About


About the Experimental Music Technologies Lab

The Experimental Music Technologies lab (formerly Music Informatics and Performance Technologies Lab), located in the Department of Music in the School of Media, Film and Music, aims to initiate and consolidate diverse research across the university in specific areas of musical technologies through both theoretical research and practical development. The lab functions both as an internal platform for presentations, collaborations and critique, as well as outwards representation of research activities, potentially yielding further connections and international collaborations.

With research foci ranging from computational creativity and music information retrieval to new instrument design and live performance studies, the lab seeks to contribute to a renewed technological engagement with music and musical cultures through a questioning of established techno-cultural practices. This pertains equally to the production, dissemination, and reception of digital music, where novel approaches in the analysis and composition of music are explored through computational methods. Furthermore, the lab is a platform for a media-archaeological approach in music technology that explores the multifaceted development of acoustic instruments with analogue equipment and digital devices. Novel means for musical expression such as live coding, new interfaces, and post-digital approaches are actively researched and developed.

Research Areas

Computational Creativity
- Generative Music (for processor-based systems and games)
- Artificial intelligence and Artificial Life in musical systems
- Computer-aided composition
- Creative Coding – audiovisual systems, including robotics, games, and installations

HCI in music technology
- New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)
- Embodiment in digital systems (tactile media, spatial audio, installations)
- Collaboration and networked musical systems
- Music perception, cognition, affect, and emotions

Music Information Retrieval
- Representation of musical signals (as score, spectrographs, other visualisations or modalities)
- Music classification and modelling through computational methods – musical feature extraction
- The semantic web, new musical formats (MusicXML, mpeg-7)
- Automated score generation and score following

Performance Studies
- Liveness and improvisation with music technologies
- Live coding and the creation of domain specific programming languages
- NIME, including psychology, HCI, media anthropology, and ethnography approaches
- Media archaeology of performance devices
- Machines, robots, and installations

Technology Research
- Explore music technology practice within a wider social context
- Philosophy of technology and music systems
- Technology and aesthetics
- Critical code studies, software studies