University of Plymouth
206 Smeaton Building
Drake Circus
Plymouth PL4 8AA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1752 232579
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)
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.
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 new multi-million pound headquarters build on track for September 2014 launch
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[above L-R: Prof Eduardo Miranda, Dr Alexis Kirke, Dr Duncan Williams]
Progress on the University's new performing arts centre building, which will support Plymouth as the cultural hub of the South West, is on track to be inaugurated in September 2014. The ICCMR facility will include custom built spaces for its full range of research activities, making it one of the only facilities of like kind under one roof in the world.
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”
Current issue of Contemporary Music Review guest edited by ICCMR research fellow
Duncan Williams (ICCMR) and Chris Garrard (University of Oxford / AHRC) co-created and curated the Symposium for Performance of Electronic and Experimental Composition (SPEEC), held in Oxford last year. Their guest edited proceedings are the subject of the current volume of Contemporary Music Review (Vol 32, issue 5), available here.
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.
Prof Eduardo Miranda delivered a key note at Medicine Unboxed 2013: Voice
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Medicine Unboxed 2013: VOICE is a mosaic of the subjective, individually complex and disparate voices that resonate within medicine.
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.
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]
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
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:
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. |
PhD candidate Hanns Holger Rutz presented a new generative sound installation ('Writing Machine') at the SONICA Festival Ljubljana.
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Alexis Kirke’s performance of Cloud Chamber at Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival is hot topic in New Scientist. |
Live electronic piece ‹Inter-Play/Re-Sound›
This new piece by PhD student Hanns Holger Rutz for amplified broken piano has been premiered at this year's Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival. [Click here] for more information. |
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] |
EU-funded project: E-Motion (Electronic Music and use of ICT for Young at Risk of Exclusion).
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EU Project: Emergent Cognition through
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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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EPSRC project:
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Digital Music Research Network
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Demo movie of the robotic evolution of music |
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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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. |
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See also:
