EPSRC Workshop "Maths of Life"

In April, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has issued a call for Proposals with the topic "Maths of Life". Reinhold Behringer's submission was accepted, and he attended this workshop on 6.May 2009 in London. His initial intention was to propose the study of artificial creativity in the sense of artistic creativity, as outlined in this Leeds Met research reflection. At the workshop itself, however, this idea was modified towards a more open approach for a mathematical model of all human creativity. There were 74 registered participants at this workshop, and nine different challenge topic emerged from the discussions, "Artificial Creativity" being one of them.

A call for a Sandpit with one of the challenges as the topic will be issued by EPSRC within the next 2 weeks.

Games Republic Win

Innovation North students have been successful in the Annual Games Republic Competition which was held on 5.May at Sheffield Hallam University. "Team Croake" won the first prize in the Games Art category, and "Team Hotchpotch" won the 3rd prize in the Games Technology category. Congratulations to all winning teams!

www.leedsmet.ac.uk/inn/news_games_republic_competition_win.htm

Paper at Electronic Music Rewiew

Members of the Centre for Creative Technology have published an online paper at the Revista eletrônica de musicologia - Electronic Musicological Review:

Reinhold Behringer, Adam Stansbie, Nikos Stavropoulos, Michael Ward. Information Computing Technology (ICT) for Music Composition and Seamless Performance Interfaces Electronic Music Review, Vol.12, March 2009.

EXPO Leeds: 24.-29.Sept.2009 - Call for Submissions

Expo is the hub and playground of the experimental music and sound art scene in the UK and beyond. Free and open, the event mobilises a national network of artists and engages with communities from all backgrounds – placing sonic art and the people who make it in direct contact with the public. Expo steps out from traditional venues and into spaces that lie at the heart of the community - inspiring practitioners and the public to reconsider their environments.

Expo will land in Leeds in September 09 for a long weekend of performance, exhibition and presentation which will take place across a variety of physical and virtual spaces.

The weekend aims to highlight the broadest possible range of approaches and thinking that surround the sonic arts. We welcome submissions of all kinds. Alongside international artists, the festival has previously showcased work by young people, disabled adults and those with learning difficulties, students and hundreds of emerging UK artists. We want all work of all kinds that has sound as a central element.

As well as asking for all kinds of submitted work for its programme Expo Leeds is offering £4000 of commission money towards the creation of a new installation work that will sit within the Leeds Arena space at Leeds City Museum during the festival weekend.

Please visit www.expofestival.org for details on how to submit and updates on the programme. The closing date for submissions and commission proposals is 29 May 2009.

Northern Design Competition 2009

The fourth annual Northern Design Competition is underway and a new search for creative talent from universities, colleges and schools across Northern England, North Wales and Scotland has begun. The awards celebrate the artistic skills of students and give employers the chance to view the work of future faces in the creative industries. This years prize fund totals over £10,000 which will be shared between category winners, runners‐up and their education providers. The competition is open to students who are studying at a university, college or sixth form
in the north.

There are six main categories to choose from and students are invited to enter more than one category; architectural design, digital media, graphic design, illustration, photography and product design. Winners from each category will receive a £1000 prize. Runners up in each category will receive £100. The overall competition winner will receive a further £2000.

This year the competition includes a new category, the Young Northern Designer (YND). The category allows students under the age of 20, in years 12 and 13, or
at college, studying an A‐level, BTEC National Diploma or equivalent level qualification to enter. There will be three winning students in this category who
will each receive a £500 prize and a further £500 for their educational establishment. Ten runners up in this category will receive £100 each and £100 for their school, college or university. All entries to the YND category must be submitted by the school or college on behalf of the student.

The deadline for entries is Monday 20 April 2009.

To organise a visit or discuss further, please contact Sarah Kirkpatrick Gandy:
s.e.kirkpatrick-gandy@leedsmet.ac.uk / 0113 812 5126.
To set up a YND account please visit www.leedsmet.ac.uk/northerndesign.

Interview of John Elliott with "GEO" (in German)

One of Dr. John Elliott's research topic is "languageness". In this he is also investigating extra-terrestrial intelligence. Recently he was interviewed by the magazine GEO (3/2009). It is published under the title "Interview mit einem Alien-Versteher" (interview with an alien-understander")

Leeds Met NTI is one of the Innovator 09 awards finalists!

On 24. February 2009, Yorkshire Forward announced the finalists of the Innovator 09 awards. Among those is the Leeds Metropolitan NTI Leeds.

The press release is here: www.yorkshire-forward.com/news-events/press-releases/finalists-announced-in-innovator-09-awards.

