Introduction – about MTG and my stay

From 20/10/2009 to 29/10/2009, I was a guest researcher at Music Technology Group (MTG), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. The aim of my stay was to obtain feedback from my supervisor, professor Sergi Jordà, relatively to my research, and also to interact with the Tangible UI (Reactable related projects) and Freesound teams.

MTG of Universitat Pompeu Fabra is part of its Department of Information and Communication Technologies, and of its Audiovisual Institute. MTG “is specialized in sound and music computing. With more than 40 researchers coming from different and complementary disciplines, the MTG carries out research on topics such as sound processing and synthesis; music content description; interactive music systems; computational models of perceptual and music cognition; and the technologies related with music social networks”.

Link to Music Technology Group:
http://mtg.upf.edu/
Link to MTG projects:
http://mtg.upf.edu/research/projects

MTG collaborates with TaiK and TKK in several projects, namely in SALERO.

My schedule was as follows:

• 20/10/2009 – 1st meeting with Sergi Jordà
• 21/10/2009 – meeting with Tangible UI team researchers (Daniel Gallardo, Carles F. Julià, Mathieu Bosi)
• 22/10/2009 – meeting with Bram de Jong and Freesound researchers
• 22/10/2009 – 2nd meeting with Sergi Jordà
• 23/10/2009 – meeting with Gerard Roma (Freesound Radio)
• 28/10/2009 – meeting with Daniel Gallardo (TurTan)

The rest of the time was spent mainly compiling, reading/viewing and archiving materials, as well as networking at MTG.

1. Meetings with Sergi Jordà, 20 and 22 October

The first meeting with Sergi Jordà was mainly to work out logistic issues and to make a plan regarding my stay.

In the second meeting, Sergi Jordà gave me valuable feedback regarding the chapters of the dissertation written so far, as well as the research projects that will be included in the scope of the doctoral studies.

2. Meeting with Tangible UI researchers, 21 October

On the second day of my stay, I had a meeting with the researchers working with Sergi Jordà at the Tangible UI team: Daniel Gallardo, Carles Julià and Mathieu Bosi.

Reactable is now a Spin Off from MTG – Reactable Systems. About Reacatble Systems:
“We created Reactable Systems with the vision to redefine the way we interact with computers. Using the knowledge we gained through the Reactable musical instrument we are developing intuitive products focused on the promotion of creativity and the mediation of culture. In order to achieve this we are applying the latest technologies in human computer interaction, music technology, graphics and computer vision.”

Link to Reactable Systems:
http://www.reactable.com/

However, there are several ongoing research projects within MTG that build upon the research conducted for Reactable. It has become a platform for developing Tangible UI based solutions.

The team presented several projects they had developed:

2.1 Song Explorer

Song Explorer is “a system for the exploration of large music collections on tabletop interfaces”. It was also the topic of Carles Julià’s Master thesis.

Link to “SongExplorer: a tabletop application for exploring large collections of songs” paper:
http://mtg.upf.edu/node/1508
Video:
http://www.vimeo.com/4796964

2.2 TDesktop

TDesktop is a “tangible environment that tries to introduce a new interaction metaphor”. It integrates several tabletop applications under a common environment.

Video playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C3C82886DBE648E5

2.3 Untitled*

Untitled* is a project by Portuguese student Joana Fernandes Gomes, developed during her internship at MTG: “based on a Tangible User Interface (TUI) using reacTIVIsion, this work is a geometric generative system that is controlled by the movement on the surface”.

Video:
http://www.vimeo.com/4611884

2.4 Turtan

TurTan is “a tangible programming language for creative exploration inspired by Logo, which uses a tabletop interface with tangible objects”. TurTan generates vector graphics and animation.TurTan offers very interesting possibilities for my line of research of combining audio with interactive algorithmic graphics.

On 28th October, I had another meeting with Daniel Gallardo, in which he detailed further aspects of TurTan.

Link to “TurTan: a Tangible Programming Language for Creative Exploration” paper:
http://mtg.upf.edu/node/1081
Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK-GNEvQb6Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQTZsKBMre4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkrclumIn64

3. Meeting with Freesound researchers, 22 October

3.1 Freesound 2

Freesound aims to “create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples”.

Link to Freesound
http://www.freesound.org

On the third day of my stay, I was invited to participate in a meeting with Freesound founder, Bram de Jong, and the team of Freesound developers at MTG. They are preparing a new version of Freesound (Freesound 2), including an API, which will allow for the use of Freesound resources by third parties. This is quite important for my research, since one of my possible research paths is precisely to access this online sound database.

Link to Freesound Blog, regarding the ongoing development of Freesound 2:
http://www.freesound.org/blog/
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/freesounddev/

3.2 Music 3.0

Freesound is connected to the “Music 3.0″ project at MTG, which aims to “develop an experimental web-based system for music creation, interaction and socialization. Such system should integrate the most recent technologies of the Web 2.0, advanced on-line tools for music creation, and large sound and music repositories”.

