Music and HCI Network (CHIME)
Lead Research Organisation:
The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Sci, Tech, Eng & Maths (STEM)
Abstract
Music is a central part of human life, and a major contributor to the UK economy.
Computing is changing how music is created, performed, distributed, stored, navigated, adapted, appropriated, consumed and manipulated. These transformations are creating new opportunities and challenges for research in Music and Human Computer Interaction, research that covers: interactive music systems; digital and virtual musical instruments; innovative approaches to existing musical activities; and tools that make new kinds of musical activity possible. These new developments will affect performers, composers, audiences, educators, learners, musicologists, app builders, assistive technologists, businesses and charities.
UK researchers carry out internationally excellent research in this area, but many are isolated, scattered across the country, and housed in diverse disciplines, leading to missed opportunities to collaborate across disciplines with potential academic and industrial partners. The CHIME network (Computer Human Interaction and Music nEtwork) is designed to address and overcome this problem.
The CHIME network will connect academics, researchers, SMEs, charities and industrial partners in order to pool and expand ideas, drive new research, and develop collaborative projects around emerging issues in the field.
Research in music and human computer interaction is useful not only to musical activities and relevant industries, but also in finding ways to make computers easy to control and understand. Music and human computer interaction has inspired numerous innovations in human computer interaction, for example in gestural interfaces, data gloves and touch interaction.
Research in music and human computer interaction is also useful in areas where one's whole body plays a key role in the interaction. This is because many musical activities involve coordinating the whole body, in real-time, often collaborating with other people, while dealing with significant perceptual and cognitive demands. Techniques for wearable motion capture originally developed for musicians are now being used in clinical applications. For example, a system developed to help drummers co-ordinate arm and leg movement has found application in managing physical rehabilitation after stroke.
Because of this recognised synergy between music and HCI, a network that brings together researchers in music and HCI along with interested parties from industry and charities will have the capacity to create new theories, products, approaches and services not only for musicians, the music industry and audiences, but may also contribute to how we interact with computers generally.
The network will meet formally twice a year to support new collaborative ventures. Key international keynote speakers will be invited to provide insights from overseas research labs, and to engage with network activities. Training will be provided for members and new researchers in domains such as: interactive machine learning, expressive haptics complementing audio, accessible instruments, methodologies for design and evaluation in music interaction, gesture sensing, direct brain interaction, real-time biosensing, live coding and liveness, digital arts, culture 3.0 and diversity. In addition to direct training workshops, suitable topics will be explored in publicly accessible panel discussions, talks and online workshops, to be live streamed and archived.
Computing is changing how music is created, performed, distributed, stored, navigated, adapted, appropriated, consumed and manipulated. These transformations are creating new opportunities and challenges for research in Music and Human Computer Interaction, research that covers: interactive music systems; digital and virtual musical instruments; innovative approaches to existing musical activities; and tools that make new kinds of musical activity possible. These new developments will affect performers, composers, audiences, educators, learners, musicologists, app builders, assistive technologists, businesses and charities.
UK researchers carry out internationally excellent research in this area, but many are isolated, scattered across the country, and housed in diverse disciplines, leading to missed opportunities to collaborate across disciplines with potential academic and industrial partners. The CHIME network (Computer Human Interaction and Music nEtwork) is designed to address and overcome this problem.
The CHIME network will connect academics, researchers, SMEs, charities and industrial partners in order to pool and expand ideas, drive new research, and develop collaborative projects around emerging issues in the field.
Research in music and human computer interaction is useful not only to musical activities and relevant industries, but also in finding ways to make computers easy to control and understand. Music and human computer interaction has inspired numerous innovations in human computer interaction, for example in gestural interfaces, data gloves and touch interaction.
Research in music and human computer interaction is also useful in areas where one's whole body plays a key role in the interaction. This is because many musical activities involve coordinating the whole body, in real-time, often collaborating with other people, while dealing with significant perceptual and cognitive demands. Techniques for wearable motion capture originally developed for musicians are now being used in clinical applications. For example, a system developed to help drummers co-ordinate arm and leg movement has found application in managing physical rehabilitation after stroke.
