Viterbi Early Career Chair Lecture Series

Gérard Assayag - Apr4 Demo (OMax+DennisThurmond),
Apr5 Lecture (ComputerAssistedComposition@IRCAM),
Apr6 Workshop (OpenMusic).* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Gérard AssayagHead, Music Representations Research GroupInstitut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM)Directeur de Recherches associé, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)More details at: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco/events/200604-assayagPoster: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco/events/200604-assayag/assayag-poster3.pdf* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *TUE, APRIL 4, 12:30PM-1:30PM, MacDonald Recital Hall (formerly MUS106)DEMONSTRATION Improvising with the Computer using OMax, a Statistical Learning EnvironmentFeaturing Dennis Thurmond (+keyboard) & Gérard Assayag (+OMax)OMax, the machine improvization system by Assayag and Chemillier, plays a concert with Dennis Thurmond, director of keyboard pedagogy at the Thornton School. As the digital partner "listens" to, and learns from, the music master, a sort of clone emerges that recombines material extracted from the past, while maintaining stylistic consistency. The performer essentially plays with a distorted self in a "stylistic feed-back" loop.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *WED, APRIL 5, 2:30PM-4:00PM, GER 309GENERAL LECTUREComputer Assisted Composition at IRCAM: the OpenMusic environmentThis lecture provides a general introduction to computer assisted composition at IRCAM, with a special focus on the OpenMusic (OM) project. OM, a visual programming environment created by Assayag and Agon, was designed at IRCAM to help composers set up programs needed to prepare complex music material structured by rules of their own construction. OM provides the means to describe music processes in a formal, algorithmic, or purely graphical way, allowing composers to model music material both in- and out-of-time, and leading to a renewed concept of a "score" as a dynamic network of interrelated musical components, thus facilitating the generating and testing of new musical ideas. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *THU, APRIL 6, 2:30PM-4:00PM, GER 309WORKSHOPOpenMusic and OMax under the coverThis workshop will provide a practical introduction to OpenMusic (OM). OM may be used as a general purpose functional/object/visual programming language. At a more specialized level, a set of classes and libraries make it a very convenient environment for music composition. Objects are symbolized by icons, and most operations are performed by drag-and-drop. Numerous examples of classes implementing musical data/behaviour will be provided. These classes are associated with graphical editors, and can be readily extended by the user to meet specific needs. High-level in-time organization of the music material is proposed through the maquette concept. The session concludes with a description of OMax, the machine improvisation system built on OM and Max.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *GERARD ASSAYAG is currently head of the Music Representation Research
Group at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination
Acoustique/Musique) in Paris, and Directeur de Recherches associC) for
the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Born in 1960, he studied computer science, music and linguistics. In 1980, while still a student, he won research awards in "Art and the Computer", a national software contest launched in 1980 by the French Ministry of Research, and another one in the "Concours Micro", a contest in computing in the arts using early micro-computers. In the mid-eighties, he wrote the first IRCAM environment for
score-oriented Computer Assisted Composition. In the mid-nineties he
created, with Carlos Agon, the OpenMusic environment which is
currently used by numerous composers and musicologists around the
world, including at universities and institutions such as
Columbia, Harvard, IRCAM, Conservatoire de Paris, Technischen
Universitat Berlin, University of Wisconsin, University of Cincinnati,
and the Sibelius Academy in Finland. Gérard Assayag is currently in charge of ATIAM, an MS/PhD program in Acoustics, Signal Processing, and Computer Science Applied to Music. ATIAM is co-organized by IRCAM , Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, and Telecom Paris. His research interests center on music representation issues, and include computer language paradigms, machine learning, constraint and visual programming, computational musicology, music modeling, and computer-assisted composition. Gérard Assayag is a founding member of the AFIM (Association
Francaise d'Informatique Musicale), and member of the FWO Society on
Foundations of Music Research. He has organized the "Forum Diderot, Mathématique et Musique" for the European Mathematical Society in 1999 (published as a book by Springer Verlag 2001) as well as several
international computer music conferences, including the Sound and
Music Computing 2004 conference, which included a preceding
international workshop/concert on improvisation with the computer.
Recently, he has participated in the founding of The Journal of
Mathematics and Music project, whose affiliates come from institutions
such as IRCAM, Yale University, and the Eastman School of Music. In recent years, Gerard Assayag has carried out research and
developed software in style modeling and computer improvisation. His
recent papers with his co-authors include "Using Factor Oracles for
Machine Improvisation" in Soft Computing, "Using Machine-Learning
Methods for Musical Style Modeling" in IEEE Computer, and "Computer
Assisted Composition at IRCAM : PatchWork & OpenMusic" in the
Computer Music Journal, and "Mathematics and Music, A Diderot
Mathematical Forum" published by Springer-Verlag, Berlin.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Organizer: Elaine Chew, Viterbi Early Career, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems EngineeringSupported in part by the Viterbi Early Career Chair Funds, the Integrated Media Systems Center, and the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.For other lectures in the series, please see http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco/events/vecc0506.html

Location: See event details

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Elaine Chew