Thank you to all of you who visited Goldsmiths today to attend our open day. Prof. Zimmer (Head of Department) and the team have really enjoyed chatting to you all about our programmes and the department here at Goldsmiths.
I know we spoke to one or two of you about Joe Boston’s Processing tutorial videos. You can see more of Joe’s videos here but here’s one to be going on with 🙂
Look at this piece in MusicWeek about ‘bronze format’, a new music format aimed at composers and producers and devised by a research team led by Computing’s Mick Grierson in collaboration with musician Gwilym Gold.
I asked Mick to tell us a bit more about BRONZE and how the project came into being:
“In Goldsmiths Computing Department, our Embodied Audiovisual Interaction Group (EAVI) features a number of staff and students with backgrounds in professional electronic and computer music. As a result of my work in these areas, I was approached by Gwilym Gold and Lexx to develop an idea called ‘bronze format’. It’s not really similar to generative music approaches that have been tried before by the likes of Brian Eno, and other computer music researchers. Instead, it’s been designed as a commercial music format, and so can’t be a software program that creates random mixes songs – it’s not at all random, as this isn’t really what the musicians and producers we work with want.
“It’s aimed at producers and composers who want to make any kind of music, including very organised, highly structured music, that is at a professional level equal to that which you can achieve with professional authoring tools, but that is capable of being different each time, whilst still sounding like the same track – retaining the quality and balance of the original mixes, and the words / music in all the right places. These were the challenges we faced. I led the team from Goldsmiths as part of my Sound, Image and Brain project (funded by the AHRC). Chris Kiefer, my research assistant, and Parag Mital, a PhD student in Arts and Computational technology worked on the generative audio engine. In addition, Dan Jones, a PhD student in Computing worked on some of the iPhone audio elements.”
If you haven’t already read it, take a look at the MusicWeek article here.
Director of Creative Computing Dr Mick Grierson has appeared on the Radio 4 documentary, “A Sound British Adventure”, talking about the ‘Secret History of British Electronic Music’. He discusses the pioneering work of Daphne Oram, and the relationship between technology and creativity in electronic music alongside key historical figures in the field including synthesiser pioneer Peter Zinnovieff (whose machines were used by Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones), and Brian Hodgson, creator of the Dr. Who Tardis sound effect.
You can listen to the program here until the 21st of August 2012
This blog is for anyone thinking about joining MSc Computer Games and Entertainment and wants some insight into what they’re jumping into, some helpful resources, some of the mistakes I made and how you can avoid them and finally (if like me) you’re new to programming: how you can catch up and code like the best of them.
But first, introductions: Hello everyone, my name is Max Bye and I’m an alcoholic.
Eyes below for a picture.
Our lecturers seem to get everywhere! This week’s media star is Dan McQuillan whose article in The Guardian Online is causing a bit of a stir.
So, could prototyping be the new policy?
When it comes to social innovation projects, argues Dan, the new technologies available to us enable us to prototype solutions in less time than it would take us to fill in a funding application (sounds a lot more interesting too!).
Dan knows what he’s talking about. In 2008 he co-founded Social Innovation Camp, which brings together ideas, people and digital tools to build web-based solutions to social problems in just 48 hours. Successful projects that started at Social Innovation Camp include Enabled by Design, The Good Gym and MyPolice. Dan’s current action-research includes leading Social Innovation Camps in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
So if you haven’t read the article yet, clickity click. We’ll still be here when you get back.
It’s a beautiful sunny day outside today and we hope you are all out enjoying yourselves or revising your socks off but perhaps what you really feel like doing on a fine Friday morning is watching a video about CSS by our very own Dr Danicic? Well, you never know, so here you are:
On Thursday 26 April 2012, the Department of Computing hosted the launch of CAST (Centre for Creative and Social Media).
The event was a huge success and a highly enjoyable evening. Our compere for the evening was Mark Grist, former MA Creative and Life Writing student, and Edinburgh Fringe Slam champion 2010, Mark Grist (markgrist.com), who has just completed two national tours with his performance poetry. His double act, Dead Poets, seeks to challenge preconceptions of poetry and hip hop, and was recently featured on BBC 6 Music with Steve Merchant. Recently, a video of Mark’s rap battle with Blizzard went viral which has earned him a huge amount of media attention with the Independent on Sunday calling him a ‘Face to Watch’.
Our brilliant Pecha Kucha speakers included:
Our speakers were challenged to brevity and impact: 6 minutes and 40 seconds to explore innovation in their field. They did an absolutely fantastic job and we are really grateful to them for their involvement.
Other stars of the evening were Patrick Tresset and Paul the Robot, Annette Walker and her tap-dancing, and Bruno Zamborlin’s incredible Mogees installation which turned the railings on the venue’s staircase into musical instruments.
About CAST
This year, students in CAST have enjoyed Innovation Internships at the Wall Street Journal, Telegraph Media Group, Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), Livestation, Runnymede Trust, and Headshift.
CAST programmes offer interdisciplinary teaching across computing and professional disciplines with students learning applied computing and research methods to complement the fundamentals of journalism, sociology and cultural studies.
CAST is currently accepting applications for the 2012/13 academic year on the following programmes:
– MA/MSc Digital Journalism
– MA/MSc Digital Sociology
– MA/MSc Creating Social Media