New visualisation of music

In recent months I have worked on a new approach for visualising music. Already since a long time I had been dissatisfied with the way that media players show graphics to music: it is often just based on a raw analysis of the audio, showing a spectrogram, and then some random spatial animation. In most cases there is hardly a connection between what is seen on the screen to what the music is actually playing, except that the rhythm of the music is reflected in some of the motion.

But I wanted a visualisation which is true to the music and contains all music elements in it. And I found one: a transformation which is based on a display of the rhythmic (repetitive) properties of the music. My paper about this will be presented in march 2012 at the workshop "Music, Mind, Invention" in Ewing, New Jersey.

Here just a brief summary - details will be seen in the paper: the 2D piano roll plot which is used in music sequencers for showing / editing music notes over a timeline, contains all relevant information about the music. Treating this piano roll plot as an image can then lead to a visualisation which contains all the musical elements - and this transformation is even reversible, so that the visuals can be re-translated into music.

FP7 Call 8 Info Day in Luxembourg

In July, the new Call 8 of the European Framework Programme 7 (FP-7) has been launched. On Wednesday, 5.October 2011, there will be an information day held in Luxembourg.

The topics to be dealt at this meeting are:

• Adaptive learning systems - Objective 8.1.a
• Educational technologies for science, technology and maths - Objective 8.1.b
• Advanced solutions for fast and flexible learning at the workplace (targeting, in particular, SMEs) - Objective 8.1.c
• Creativity in learning processes - Objective 8.1.d
• Exploratory activities and networks- Objective 8.1.e

The deadline for proposal submissions to this call is 17.January 2012.

Visitor from Austria: Gerhard Schwed

Today, Gerhard Schwed from the Danube University Krems (Austria), Head of e-Learning, arrived at LeedsMet. He will stay here for the next two weeks in an ERASMUS-funded exchange visit, for sharing eLearning expertise with our teams at LeedsMet.

ISMAR 2011 in Basel: 26.-29.October

This year, the annual ISMAR Conference (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) will take place in Switzerland: in Basel, from 26.-29.October 2011. Since the time when this conference was founded 13 years ago, in 1998, as the "International Workshop on Augmented Reality (IWAR)", it has established itself as the world's leading conference on Mixed and Augmented Reality.

I was fortunate enough to have been involved for many years in this very successful conference, and I am also glad that this year I could help in selecting the papers to be published, as one of the 12 area chairs. Next Monday is the deadline for submission of the final camera-ready papers - there were many excellent submissions, but the review criteria were also very strict.

Unfortunately I will not be able to participate this year at ISMAR 2011, but I wish the organizers the very best! This shall be an excellent conference, and the participants will surely enjoy their attendance.

The EuroPLOT project

My colleague at LeedsMet, Prof Janet Finlay, has started her sabbatical year this September, and after that she will leave LeedsMet to pursue other things in life. I wish her the very best for this move!

As a result, I have now "inherited" leading the project "EuroPLOT", which she has initiated and led since last year. This project is devoted to the development of "persuasive learning objects and technologies" (PLOTs). LeedsMet's role is here to lead the project, to contribute to all the work packages, and to lead the dissemination activities. For this project, I began to expand some of the online activities: we set up a blogger page and a page on Facebook, and opened a Twitter account.

Since August 2011 we had a few internal meetings at LeedsMet, with the next teleconference meeting coming up next week. Every 6 months there is also a face-to-face meeting; the next one in November will take place in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic.

The project is moving towards the end of its first year, with two more years after that. It is funded by the European Commission Lifelong Learning Programme (Project ref: 511633-LLP-1-2010-1-UK-KA3-KA3MP).

Another academic year begins

It has been exactly to the date one year, when I posted my last entry into this blog here. For some reason, I did neglect writing here. Not because of a lack of things to report, but because I was busy with actually doing work, rather than writing about it. But I want to restart posting here, to give an account and an insight into my work at LeedsMet. As one year ago, also this year around this time the new semester is starting. Things are still quiet, next week the International students will come, a week after this all other students will have their induction.

Back for the New Semester

On 1.September I returned from my holiday into my office. The email inbox had closed due to overflow, so the first item to do was to save the emails with the largest attachments in a local folder.

Overall the first days after the summer break were quiet: no students are here yet, the campus appears empty. However, there is a lot of work going on in the offices: staff prepare their lectures and assignments for the coming semester, the time table is being setup, and the curriculum for the semester is finalised.

In order to cope with the variety of projects in which I am involved, I have devised a new method handling the often changing tasks, requirements, and ideas for those projects: somewhat based on "agile software development". It involves a patch of paper and handwritten notes. I hope to be able to create a software for this approach eventually.