Thursday, August 26, 2021

Fwd: [DMRN-LIST] PhD Studentship. Haptic Interaction Design: Accessibility in Music-Making Tools

 Visual impairment (blind or partially sighted) affects thousands in the UK and millions worldwide. Accessibility to digital information and tools is necessary for engagement and participation within the society, for their educational aspirations and career. Whilst there is a massive effort from charities and organisations to support them, there is a lack of appropriate tools when it comes to computer-based musical creativity (e.g. composition and performance). Often users are required to adapt to commercially available software to meet their needs.

This project proposes to design a set of novel accessibility tools based on haptics to facilitate the communication between visual impaired users and creative software platforms for music creation. The project will rethink the current production tools and propose new ways for processing and experiencing information through haptics. It will challenge current human-computer-interaction paradigms and machine learning techniques with the aim to devise new ways, in which visually impaired users can process information, navigate, interact and collaborate with other blind and non-blind users during the music creation and performing processes.

This project will contribute to:

  1. Understanding interaction design approaches for HCI accessibility with haptics;
  2. Developing novel machine learning-based algorithms for real-time user interaction with the screen and audio;
  3. Enabling haptic-based accessibility for navigation, screen interaction and collaboration.

PhD Classic Doctoral Training Grant Funding Information

This 36 month (3 year) fully-funded PhD Studentship, in-line with the Research Council values, comprises a tax-free stipend of £15,609 per annum (paid monthly). The bursary is renewable annually for up to 36 months in total, subject to you making satisfactory progression within your PhD research.

This funding model also includes a FT Home fees studentship (£4,500 for 2021-22) for up to 3 years, subject to you making satisfactory progression within your PhD research.

This opportunity is open to UK, EU and International applicants. International applicants will be required to meet the difference in fee costs from their own funds.

Person specification:

  • A BSc or MSc in relevant field such as Music Technology, Computer Science, Data Analysis and Human Computer Interaction.
  • Programming skills
  • Good communication skills; especially in written English
  • Strong work ethic
  • Think creatively and independently

How to apply:

To apply, please complete the project proposal form of 1,500-2,500 words (fully referenced) explaining your ideas about the proposed topic, ensuring that you quote the project reference CDT Project 4, and then complete the online application, which can be found under the 'How to Apply' tab of the PhD course page where you will be required to upload your proposal form in place of a personal statement as a pdf document.

You will also be required to upload two references, at least one being an academic reference, and your qualification/s of entry (Bachelor/Masters certificate/s and transcript/s) and IELTS.

Deadline for Applications

Please ensure you submit your application by 23:59 on Thursday 16th September for a February 2022 start.

Contact for Application Enquires:  tychonas.michailidis@bcu.ac.uk

Fwd: Invitation to attend history of Sound and Technology Working Group at CHSTM - Meets monthly from 10 September 2021 (online)



** This list is managed by Dr Evangelos Himonides (UCL), on behalf of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research (sempre), and aims to serve as a discussion forum for researchers working at the shared boundaries of science and music. This list was previously managed by the Institute of Musical Research. ** MESSAGE FOLLOWS:
Dear list,

The Sound and Technology Working Group at the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM) invites you to participate in a series of workshops starting in September 2021.

Each monthly session – to take place on Zoom – will feature a moderated discussion of a new or recently published work by a scholar working in the area of the history of sound and technology, broadly construed. Readings will be pre-circulated in advance of each session.

Researchers at all levels are invited, though we especially welcome graduate students and early-career researchers.

If you are interested in participating, please create an account at the CHSTM website (https://www.chstm.org/) and join the working group (https://www.chstm.org/content/sound-and-technology). You will then receive updates on the group's activities through this site.

A short description of the scope of the working group and a schedule for the first semester of meetings follows. This initiative builds on the activities of the TAXIS reading group (https://taxis.hcommons.org), whose members generously contributed to its conception and planning.

Please do not hesitate to contact the conveners if you have any questions or comments about the group. We look forward to your participation!

Eamonn Bell <eabell@tcd.ie>
Brian Miller <millerba42@gmail.com>

---

Meeting Schedule
(EDT = Eastern Daylight Time; EST = Eastern Standard Time)

Friday, September 10, 2021 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EDT
Guest: Dr. Deirdre Loughridge (Northeastern University)

Friday, October 8, 2021 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EDT
No meeting (4S)

Friday, November 12, 2021 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST
Guest: Dr. David Suisman (University of Delaware)

Friday, December 10, 2021 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST
Guest: Dr. Viktoria Tkaczyk (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Friday, January 14, 2022 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST
TBA (topical readings and/or guest)

Friday, February 11, 2022 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST
Guest: Dr. Alexandra Hui (Mississippi State University)

Friday, March 11, 2022 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EST
TBA (topical readings and/or guest)

Friday, April 8, 2022 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EDT
Guest: Dr. Peter Sachs Collopy (California Institute of Technology)
 
Friday, May 13, 2022 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm EDT
Guest: Dr. Mara Mills (New York University)

Group summary

The Sound and Technology working group is concerned with scholarship coming from the history of technology and science, towards a history of sonic technocultures. This group welcomes scholars interested in sound and sound technology from all time periods, though the group's reading and writing will focus on cases, debates, and actors that engage the conditions of sound's technological reproducibility since the late 19th century. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, relevant studies have been fragmented across a variety of fields within the humanities, arts, social sciences, engineering, acoustics, and the sciences. This working group will work across these disciplines to collectively interpret sources and commentary that share an interest in sound.

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Fwd: [DMRN-LIST] Lecturer position at Centre for Digital Music

he Centre for Digital Music @c4dm at Queen Mary @QMUL is looking to recruit a Lecturer in Audio Signal Processing. 

 

Candidates should have a track-record of high quality research, applying Digital Signal Processing with Machine or Deep Learning, and/or Data Science to areas such as Digital Audio (Production, Consumption, Access, Distribution), Digital and Computer Music, Bioacoustics and Environment Acoustics, Computational and Virtual Acoustics. Expertise and experience in Human-Computer Interaction and User-centric studies applied to these fields will also be advantageous.

 

Further details here: https://ig24.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_qmul01.asp?newms=jj&id=150200&newlang=1

 

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be suitable.

NB: although we don't have official Tenure-track positions in the UK, this is the equivalent.