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Contemporary
Music Festival

University of Plymouth
206 Smeaton Building
Drake Circus
Plymouth PL4 8AA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1752 232579

Reaching us...

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Paving the Way for Tomorrow’s Music

"In addition to enjoying an excellent and affordable quality of life in the South West of England, post-graduate students and research staff at Plymouth have access to well equipped studios, an open plan lab with exciting kit, annual research seminar series and a vibrant contemporary music community." (Prof E Miranda, Head of ICCMR)

[Click here to find out about postgraduate research opportunities]

The relationship between the people who make music happen and computing technologies is pivotal for the future of the music industry.

Computing technology is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in all aspects of music. Smart sound design and synthetic music pervades a wide range of creative practices, from avant-garde contemporary music to entertainment media for mass consumption. Computer technologies are having a profound impact on how music is studied, composed, performed, listened to, stored and distributed. For instance, software sound synthesis techniques offer musicians the possibility of creating bespoke digital musical instruments capable of producing an unprecedented range of novel sounds; and Artificial Intelligence techniques allow for the design of sophisticated composition methods that would have been impossible to conceive otherwise.

ICCMR is affiliated to the University’s Centre for Research in the Humanities, Music and Performing Arts (HuMPA) and to the Cognition Institute. It offers a number of unprecedented opportunities for collaborative and interdisciplinary research with Theatre, Dance, Psychology and Neuroscience. The impact of ICCMR's groundbreaking research has been reported in Nature, BBC Radio 3, BBC World Service, CNN, Wired, Gramophone, News Scientist and The Telegraph, to cite but a few. The Centre has an excellent funding track record, with over £2.5m raised to fund its research within the last few years.

Masters course in Computer Music - [Click here for more  information]

Research into computing at the University of Plymouth has been recently rated as of world leading standards in the recent evaluation of UK academia (RAE2008). Overall, 100% of the research was judged as being of international repute, with 25% of work recognised as of world leading value. This puts Plymouth among the top 15 UK universities for computer science and informatics research.

The ICCMR offers postgraduate research opportunities at both Masters and Doctoral levels in computer music, music technology, and computer assisted composition. 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 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.

Music and Artificial Intelligence work developed at ICCMR is hot topic in BBC TV 2 Dara O Briain’s Science Club programme

Alexis Kirke explains to Dara O’Briain how artificial agents can evolve music.

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]

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), this workshop will discuss ways in which unconventional modes of computation may provide new directions for future developments in Computer Music. The workshop will be co-chaired by ICCMR's head of research, Professor Eduardo Miranda and Professor Andy Adamatzky of the Unconventional Computing Centre, UWE.

The convention will be held at the University of Exeter, UK, on April 2nd-5th.
http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/computer-science/research/aisb/

The call for papers is now closed. Further details are available here.
[read more]

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]

New book edited by Alexis Kirke and Eduardo Miranda is published by Springer

"This unique guide/reference presents a broad overview of the work being carried out by the expanding research community dedicated to investigating computer systems for expressive music performance (CSEMPs), covering a significant number of the systems available today. The book discusses all aspects of computing for expressive performance, from the history of CSEMPs to the very latest research, in addition to discussing the fundamental ideas, and key issues and directions for future research." (W Wheeler, Senior Editor, Springer). Read more

Symphony of Minds Listening is an artistic demonstration of how the brain constructs reality. 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]

ICCMR new multi-million pound headquarters has been announced

The University's new performing arts centre building, which will support Plymouth as the cultural hub of the South West, is due to be inaugurated in the Spring of 2014.

ICCMR composer has been awarded a prize in Hamburg

PhD candidate, Christian Dimpker, has won the award Klangradar 3000 of the Tonali composition competition in Hamburg, Germany.

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.

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