Coastal Companion

Your ultimate guide to the coast

Interactive Musical Robot Featured at 2011 Pulse Art + Technology Festival

by

GEORGIA TECH INTERACTIVE MUSICAL ROBOT WILL BE FEATURED AT 2011 PULSE ART & TECHNOLOGY FESTIVAL

SAVANNAH, GA. (January 20, 2011) – Georgia Tech Savannah is proud to be a sponsor of the 2011 PULSE: Art & Technology Festival created by the Telfair Museums and will host a series of lectures, performances and workshops during the nine-day event that starts today. Dr. Gil Weinberg, founder and director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, will conduct a lecture and performance at the Jepson Center on Friday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. The performance will feature an interactive marimba playing robot named Shimon that was recently featured in the nationally televised 2010 Georgia Tech PSA (see link below). Attendees will have the opportunity to interact and make music with Shimon after the performance.

Shimon is not an ordinary marimba-playing robot because it improvises and interacts with human musicians. Using melodic and harmonic perception and improvisation modules, Shimon creates musical responses in conjunction with social cues from its human counterparts. The result is not only novel and expressive human-robotic interaction, but also great new music.

Visualize a pianist playing a musical phrase followed by Shimon, who builds on this input with a new improvised sequence. A fellow guitar player can then enhance Shimon’s ideas, leading to new responses that could inspire humans to play in ways they have never played before. The robot’s head provides visual cues that represent social-musical elements, from beat detection through tonality, to attention and spatial interaction. Just imagine the head bob of a jazz drummer or a DJ spinning a hip hop record and you have a picture of Shimon’s personality.

Weinberg conceived the concept of robotic musicianship in 2006 with the development of Haile—the world’s first robotic musician capable of improvisation with human musicians. His research focuses on expanding musical expression, creativity and learning through innovative new technology including cell phones, toys and aquariums. Weinberg’s interactive systems have been presented in museums such as the Smithsonian Museum, Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Boston Children’s Museum. Weinberg received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and is currently an associate professor of Music and adjunct professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

“The goal of the project was to create real-time musical collaborations between human and robotic musicians that would capitalize on the combination of their unique strengths,” said Weinberg.
To learn more about Shimon visit: www.gatech.edu/music/shimon.html
The Public Service Announcement can be viewed at: www.gatech.edu/music/psa.html.
Georgia Tech Savannah will be hosting a number of additional workshops as part of PULSE taking place Jan. 20 – 29. These include:

Introduction to openFrameworks by Zachary Lieberman, Friday, Jan. 21 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Georgia Tech Savannah. Lieberman will provide a short introduction to openFrameworks a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation. Participants must be 16 year old or older. Previous coding experience is helpful.

Youth Workshop: Introduction to Scratch on Saturday, Jan. 22 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Georgia Tech Savannah. Developed at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create individual interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art and share creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. Students between the ages of 9-18 are encouraged to attend.

Read more about 2011 Pulse Art + Technology Festival in Savannah, GA, on our special events page.

Grant Supports New Jazz Technology Project – Savannah, GA

by

Savannah Music festival awarded Jazz.Next Implementation Grant to support new jazz technology project

Savannah, Georgia –SWING CENTRAL, the nationally acclaimed high school jazz band competition and workshop produced by the Savannah Music Festival (SMF), is the subject of a new media project that utilizes technology to enhance the promotion of jazz music and education. SMF is one of only five recipients of first-round funding from the national Jazz.NEXT initiative, also including NPR, Monterey Jazz Festival, Walker Art Center and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. The project is funded by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation through the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “Through this technology project, we’re making our unique jazz education efforts accessible to the masses,” remarks SMF Associate Artistic Director of Jazz Education, Marcus Roberts. “The internet is now a primary learning tool for people of all ages, and young people such as the participants in our Swing Central program will benefit greatly from the lessons, artist interviews and audio/video performances that will be hosted at swingcentraljazz.org.”

Over the next two years, the swingcentraljazz.org technology initiative will combine video and audio documentation of SMF’s jazz programs, social and other digital media, and traditional broadcast to promote its efforts to a broader audience, offer supplemental educational content to young jazz musicians, reinforce the creative and academic work of jazz artists, enhance communication between students and teachers, and connect members of the jazz community with each other. The Center for New American Media from New York City has been selected to handle video documentary work relating to the project, and Heideldesign from Savannah will be SMF’s digital media partner. In addition to its wide use within swingcentraljazz.org, the video documentation of the 2010 SWING CENTRAL program will be used to produce a documentary promoting the importance of mentorship and teamwork within the jazz tradition.

The Center for New American Media and its creative partners (Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker, and Peter Odabashian) have created some of the most honored and critically praised documentaries on American life and culture over the past 25 years. Twice winners of both the Peabody Award and the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, their work, all of which premiered on public television, includes People Like Us: Social Class in America, Vote for Me: Politics in America, and American Tongues, which deals with American accents. Heideldesign, managed by lead designer and owner, Lee Heidel, has been on the leading edge of web design and development since 1998. Their web development work is featured on the newly redesigned savannahmusicfestival.org.