Le son du futur/Le futur du son

*New - See the official Conference Website for more details. 

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) is organizing its first international conference, Le son du futur/Le futur du son, to take place in Montreal, May 24-27, 2022. The conference format will be different from usual settings and designed to foster exchanges and interaction among researchers and creators through different types of sessions including panels, workshops, interactive sessions in small groups and roundtables. Keynotes will be delivered by guests representing the artistic, scientific, and industrial sectors to provide cutting edge information, while three concerts will display some of the artistic outputs of CIRMMT research-creation activities.

Participants will present key elements of their research in very short formats (5 minutes) during one of the four panel sessions or during the poster session. The bulk of the conference will consist of 16 interactive sessions organized around themes that cross multiple disciplines; certain interactive session topics will be fixed, but the topics of the final sessions will remain open to be shaped around ideas and topics that emerge during the conference.

PROGRAM

Composed of 1 student symposium, 4 panel sessions, 5 keynotes, 2 poster sessions, 16 interactive sessions, 3 roundtables, 3 workshops and 3 concerts, the 4-day conference will aim to foster collaborative projects through a creative approach. In lieu of a traditional setting where research is exclusively presented through lectures or poster sessions, our conference will privilege collective activities and work/interaction sessions following dense moments of knowledge sharing. The following table provides an overview of the whole event and its activities (details subject to change).

The first day (May 24) is dedicated to COBS, a student-led Symposium organized by students of Montreal research centres CIRMMT, OICRM and BRAMS.

Keynotes are intended to provide high-level expert knowledge while exploring future directions which may be less familiar to some of the participants.

• Robin Bargar (Dean, College of the  Arts, California State University, Long Beach, USA) and Insook Choi (University of Salford, Manchester UK, and Chief Scientist for Wowsome XR): Where to Encode Musical Information
  
  
• Louis-Xavier Buffoni (Director of research and development, Audiokenetic, Montréal): The Future of Interactive Audio Production
  
  
• Sid Fels (Director, Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC), University of British Columbia, Canada): Breaking the Brain to Sound Barrier: Leveraging the Mind-Body Continuum for Musical Expression
  
  
• Alain Fleischer (Director, Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, France): Transfert de formes / Transfert de sens
  
  
• Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay (Professor of Composition and Improvisation University of Huddersfield, leader of FluCoMa - Fluid Corpus Manipulation, UK): Beyond cohabitation: towards a rich interdisciplinarity in music-technology research

Panel sessions will be organized around four themes that correspond to CIRMMT’s Research Axes (RAs): Instruments, Devices and Systems (RA1), Music Information Research (RA2), Cognition, Perception and Movement (RA3), and Expanded Musical Practice (RA4). These sessions are conceived to provide maximum information in a very short time (5 minutes per researcher), and their primary purpose is for all presenters to have a chance to give an overview of their current research and expertise, which will facilitate exchanges between participants during the conference and beyond.

The Poster session will complement the presentations made during the panels and will be primarily reserved for emerging scholars.

Interactive Sessions: While the panels, posters, keynotes, and workshops will mostly convey knowledge and information form a presenter to the audience, the interactive sessions are thought as moments of collective work and reflection on various themes. Each will be led by a presenter, who will provide a short introduction based on previous or current research projects that will, in turn, be the point of departure to explore and propose further interdisciplinary collaborations. The format of these sessions will vary to adapt to the topics and questions raised by the session leaders. The following examples illustrate the variety and richness of topics that we aim to cover during these sessions:

• La captation du mouvement en situation écologique / Motion capture in ecological situation; session led by Frédéric Marin (Université de technologie de Compiègne, France).
  
  
• Creative Later-Life in a Digital Age: Mobilizing technology for inclusive later-life musical learning, participation and creativity; session led by Andrea Creech (Schulich School of Music, McGill University, Canada)
  
  
• Sound Art after COVID: can participatory sound art initiatives lead to a new understanding of sound environments in urban settings?; session led by Catherine Guastavino (School of Information Studies, McGill University, Canada)
  
  
• EDI approaches of audio engineering and production to enhance music technology partnerships; session led by Amandine Pras (University of York, UK)
  
  
• Music Psychology and Performing Musicians: a Dialogue; session led by Michael Schutz (McMaster University,ON, Canada)
  
  
• Sound Art Documentation; session led by Guillaume Boutard (École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information (Ebsi), Université de Montréal, Canada).
  
  
• Hearing health and hearing conservation initiatives for musicians; session led by Jérémie Voix (Chaire de recherche industrielle CRSNG-EERS en technologies intra-auriculaires, École de Technologie Supérieure, Canada).

Two workshops will be organized during the conference, taking advantage of cutting-edge facilities at Université de Montréal and McGill University to introduce participants to new tools and methods pertinent to research and music technology. Workshops will be led by Robert Normandeau (Faculté de musique, Université de Montréal, Canada) on Immersive sound spatialization with SpatGRIS, and Philippe-Aubert Gauthier (Ecole des arts visuels et médiatiques, UQAM, Canada), on Expanding sound spatialization with virtual acoustics capabilities in the MMR.

Three concerts will provide concrete examples of artistic outcomes of CIRMMT-led research-creation.

• The first concert (May 24, Tanna Schulich Hall, McGill University) will be an improv@CIRMMT event, part of a long-running student-run series presenting improvised music and open-form compositions which engage with digital musical instruments, human-computer interaction, and other new musical technologies.
  
  
• The second concert (May 25, Salle Claude-Champagne, Université de Montréal) will be a tribute to Iannis Xenakis, combining a new instrument/installation, PolytopeXXI, with a masterpiece of the XXth century repertoire, Xenakis’ Pleiades. PolytopeXXI will feature a monumental new instrument: a sort of giant, electronically augmented, audio-luminescent harp, whose strings will be struck by the percussionists of the ensemble SIXTRUM in a new work by Myriam Boucher and Dominic Thibault. The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne will also take part to the concert with the rarely performed Anaktoria, by Iannis Xenakis.
  
  
• The third and last concert (May 26, MultiMedia Room, McGill University) will be part of the live@CIRMMT concert series. It will be dedicated to student commissions and feature CIRMMT students Joshua Bucchi, Martin Daigle, Mélanie Frisoli, Xue Han, Edu Meneses and Jason Noble.

Acknowledgements:

This conference is supported by a Connection Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, with contributions from CIRMMT, the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, and the Faculté de Musique de l'Université de Montréal.