Affective Audio: Emotion in Audio and Digital Media
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NEWS ARCHIVE


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7th October 2016 - Presentation at Audio Mostly Conference
Earlier this month, Dr. Stuart Cunningham and Dr. Jon Weinel attended the Audio Mostly 2016 conference, which this year was held in Norrköping, Sweden between the 4th and 6th October. The theme of this year's conference was "Multi-sensory Interaction Design" and encouraged submission analysing the use of sound and emotion alongside other senses.. In a fitting response to this, Stuart and Jon presented their paper, entitled "The Sound of the Smell (and taste) of my Shoes too: Mapping the Senses using Emotion as a Medium", which discusses how emotion could be used as a medium for cross-modal representations; presents application scenarios for this theory in computer games, virtual environments, and assistive technologies; and outlines empirical work to be pursued in future research in the field.


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12th August 2016 - Game Audio Evaluation Chapter in New Book
Affective Audio researchers welcomed the release of the new book "Games User Research: A Case Study Approach", which features a chapter entitled "In-Game Intoxication: Demonstrating the Evaluation of the Audio Experience of Games with a Focus on Altered States of Consciousness" authored by Dr. Stuart Cunningham, Dr. Jonathan Weinel and Prof. Richard Picking. The chapter details a study undertaken using the repertory grid approach to develop scales for user evaluation of game sound. The book, edited by Dr. Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz of Algoma University, Canada is published by CRC Press / Taylor & Francis.


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14th July 2016 - Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA London 2016) Conference
PhD student Darryl Griffiths recently represented the Affective Audio group at the EVA 2016 conference, which took place in London between the 11th and 13th July 2016. Darryl gave a demo of his recent research and development work, entitled "An Interactive Music Playlist Generator that Responds to User Emotion and Context", which was co-authored by Dr. Stuart Cunningham and Dr. Jon Weinel. The demo was well-received by conference delegates and featured an interesting, audio rich, exploration of the emotional classification of music of various genres.


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14th June 2016 - ICSRiM Student Conference on Music, Multimedia and Electronics (iscMME 2016)
Affective Audio research students Steffan Owens and Steve Nicholls, accompanied by supervisor Dr. Stuart Cunningham, attended and delivered presentations at the ICSRiM Student Conference on Music, Multimedia and Electronics (iscMME 2016), which was held at the University of Leeds. The one day student conference was focused upon music-related research projects that fuse together science and arts. The programme for the conference featured a range of talks, live coding workshops, and musical performances from students and researchers from around the UK.

Steffan's presentation was entitled "Designing a Programme of Study to Improve Timekeeping in Music" and included an update on current progress so far in his research degree studies along with results from early experiments. Similarly, Steve gave a presentation on "An Approach to Musical Collaboration using Artificial Intelligence", which provided background and context to his own work along with plans for new research activities.


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7th June 2016 - Electroacoustic Performance at New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival
As part of the 2016 New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), Dr. Stuart Cunningham had his work, entitled "Noise without Noise" performed at a concert held on the evening of 7th June 2016 at the National Sawdust arts centre in Brooklyn, NY, USA.

The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival is an annual, multi-day festival featuring works submitted by emerging and established composers, performers, and sound artists from all over the world. This is the second year that Dr. Cunningham's work has been featured at the festival, following on from the performance of his piece "LSD No. 2", which was showcased at the 2015 festival.


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13th May 2016 - Presentation at Stanley Kubrik: A Retrospective, Leicester, UK
Immersive video and virtual reality researcher, Steve Davies, recently presented a paper at the Stanley Kubrik: A Retrospective conference, held at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. This was an event inviting interdisciplinary research articles on the work of late auteur Stanley Kubrik. Steve's presentation, entitled 'Towards HAL-ography' explored the influence and impact of the design of the HAL9000 computer in Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The spherical design of HAL's lens was inspired by recorders from the Gemini spacecraft. Though non typical in cinematic optics, the fisheye lenses used for HAL's POV are rapidly being adopted in Virtual and Augmented Reality filmmaking. Steve's presentation explored the influence and impact of this design and the practicalities and benefits of the technology across the sci-fi cannon and beyond.


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23rd March 2016 - Affective Audio Researchers visit Aalborg University, Denmark
Dr. Stuart Cunningham and Prof. Rich Picking g undertook an Erasmsus+ exchange visit to Aalborg University in Denmark, where they were based in the newly developed "Musikkens Hus". During their time, Stuart and Rich delivered a range of teaching sessions that related to the use of technology in music production and evaluation scenarios, whilst participating in supervision meetings of doctoral students at Aalborg University. As part of the visit, the team delivered a public lecture entitled "Health and Wellbeing: Music, sound and technology research at Glyndwr University”, which was well-received and led to some fruitful discussions. Stuart and Rich also found time to discuss opportunities for further research collaboration with colleagues at Aalborg, to build upon their flourishing partnership.


