University of Plymouth
The House
Drake Circus
Plymouth PL4 8AA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1752 232579
Paving the Way for Tomorrow’s Music
ICCMR is a member of the AHRC 3D3 Centre for Doctoral Training
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) is devoted to research at the crossroads of music, science and technology. ICCMR is truly interdisciplinary: we actively publish our research outcomes in learned journals and conferences in the fields of music, digital arts, computing, engineering, psychology, neurosciences and medicine [see Publications]. The impact of our research has been recognised as world-leading by the last Research Excellence Framework, REF 2014, which is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. ICCMR is based at The House, a brand new purpose-built Performance Arts Centre, and is associated to the Centre for Research in the Humanities, Music and Performing Arts (HuMPA) and the Cognition Institute.
In addition to enjoying an excellent and affordable quality of life in the South West of England, music postgraduate students at Plymouth University enjoy a well-resourced creative environment underpinned by world-leading research conducted by ICCMR and the annual Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival. The groundbreaking research developed with our postgraduate students has been reported in Nature, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 3, The Gramophone, New Scientist, CNN, Scientific American, TV Globo, France Music and Polskie Radio to cite but a few.
The ICCMR offers postgraduate research opportunities at both Masters and Doctoral levels. The ICCMR is also engaged in knowledge transfer with the undergraduate provision in Music Technology at Plymouth University. Find out more about undergraduate music technology here.
ICCMR world-leading research reported in CNN
The impact of ICCMR's world-leading REF 2014 contribution continues to resonate [click for more]
Brain controlled drum machine
Joybeat is a hybrid brain-computer music, developed by PhD candidate Joel Eaton. Joel presented this system at the 9th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology in Berlin. Click here to watch the full video.
ICCMR bio-computer featured in BBC News
The power of slime mould has been harnessed by the ICCMR in a new musical bio-computer. See more of this story at the BBC News website. For more information about this research, see this movie.
ICCMR to host major international conference on 16-19 June 2015
The 11th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR) Music, Mind, and Embodiment will take place in Plymouth, UK on 16-19 June 2015. The symposium will include a series of concerts, a satellite workshop on Music Neurotechnology and Motion Capture, and an unforgettable boat cruise. Read more about the main conference here, and the satellite workshops here / here
BioMusic is the theme of 2015 Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival
The Festival will explore new music inspired by, and even created by, biological processes. They include a biocomputer that can play the piano, an audio-visual representation of Motor Neurone Disease and a composition for saxophone and electronics charting the evolution of humpback whale song. [read more]
New book on Brain-Computer Music Interfacing featuring ICCMR authors is published
This Guide to Brain-Computer Music Interfacing (BCMI) presents a world-class collection of BCMI tools with which adventurous explorers may pursue practical and propositional models in music neurotechnology. The text focuses on how these tools enable the extraction of meaningful control information from brain signals, and discusses how to design effective generative music techniques that respond to this information. [read more]
BBC News highlights the performance of Activating Memory at Music Tech Festival
ICCMR's brain-computer music interfacing technology developed by PhD candidate, Joel Eaton, and Prof Eduardo Miranda, is one of the main highlights of Music Tech Festival, held recently at LSO St Luke's, London. Click here to watch the BBC report from the festival.
ICCMR working alongside BBC on new project EAR: Environments for Alzheimer's friendly Radio
EAR will develop radio broadcasts which are more understandable and user-friendly for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias. Click here to listen to the BBC interview with Dr Kirke
Joel Eaton performs Flex at Liverpool's FACT
As part of the Syndrome program of events based around ideas of control Joel Eaton of the ICCMR sperforms his piece Flex using his brain-computer music interface (BCMI) technology.