Because of this recognised synergy between music and HCI, a network that brings together researchers in music and HCI along with interested parties from industry and charities will have the capacity to create new theories, products, approaches and services not only for musicians, the music industry and audiences, but may also contribute to how we interact with computers generally.
The network will meet formally twice a year to support new collaborative ventures. Key international keynote speakers will be invited to provide insights from overseas research labs, and to engage with network activities. Training will be provided for members and new researchers in domains such as: interactive machine learning, expressive haptics complementing audio, accessible instruments, methodologies for design and evaluation in music interaction, gesture sensing, direct brain interaction, real-time biosensing, live coding and liveness, digital arts, culture 3.0 and diversity. In addition to direct training workshops, suitable topics will be explored in publicly accessible panel discussions, talks and online workshops, to be live streamed and archived.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Simon Holland (Principal Investigator) | |
| Tom Mudd (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
| Description | Drake Music Scotland |
| Organisation | Drake Music |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Co-organised a Workshop on Music Interaction and Physical Disability at Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh on May 19th, 2023. Contributors included researchers, performers, composers (including musicians with severe physical disabilities), SMEs, and representatives from charities including the Amber Trust and Drake Music Scotland. CHIME proposed the workshop, organised the scientific program , recruited SMEs, found the venue, paid for attendees unable to fund themselves, paid for helpers for those with disabilities, paid artist fees to artists with disabilities |
| Collaborator Contribution | Drake recruited composers and performers with disabilities and helpers for them, organised equipment for artists with disabilities, and organised performances by musicians with disabilities. |
| Impact | Multi-Disciplinarity: Digital health, Human Computer Interaction, Music, Music Education, Music Interaction, |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Soma Interaction Design in Music collaboration with the Mixed Reality Laboratory, University of Nottingham |
| Organisation | University of Nottingham |
| Department | Mixed Reality Laboratory |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The EPSRC CHIME Network worked with researchers based at the University of Nottingham Mixed Reality Lab in organising the a three-day participative workshop on Soma Interaction Design in Music, on 6-8 Feb 2024. The CHIME network wrote the call for the event, co-facilitated the event, liaised with participants, and are co-cordinating subsequent research publications. (See also the KTH partnership described below in a subsequent Collaborations & Partnerships entry. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Mixed Reality Lab hosted and co-facilitated the workshop, and are currently co-cordinating subsequent collaborative publications. |
| Impact | The workshop itself was a multi-disciplinary outcome: The 2024 Soma Interaction Design in Music Workshop Collaborative papers are forthcoming to be submitted to relevant conferences (e.g. International Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction, and the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference), and to relevant journals. All outputs are strongly multi-disciplinary, firstly as the network itself is multi-disciplinary (Music and HCI), but also as the the collaborators have different areas of focus - CHIME is rooted in music and HCI - the Mixed Reality Lab has a long history of designing and studying artistic and entertainment applications of computing more generally: spanning theatre, music, museums, and games. The studio works with diverse technologies from immersive virtual and augmented reality through to embedded, tangible, and wearable interfaces. The key disciplines involved are: - Design and particularly soma design - HCI - Music and creative practice |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | ORGANISE MONTHLY CHIME PUBLIC SEMINARS |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | CHIME Seminars: a monthly seminar series with invited speakers presenting on a range of relevant topics. Speakers are a deliberate mix of senior researchers, newer PhD or early career researchers, and relevant SME/charity representatives. The seminars have been recorded and made available through the CHIME website as outlined in the original network proposal. We have had over 100 unique attendees at these sessions to date. Presentations are focused on research, but presenters are also systematically drawn from Charities (e.g. Drake) SMEs (e.g. Ableton) and Artists (e.g. Lia Mice). The numbers of male and female speakers are almost exactly balances. Speakers to date have been drawn from the UK, Australia, France, Austria, Iceland. Attendees are drawn from the UK, US, Canada, China, Italy, Austria, Australia, Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan and New Zealand. Audiences of between 30 and 70 members of the public typically attend any given talk and contribute to the hour-long open discussion afterwards. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://www.chime.ac.uk/events |