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1st December 2015 - New Publication in Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
Appearing in the November 2015 edition of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (Vol. 63, No. 11) is an article authored by Dr. Iain McGregor (Edinburgh Napier University) and Dr. Stuart Cunningham. The work entitled 'Comparative Evaluation of Radio and Audio Logo Sound Designs' and is centered around the use of personal constructs, via the repertory grid method, to investigate the potential differences between the intentions of the sound designer and their listeners.


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19th June 2015 - New Publication in Sonic Ideas / Ideas Sonicas
We are pleased to announce that our article entitled 'EEG as a Controller for Psychedelic Visual Music in an Immersive Dome Environment' appears in Vol 7 No. 14 of Sonic Ideas / Ideas Sonicas, which is published by the the Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts (CMMAS).

The article was authored by Dr. Jonathan Weinel, Dr. Stuart Cunningham, Nathan Roberts, Shaun Roberts, and Darryl Griffiths and is based upon the work carried out as part of the Psych Dome project. The work deals with aspects of Altered States of Consciousness and the tools and techniques by which they might be represented in visual music, in an immersive environment. The longterm goal of research in this area is to devise machines that are capable of transferring the sounds and visuals of dreams and hallucinations from the human brain into digital technologies.


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1st May 2015 - Visitors from Aalborg University (Denmark) and NoiseFloor Festival
From 27th April to 1st May, the Affective Audio team were joined by visiting researcher Hans-Peter
Gasselseder, from Aalborg University in Denmark. Hans-Peter delivered a range of talks and workshops with students here in Wrexham based around his research area of emotion and psychology in computer game environments. During his visit, Hans-Peter also met a range of staff and students at Glyndwr University to complement, and build upon, the existing collaboration between the two Universities.

During the week, Hans-Peter joined Dr. Jon Weinel, Dr. Stuart Cunningham, and PhD student Darryl Griffiths, in attending the NoiseFloor Festival at Staffordshire University, UK. As part of the Festival, Jon treated the audience to an exceptionally well-received performance of his recent composition
Cenote Sagrado.



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20th March 2015 - Optical Research at the Axis Arts Centre and Performances at iFIMPaC Festival
Between 9th - 20th March, Dr. Jon Weinel curated an exhibition of the ‘Optical Research’ collection of visual music and related work at the Axis Arts Centre in Crewe (MMU Cheshire), and on the 18th gave a gallery talk about the exhibition in the context of my work in psychedelic/cyber-culture.  This was included as part of MMU Cheshire’s ‘Curating Knowledge’ series of exhibitions and gallery talks.

Also in the last week, the Affective Audio team attended the iFIMPaC Festival in Leeds, UK between 12th and 13th March, where Jon premièred his works:
Flood City, Cenote Zaci and Cenote Sagrad.
Flood City was featured in an electroacoustic diffusion concert on the Thursday, and the two audio-visual pieces were performed at the late night concert held at Belgrave Music Hall on Friday 13th March, in support of the incredible Radioland: Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity Revisited concert.



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23rd February 2015 - ConCATenative Synthesis at Salford Sonic Fusion Festival
Dr. Stuart Cunningham Dr. Jonathan Weinel and PhD student Darryl Griffiths were invited to present to delegates at the Salford Sonic Fusion Festival, which took place between Thursday 19th and Sunday 22nd February at MediaCity UK. Dr. Cunningham gave the invited presentation, entitled “Putting the Cat back in Concatenative Synthesis” as part of the unique Zoomusicology and Bio-acoustics Symposium. The symposium featured researchers, arts practitioners, and veterinary experts from around the world and has sparked the possibility of future collaborative projects in this field.


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13th February 2015 - New Book Published on Context Aware Computing
Dr. Jonathan Weinel, Dr. Stuart Cunningham and Dr. Richard Picking have two chapters in a newly published book 'Recent Advances in Ambient Intelligence and Context-Aware Computing'.  The chapters both discuss work related to the application of biofeedback, affective computing and immersive technologies within the exciting field of real-time computer audio and visualisations.  The work is another example of the high-quality, peer-reviewed research outputs produced by the team, following on from the success of their recent MIT publication.