Unfolding | Clusters premieres at UCLA Art|Sci center, California
ICCMR researcher Federico Visi premieres Unfolding|Clusters at the UCLA Art|Sci center in Los Angeles as part of an international collaboration with the David Geffen School of Medicine, the Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Chirugiche, Bologna Italy, and the ICCMR, supported by the Santander Postgraduate Internationalisation Scholarship. [read more]
Alexis Kirke invited to Tel Aviv to Speak
ICCMR Research Fellow Dr Alexis Kirke was an invited speaker at the opening of Print Screen Festival in Tel Aviv, Israel, which also screened the ICCMR short film 'many worlds' as part of the festival. The visit was covered by the Jerusalem Post, Tel Aviv Channel 10 TV, and Ha-aretz.
ICCMR and NOTAM collaboration
ICCMR is collaborating with NOTAM (Norwegian Center for Technology in Music and the Arts) in Oslo, to develop algorithms to compose music with brain data. Read more on the NOTAM webpages here.
Groundbreaking Music Neurotechnology project featured on BBC News Channel and BBC World News
Prof Eduardo Miranda and ICCMR engineer Joel Eaton demonstrate the Brain-Computer Music Interfacing system behind the composition "Activating Memory" for string quartet and BCMI quartet. Read more on the BBC webpages here.
ICCMR's analogue synth guru David Bessell and his band Node return with their first new release since 1995
The new CD features what is quite possibly the largest collection of vintage analogue equipment that has been assembled in a studio in recent times.
ICCMR's ground-breaking research featured at IRCAM
Prof Eduardo Miranda delivers a Research and Creativity Seminar at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris, on "Blurring the line between Musical Creativity and Scientific Development with Music Neurotechnology”
New performance of "Symphony of Minds Listening" at La Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille
Eduardo Miranda’s “Symphony of Minds Listening” was performed at La Friche la Belle de Mai on 17 October in Marseille, France, by Orchestre de la Cité de la Musique de Marseille, under the baton of conductor Bernard Amrani. For more information on the symphony click here.
New performance of "Cloud Chamber": A Duet for Violin and Subatomic Particles, at California Academy of Sciences
Dr Alexis Kirke was invited by Stanford University to perform at the "Lepton-Photon 2013" conference at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco USA. Further details and a video of the performance are available here.
ICCMR research into Music Neurotechnology is hot topic in BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme
Prof E Miranda explains how he combined Beethoven with Neuroscience to compose his new symphony.
ICCMR research into Music and Artificial Intelligence has been featured on Deutschlandradio Kultur (Germany National Culture Radio)
Prof E Miranda was special guest on Breitband, a cultural programme on media and digital culture. [listen online]
ICCMR teams up with Barclays to compose Open Outcry, a reality opera about the stock market
Created by ICCMR composer Alexis Kirke and Dr Greg B Davies, Head of Behavioural and Quantitative Finance at Barclays, ‘Open Outcry’ is a musical performance that is created by the ebb and flow of emotion and money on a stock trading floor. [Click for article in The Telegraph]
Sound-Wave premiere at Plymouth Marine Institute
Sound-Wave, in which Alexis Kirke (ICCMR Research Fellow) and Samuel Freeman turned a swimming-pool sized research wave-tank at Plymouth Marine Institute into a musical instrument, has been featured internationally in the press including the Daily Mail and Classical Music in the UK, and various media in Australia, China, India, USA, Indonesia, and the Czech Republic. Before the performance Alexis met the Duke of Edinburgh, who was opening the new Marine Building which the performance celebrated, to explain how the music was created.
New EPSRC-funded project will examine the impact of music on our emotions
The BCMI-MIdAS (Brain-Computer Music Interface for Monitoring and Inducing Affective States) is a collaborative project between the Universities of Plymouth and Reading, funded by two 54-month EPSRC grants. The central purpose of the project is to develop technology for building innovative intelligent systems that can monitor our affective state, and induce specific affective states through music, automatically and adaptively. [read more]
ICCMR’s Brain-Computer Music Interface breakthrough
hits the news worldwide
Leading news article in Nature by Philip Ball.
ICCMR is a pioneer of Music Neurotechnology, which is a new field at the crossroads of biomedical engineering and music technology. Featured on CNN Labs.