Excerpts from this press release:


Eighteen of Yorkshire and Humber’s most innovative organisations have beaten off stiff competition to be short listed in the prestigious Innovator 09 Awards.
The six awards, carrying a £3,000 prize, are aimed at recognising those companies and individuals in Yorkshire and Humber who have embraced innovation and developed, alone or in partnership, new ideas, products, technologies or ways of working in order to improve their business.
University departments and facilities that are involved with industrial collaborations were also invited to enter as they too work to overcome the challenges of today’s increasingly competitive marketplace.
...
Innovation Catalyst Award, sponsored by Institute of Directors, will go to an individual or organisation that is a catalyst for innovation, and has been instrumental in contributing to the innovation culture in the region.
...
NTI Leeds Metropolitan University is home to the region’s first co working space which supports innovation for digital entrepreneurs, fledgling businesses and those thinking of starting a business.
...


Congratulations to Linda Broughton and her team!

FIMPaC - Forum for Innovation in Music Production and Composition

On Friday, 20.February 2009, the Leeds College of Music organised the FIMPaC event (http://www.lcm.ac.uk/research-conference/FIMPaC.htm). Leeds Metropolitan University was well represented at this event: two compositions ("Polychoron" by
Nikos Stavropoulos, and "Tokyo Yakimono" by Stephen Kilpatrick), one paper ("Utilising Aural Spatial attributes to Implement Compositional rational" by Nikos Stavropoulos), and four delegates. Overall a very interesting event and very successful for our music group.

Information about the event, the papers, and compositions presented can be obtained from Nikos Stavropoulos.

AES Conference in London, 11.-13.Feb.

We, Dave Raybould and Richard Stevens, have just returned from the 35th International Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference. This conference was focussed on audio for games, and we presented our interactive audio tutorial. This is a learning tool that uses the Unreal 3 game engine for teaching a range of techniques relevant to audio for games. As well a our 1 hour presentation as part of the conference we also had the game tutorial set up for delegates to visit and have a go on. Our approach seemed very popular and there seemed to be a real demand for such games-based-learning interactive tutorials.

We were also involved in the panel discussion on the subject of "Education and training in games audio". Although there is a lot of interest in developing games audio curricula, we seem to be ahead of the game here with our MSc in "Sound and music for interactive games", and there was a lot of interest in the course and support for the content we described. This fed into the work I (Richard Stevens) have been involved in with the Interactive audio special interest group (http://www.iasig.org/wg/eduwg/index.shtml) and which we intend to take forward through discussions in the UK with Skillset.

Although the field is maturing this seemed to be an area ripe for further research and a number of areas were defined:

- Interactive dynamic musical systems.
- Real time mixing in game environments
- Further work relating to sound propagation systems in games – particularly in relation to sound occlusion
- Synthesis and processing for non-repetitive dialogue systems
- Multiplayer sound. When you have multiple players but only one set of speakers how do you represent their multiple perspectives ? (Some interesting work on personalised HRTF’s)
- Non-repetitive sound through modal synthesis and physical modelling
If you’d like to know any more about the conference, have an interest in these fields, or would like to have a look at our work then please get in touch!

Richard Stevens and Dave Raybould

SAGSET Conference: 22.-24.July 2009

The 39th Annual SAGSET (Society for the Advancement of Games and Simulations in Education and Training) Conference will be organised by Leeds Metropolitan University and will be held in The Old BBC Broadcasting House in Leeds City Centre from 22nd-24th July.

Details are on the conference web site.

Event: Sonic Spatial Perspectives. 6.-7.Feb.

Leeds Metropolitan University and the Centre for Creative and Cultural Knowledge Exchange (C3KE) invite you to attend Sonic Spatial Perspectives on Friday the 6th and Saturday the 7th of February 2009.

The two-day event features a series of concerts and workshops on the techniques, practices and aesthetics of sound diffusion; the practice of enhancing spatial components of electronic music and sound sculpture through the use of
multi-channel sound systems.

Keynote address by Professor Jonty Harrison, Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music at the University of Birmingham.

Showcasing:

BEAST (Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre), the concert sound system of the
University of Birmingham’s Electroacoustic Music Studios. www.beastmusic.co.uk

RESOUND Open Source software package for the live spatialisation of sound via multiple loudspeakers. http://resound.sourceforge.net


Participate in the dynamic dialogue
Debate and exchange perspectives in the area of spatial audio
Gain and encounter some of the leading research in this area

Event Venue: Leeds Metropolitan University, Headingley Campus, James Graham Building

Friday 06/02/09
12:00 – 12:15 Opening by Derek Hales, Director of the C3KE
12:15 – 13:15 Keynote address by Prof. Jonty Harrison, University of Birmingham
13:15 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 16:00 Workshop on the BEAST sound diffusion system
16:00 – 17:00 Coffee
17:00 – 19:00 Concert 1
19:00 – 20:00 Buffet

Saturday 07/02/09
11:00 – 13:00 Workshop on the RESOUND sound diffusion system
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:00 Concert 2
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee
15:30 – 17:00 Round Table Discussion
17:00 – 19:00 Concert 3

To book your place please e-mail Tie Doepel at t.doepel@hud.ac.uk or call on 01484 471364. Queries about the specific workshop content should be addressed to Dr Nikos Stavropoulos at n.stavropoulos@leedsmet.ac.uk. Directions to Headingley Campus and information on hotels and transport links can be found at www.leedsmet.ac.uk