| Description | Organised Annual CHIME Workshop on Music and Human Computer Interaction |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The network organized the inaugural EPSRC CHIME Network on Music and Human Computer Interaction annual 1-day workshop, held in Milton Keynes at the Open University on 4 Dec 2023. The workshop was organised to maximise opportunities for all participants to have hands-on interactions with research prototypes. The workshop included 14 hands-on participative demos, 9 research talks, 3 posters, a keynote Sam Aaron, and a distinguished industry panel. There was also an afternoon specialised sub-workshop from Chris Nash on Teaching Coding through Music. Some 42 participants attended. A Proceedings in is preparation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.chime.ac.uk/chime-annual-workshop |
| Description | Organised Liberating Methods for Music Interaction |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Researchers on interfaces for music are situated in a wide range of academic disciplines, including music, computer science, human computer interaction and psychology, and often work in relative isolation from other researchers with similar interests. Historically this has sometimes led to new (and more experienced) researchers perceiving themselves to be constrained to use only methodologies well-trodden within their host discipline, even when these may be ill-matched to the real questions of interest, leading to less relevant research questions being addressed. This practical problem-solving workshop will look at how to find and adapt methodologies that fit whatever questions a researcher in music interaction may actually want to ask, and, importantly, how to justify such methodologies clearly to supervisors, students, examiners, funding bodies and referees who may be unfamiliar both with music and less well known approaches. Following brief introductory presentations from the invited speakers, each attendee who wants to will present their issue to the group as a 3-5min lightning talk. The group will then be split into subgroups to explore methodological approaches to their specific problems, either choosing a single issue from the group to discuss, or rotating to consider each member's issue in turn. Towards the end of the session, the subgroups will report back to the main group, for wider discussion and critique with the invited speakers. Finally, the invited speakers and workshop organisers will present reflections on the session. This practical workshop is aimed at NIME researchers interested in thinking more widely about methods. NIME researchers have historically drawn on a very broad range of methods from diverse fields. This can make things difficult for PhD students and early career researchers attempting to orient themselves in the field, and to find relevant and rigorous methods of inquiry relevant to their research questions. The workshop will be facilitated by a group of experienced PhD supervisors, referees and successful bid writers in areas related to NIME, including representatives from a range of host disciplines including Music, HCI, Psychology, AI and Computer Science. The three invited speakers between them have a breadth of experience across NIME and beyond into the wider domains of HCI, or practice/artistic-based research, and interaction design. Length of Workshop: Half day |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.5a661805 |
| Description | Organised Workshop on Music Interaction and Physical Disability |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Event on Music Interaction and Physical Disability May 19th, St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh. This event brought together researchers; performers and composers with disabilities, SMEs; and representatives from charities focused on music and disability including Drake Music Scotland and The Amber Trust. This meeting led to discussions to set up an international special interest group on disability and led to an ongoing partnership between Drake Music and the Music Computing Lab at Open University to develop tools for people with physical disabilities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.chime.ac.uk/music-interaction-and-disability |
| Description | Organised the Soma Interaction Design in Music Three Day Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 20 participants took part in a 3 day Soma Design workshop hosted by the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham and facilitated by researchers at KTH, Stockholm. The event was aimed in particular at doctoral researchers in music interaction who were interested in the kinds of in-depth design-informed explorations of the body, and included hands-on activities and projects alongside reflection and discussion. We had excellent feedback from the doctoral participants about how useful this should be for their own research. The group are currently working towards a series of co-authored papers and articles developing themes from the workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.chime.ac.uk/soma-design-workshop |