ICCMR’s system developed in collaboration with engineers at the University of Essex is reported in Wired.
ICCMR’s work is featured at Electronica III in London
Charles Hazlewood conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra’s performance of “Sacra Conversazione” by Eduardo Miranda at Electronica III, presented by Jarvis Cocker.
Mozart Mash-up by ICCMR composers for BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Radio 3
As part of BBC Radio 3's The Genius of Mozart season, the BBC Concert Orchestra set a challenge to ICCMR composers and members of the public.
Our innovative research activity is often featured
in the international press.
[Click here]
to read Nigel Morgan's review in Computer Music Journal of the Peninsula
Arts Contemporary Music Festival, which took place in Plymouth, in February
2006.
Other news:
New book edited by Alexis Kirke and Eduardo Miranda is published by Springer |
Music and Artificial Intelligence work developed at ICCMR is hot topic in BBC TV 2 Dara O Briain’s Science Club programme |
Prof Eduardo Miranda delivers key note at Medicine Unboxed 2013: Voice .jpeg)
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Vol 32, issue 5 of Contemporary Music Review guest edited by ICCMR research fellow
[See issue here] |
The ICCMR co-hosted the 1st AISB symposium on Music and Unconventional Computing, part of the AISB Annual Convention, organised by the Society
for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour
(AISB). The workshop was co-chaired by ICCMR's head of research, Professor Eduardo Miranda and Professor Andy Adamatzky of the Unconventional Computing Centre, UWE.
Further details are available here. |
PhD graduate, ICCMR composer Christian Dimpker, has won the award Klangradar 3000 of the Tonali composition competition in Hamburg, Germany. |
| Waggle Dance for strings and the Soundwall was recently premiered by Heritage Orchestra at the Science Museum in London.
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 Symphony of Minds Listening, an artistic demonstration of how the brain constructs reality, has been featured in Wired. The composition will based on the fMRI scans taken from 3 people while they listened to the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. This is part of a project ICCMR is developing with Dr Dan Lloyd (Trinity College, Connecticut, USA) and Dr Zoran Josipovic (New York University, USA), aimed at a the development of methods for decoding a person's brain activity to determine what that person is listening. Photo: Prof Miranda, Prof Josipovic and Prof Lloyd at the fMRI scan facility in New York. [read more] |
Noris Mohd Norowi, PhD Candidate at the ICCMR, wins the Best Poster prize awarded by The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation Behaviour at the Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Application and Theory 2012 conference. |
Joel Eaton performed his ground-breaking new composition The Warren live at the Arnolfini, Bristol, using BCMI technology developed at ICCMR. The Warren is Joel’s final project for his MRes Computer Music degree. |
Alexis Kirke’s performance of Cloud Chamber at Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival is hot topic in New Scientist. |
Issue 28(3) of Contemporary Music Review on “Exploring Music Through Neuroscience” co-edited by Prof E Miranda is now available from Routledge.
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Issue 28(2) of Contemporary Music Review “Aesthetic Decisions in Computer-aided
Composition” is now available from Routledge.
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ICCMR's research into Brain-Computer Music Interfacing hits the news in Italy.
Available is a movie [click here] and an article [click here]
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The Faraday 2008 lectures by the Institute of Engineering and Technology on the theme of Technology for Life [Video Link] [How it works]
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Demo movie of the robotic evolution of music |
Digital Music Research Network
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Dr Alexis Kirke has recently won the Vice-Chancellor’s Community Engagement Award 2011 with his Drive-in-Deco project.
Drive-in Deco was a 2011 site-specific hi-tech multi-media drama which offered social opportunities for the people who live locally, took place in a rundown area of Plymouth and attracted huge media interest and large audiences. |
Prof Eduardo Miranda has recently been awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s World Class Research Award 2011.
“Eduardo Miranda has made an outstanding contribution to the research and outward-facing agenda of this institution.”
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See also:
