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As part of the LOERIC Workshop at the Irish World Academy University of Limerick there is a public presentation by two leading researchers in the field of traditional music and digital technologies, Professor Steve Benford and Professor Bob L. T. Sturm
Title: Traditional Music Making and Digital Technologies
Professor Steve Benford, Mixed Reality Laboratory, The University of Nottingham
Abstract: While at first sight, the worlds of digital technologies and traditional music making might seem far apart, there are many current and potential synergies between them. I will explore these through the lens of three projects. The first was an ethnographic study of traditional sessions that revealed how musicians were turning to digital resources (such as thesession.org), but employed a degree of ‘situated discretion’ as to how they were embedded into the practice of playing in sessions. The second was a project to digitally augment a musical instrument (the Carolan Guitar) so that it could capture and retell its life story as it passed among musicians. The third has been a project to create an AI musician that can improvise around traditional tunes in real-time in response to a human player. My reflections will explore the opportunities and challenges for digital technologies in traditional music making and the evolving nature of the oral tradition in a digital world.
Bio: Steve Benford is the Dunford Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham where he co-founded the Mixed Reality Laboratory. His research explores artistic applications of digital technologies through performance-led methods that engage artists in creating, touring and studying unique interactive experiences. In turn, these have inspired fresh perspectives on interaction such as trajectories and uncomfortable interactions. He directs the EPSRC-funded Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training and the University’s newly founded Cobot Maker Space that is exploring human interaction with robots. He was previously an EPSRC Dream Fellow. He is also a keen traditional musician.
Title: Evaluating Artificial Intelligence in the context of Traditional Irish Music
Prof. Bob L. T. Sturm, Speech, Music and Hearing Division, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Abstract: Past work has investigated the degree to which human listeners may be prejudiced against music knowing that it was created by artificial intelligence (AI). While these studies did not find a statistically significant relationship, the listening experiments were performed with music genres such as contemporary classical music or free jazz which are fairly welcoming of technology. In this talk, I will discuss this prejudice in a context where strong opinions on authenticity and technology are typical: Irish traditional music (ITM). We conducted a listening experiment with practitioners of ITM (at University of Limerick in 2021) asking each subject to first listen to a human performance of music generated by a computer in the style of ITM (this provenance is unknown to the listener), and then rate how much they like the piece. After rating all six pieces, each subject listens to each again but rates how likely they believe it is composed by a computer. The results of our pilot study suggest ITM practitioners tend to rate belief in AI authorship lower the more they rate liking a tune.
Bio: Bob is an associate professor at the Speech, Music and Hearing Division, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, and the principal investigator of the MUSAiC project – an ERC-funded project documenting and investigating the variety of impacts of artificial intelligence technology on music and our relationship to it. Bob is also a learner of Irish traditional accordion (under the tutelage of Paudie O’Connor and Derek Hickey), and has organized the Stockholm learner’s session since 2019.