Link to Music 3.0 project:
http://mtg.upf.edu/project/music3.0

3.3 Freesound Radio

One of the first initiatives to tap into Freesound audio resources and develop something new with them is Freesound Radio. Freesound Radio, developed by Gerard Roma in the context of his Master studies, is “an experimental environment that allows users to collectively explore the content in Freesound.org by listening to combinations of sounds represented using a graph data structure”.

Freesound Radio was developed using Flash, which is the same environment I am using for my own research projects. This makes it additionally a good benchmark for my research.

On 23rd October, I had a meeting with Gerard Roma to discuss possible collaborations in the context of the Freesound 2.0 API.

Link to Freesound Radio:
http://radio.freesound.org
Link to paper about Freesound Radio:
http://mtg.upf.edu/node/1255
Link to Gerard Roma’s Master thesis about Freesound Radio:
http://mtg.upf.edu/node/1105

4. Additional topics of interest within MTG and during my stay

4.1 TUIO Flash

TUIO is “an open framework that defines a common protocol and API for tangible multitouch surfaces”. It is based in OSC (Open Sound Control). The developers behind TUIO include MTG researchers but also external developers, as TUIO is an open framework. Some of these developers have implemented a TUIO/Flash library, allowing to better integrate Flash/AS3 with tangible multitouch surfaces (to allows to transmit OSC messages more efficiently).

Link to TUIO
http://www.tuio.org/
Link to TUIO for Flash:
http://bubblebird.at/tuioflash/

4.2 Reactower

In the 2007/08 and 2008/09 new year’s eve, MTG researchers Daniel Gallardo and Carles Julià have created a music visualization event using Agbar Tower as a music visualization. The Agbar Tower is a Barcelona landmark, designed by architect Jean Nouvel. The tower has RGB led lights in each window, which were are controlled by hardware, and connected to a custom-built sound visualization software, creating an impressive audiovisual effect. The event was transmitted live in TV3 (Televisió de Catalunya).

Link to Reactower video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IfxBjj5oKA
Link to Reactower text (in Catalan):
http://www.iua.upf.edu/~dgallardo/reactower/

4.3 Kim Cascone conference

I also attended a lecture by Kim Cascone on 26 October at Institut d’Audiovisual.
Kim Cascone is “an American composer of electronic music who is best known for his releases in the ambient genre on his own record company, Silent Records” (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Cascone). He has worked with David Lynch and founded the Microsound mailing list (http://www.microsound.org/). Sergi Jordà introduced Kim Cascone to the audience.

Link to the conference:
http://www.idec.upf.edu/es/seccions/extra/agenda.php?id=231

In his lecture, Cascone discussed the topic of “Field Diffusion”. He identified a problem with the presentation of field recording based performances in traditional concert halls. In his view, they are ill suited for that purposed. An alternative means of presentation that he suggests is to integrate the presentation of field recordings in the field itself, hiding both the sound diffusion apparatus (loudspeakers, cables) and the sound artists from view.

4.4 SMC 2010

MTG will host the 7th Conference on Sound and Music Computing (SMC),  from July 21st to 24th, 2010. A Call will be announced soon.

Link to SMC 2010:
http://smc2010.smcnetwork.org/

4.5 John Cage exhibition at MACBA

There is currently a large John Cage and Merce Cunningham retrospective taking place in several venues in Barcelona:  “The choreographer Merce Cunningham, who died last 26 July and whose partner, the composer and musician John Cage, will be the star themes of the culture programme Jo cuino i ell renta els plats (I do the washing and he does the dishes), which features concerts, exhibitions, dance and educational activities throughout the autumn in the city. ”
From: http://w3.bcn.es/V01/Serveis/Noticies/V01NoticiesLlistatNoticiesCtl/0,2138,1653_35144087_3_980268409,00.html?accio=detall&home=HomeBCN&nomtipusMCM=Noticia

I attended the John Cage exhibition at MACBA, “The Anarchy of Silence”, which showcased most of Cage’s major works and scores, such as HPSCHD (an important reference for my research). The exhibition will be shown until 10/1/2010.
Links:
http://www.macba.es/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=34&inst_id=25201&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=vjqr6846j5q578bv14tkh8c6c5
http://www.undo.net/cgi-bin/undo/pressrelease/pressrelease.pl?id=1256296586

5. Barcelona

My life in Barcelona took place mostly between Sagrada Familia, where I was staying, and Gloriès / Poble Nou, where MTG is based. It was fascinating to see on a daily basis two of the cities landmarks: Torre Agbar and Sagrada Familia.

6. Acknowledgements

Thanks for MTG for hosting me, to Sergi Jordà for his time and excellent advice, and to all the researchers at MTG I have talked to.