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19 December 2014 - 'Affective Audio' Journal Article Published by MIT
Jonathan Weinel, Stuart Cunningham, Darryl Griffiths, Shaun Roberts and Rich Picking have an article in the peer-reviewed academic journal: Leonardo Music Journal, published by MIT Press.  The article 'Affective Audio' discusses recent highly innovative research carried out by the team that explores the intersection between cutting-edge computing technologies, music and audio technology.  The article focuses particularly on the work of current PhD student Darryl Griffiths, which explores the use of sensor technologies to recognise human context, in order to improve the selections made by musical playlists. 


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10 October 2014 - Audio Mostly 2014, Aalborg, Denmark
Dr. Stuart Cunningham and Dr. Jonathan Weinel visited Aalborg University in Denmark, where strong links are held with the Music and Sound Knowledge Group. Over the course of the week Stuart and Jon ran several lectures and workshops with undergraduate and postgraduate students at Aalborg University on topics such as: Affective Audio; Context-Aware Technologies; the Repertory Grid Research Method; and Subjective and Objective Audio Evaluation, as well as jointly supervising PhD students with Professor Mark Grimshaw, the Obel Professor of Music at Aalborg University.

During the week, Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Weinel presented papers at the 9th Audio Mostly Conference, which took place at the recently opened Musikkens Hus in Aalborg. Their presentations: Sound Through The Rabbit Hole: Sound Design Based On Reports of Auditory Hallucination and ACERemix: A Tool for Glitch Music Remix Production and Performance; were extremely well received and the articles themselves are available via the ACM Digital Library. Both articles were produced in collaboration with Stuart and Jon's PhD student, Darryl Griffiths. To finish off their busy week, Jon and Stuart were invited to participate as members of the PhD Symposium Panel, providing the next generation of researchers with new ideas and perspectives on their future work.


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26 September 2014 - ICMC 2014, Athens, Greece
Dr. Jonathan Weinel from the University Research Centre: Creative and Applied Research for the Digital Society (CARDS) visited the 40th International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Athens, Greece, to present CARDS research outputs. ICMC features research on innovative tools for the purpose of music creation  as well, on the results of application of these tools in perception and performability.  These consisted of a conference paper co-authored with Dr. Stuart Cunningham and PhD student Darryl Griffiths, entitled: 'Easter Eggs: Hidden Tracks and Messages in Musical Mediums', and the screening of a visual music film: 'Mezcal Animations' by Weinel.  These were well received, and the paper was included in the published proceedings of the conference (available in print and online).


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9 July 2014 - EVA 2014, London, UK
Dr. Jonathan Weinel, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, presented a paper at the British Computer Society (BCS) conference for Electronic Visualisations and the Arts - 'EVA London 2014'.  His lively demonstration featured a real-time computer visualisation with sound controlled by a brain-wave device, which enabled colourful spiral pattern and sounds to be affected by the brain-wave patterns of willing participants. 

The research was featured in the conference proceedings available in print and online (http://ewic.bcs.org/category/18205), and represents another high-quality research output from Glyndŵr's CARDS research unit, exploring cutting edge uses of digital technology for creative applications.
(photo: Kia Ng)


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16 May 2014 - Two New Journal Articles
Dr. Jon Weinel and Dr. Stuart Cunningham have had two peer-reviewed International Journal articles published in Mexico and Canada. Their work in the domain of digital music and art is a perfect example of the interdisciplinary ethos of the Research Centre and the increasing pervasiveness of digital technologies in society:

Weinel, J.  2014.  ’Shamanic Diffusions: a technoshamanic philosophy of electroacoustic music’.  Sonic Ideas/Ideas Sonicas 6(12). 
Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts (CMMAS).Sonic Ideas/Ideas Sonicas is a dual language journal published by the Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts (CMMAS), which addresses a variety of issues related to computer music and sonic arts.  This particular edition edited by Luc Dellanoy, focuses on music and philosophy.  Weinel's article is a philosophical discussion which forms part of his research regarding psychedelic music and computer artworks.

Weinel, J.  Cunningham, S.  2014.  ’Digitized Direct Animation: Creating Materials for Electroacoustic Visual Music Using 8mm Film’.  eContact! 15(4).  Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC).
This article discusses a technique for creating 'visual music' (a form of video art), by using 8mm cine film in combination with modern digital technologies.  The article deals with both technical and artistic considerations for creating a visual music composition: Mezcal Animations.  Mezcal Animations has been performed internationally at: Last Friday Listening Room (University of California San Diego), Seeing Sound 2013 (Bath Spa University), Sweet Thunder Festival (San Francisco), and will be performed next month at Sound Sight Space and Play 2014 (DeMontfort University).  The associated article is featured in a special edition of the Canadian journal eContact!, which looks at video music as an emerging art form.  

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