Cyborg Soloists: Advancing Interdisciplinary Music in the Post-Internet Age Through New Musician-Technology Interactions.
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal Holloway University of London
Department Name: Music
Abstract
The project will achieve these objectives by addressing the following research questions:
- How can Interdisciplinary Music be advanced beyond its current practice by collaborating with leading technological
innovators?
- How can recent developments in electronics instruments, motion sensors, AI, virtual reality, web design and interactive animation and other technological innovations be used by creative musicians in new ways to create ambitious new work?
- How can musicians utilise specialist technological expertise in achieving more ambitious uses of film, analogue synthesisers and other existing technologies?
- Can these technological innovations be applied to other arts and other industries?
Cyborg Soloists will address these questions by creating a Centre for R&D in Interdisciplinary Music at Royal Holloway. The
Centre will combine the resources of the Music, Media Arts, Drama, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science
departments. Internationally renowned musicians and technological innovators will be invited to create work that expands
the field of interdisciplinary music that will then be toured to major international festivals and venues. The hub will host
residencies for visiting artists, giving these bespoke teams the time and resources to tackle the technical and artistic
challenges limiting the expansion of the field. The applicant will lead the projects, mentor the collaborators, and be one of
the primary artists in most of the projects. Ethnographic documentation of the projects will be used to research the creative
processes leading to new insights into musician-technology interactions. And the new and adapted technologies will have
wide applications across musical genres, other performing arts, as well as having wider applications in human-computer
interactions.
By creating research teams between musicians and technological innovators, a range of ambitious, innovative new projects
will be explored, focused on the following topic areas:
Extending the Body
Creating cyborg musicians through the use of motion sensors, 3D motion capture, and brainwave scanning tech.
Remaking the Old
Repurposed analogue technologies, expanding the possibilities of analogue synthesisers, and of common analogue
technologies such as tape machines and turntables
Film-Body interaction
Compositions featuring live video interaction with the performer, using new films featuring performers and composers, and
re-editing existing films
Hyperinstruments
Creating new musical instruments that extend existing ones with electronics. These would range from expansions of new
digital instruments (such as Air Sticks), new surface-based sensors, instruments featuring in-built sensors, and new
acoustic instruments using 3D-printing technology
AI and new types of interaction with computers
Artificial Intelligence to develop computerised co-performers (acting as chamber musicians) and create new types of visual
interaction.
Music with Virtual Reality
Virtual reality to create musical works that expand on RHUL's StoryFutures project and Jonathan Packam's VR scores.
Music using the Internet and Mobile Technologies
Exploring the use of mobile phones for audience interaction, as well as website-based crowdsourced compositions
Hybrid Installation Works
Long form performances and works created for art spaces, facilitating new types of audience interaction.
Staged Hybrid Works
Inviting directors and theatre practitioners to create major works with composers and performers, featuring the
technological innovations developed.
Research Outputs from the project will including the 25 compositions, at least 10 new technological innovations developed with industry partners, performance tours by the applicant and invited collaborators, 12 journal articles, 12 conference papers, new software and hardware, 2 conferences, 2 festivals, and an edited book
about new directions in interdisciplinary music.
- How can Interdisciplinary Music be advanced beyond its current practice by collaborating with leading technological
innovators?
- How can recent developments in electronics instruments, motion sensors, AI, virtual reality, web design and interactive animation and other technological innovations be used by creative musicians in new ways to create ambitious new work?
- How can musicians utilise specialist technological expertise in achieving more ambitious uses of film, analogue synthesisers and other existing technologies?
- Can these technological innovations be applied to other arts and other industries?
Cyborg Soloists will address these questions by creating a Centre for R&D in Interdisciplinary Music at Royal Holloway. The
Centre will combine the resources of the Music, Media Arts, Drama, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science
departments. Internationally renowned musicians and technological innovators will be invited to create work that expands
the field of interdisciplinary music that will then be toured to major international festivals and venues. The hub will host
residencies for visiting artists, giving these bespoke teams the time and resources to tackle the technical and artistic
challenges limiting the expansion of the field. The applicant will lead the projects, mentor the collaborators, and be one of
the primary artists in most of the projects. Ethnographic documentation of the projects will be used to research the creative
processes leading to new insights into musician-technology interactions. And the new and adapted technologies will have
wide applications across musical genres, other performing arts, as well as having wider applications in human-computer
interactions.
By creating research teams between musicians and technological innovators, a range of ambitious, innovative new projects
will be explored, focused on the following topic areas:
Extending the Body
Creating cyborg musicians through the use of motion sensors, 3D motion capture, and brainwave scanning tech.
Remaking the Old
Repurposed analogue technologies, expanding the possibilities of analogue synthesisers, and of common analogue
technologies such as tape machines and turntables
Film-Body interaction
Compositions featuring live video interaction with the performer, using new films featuring performers and composers, and
re-editing existing films
Hyperinstruments
Creating new musical instruments that extend existing ones with electronics. These would range from expansions of new
digital instruments (such as Air Sticks), new surface-based sensors, instruments featuring in-built sensors, and new
acoustic instruments using 3D-printing technology
AI and new types of interaction with computers
Artificial Intelligence to develop computerised co-performers (acting as chamber musicians) and create new types of visual
interaction.
Music with Virtual Reality
Virtual reality to create musical works that expand on RHUL's StoryFutures project and Jonathan Packam's VR scores.
Music using the Internet and Mobile Technologies
Exploring the use of mobile phones for audience interaction, as well as website-based crowdsourced compositions
Hybrid Installation Works
Long form performances and works created for art spaces, facilitating new types of audience interaction.
Staged Hybrid Works
Inviting directors and theatre practitioners to create major works with composers and performers, featuring the
technological innovations developed.
Research Outputs from the project will including the 25 compositions, at least 10 new technological innovations developed with industry partners, performance tours by the applicant and invited collaborators, 12 journal articles, 12 conference papers, new software and hardware, 2 conferences, 2 festivals, and an edited book
about new directions in interdisciplinary music.
Planned Impact
The music industry currently contributes £4.5 billion per annum to the UK economy, with creative and technical innovation crucial to the UK's international standing. With changes to immigration (including Brexit) encouraging a drain of talent to other countries in Europe, the US, Canada, and Australasia, it is a particularly crucial time for investment in musical innovation, both in new approaches to musical creativity, and new music-related technologies, to maintain this international competitiveness. In addition, the Digital Economy has been identified by UKRI as a key theme, "supporting research to rapidly realise the transformational impact of digital technologies on aspects of community life, cultural experiences, future society, and the economy" with content creation and consumption as a key component. The project addresses this theme by exploring many different uses of digital technologies in the performing arts, with applications to the UK's cultural life, as well as to the broader creative industries, and to medical and therapeutic uses.
This project's artistic and technological innovations will contribute to the music industry and the Digital Economy. New approaches to interdisciplinary music and the technologies used, will influence the cross-media innovations of musicians across the industry, from traditional orchestras using multimedia to develop new types of interaction with audiences to pop, electronic dance and hip hop musicians who will have new tools for integrating their bodies into musical creation and interaction, to new online VR platforms at film festivals, looking to explore immersive audio-visual experiences for audiences. These innovations will reach a wide variety of audiences through being featured in tours to multiple international music festivals, professional concert films released online, 2 major festivals at RHUL, media articles and a documentary about the works.
The technological innovations, including new extensions to instruments, sensors, and software for new types of audio-visual interaction, will have applications to artists across the sector, from musicians performing popular electronic dance music, to choreographers and theatre directors exploring connections between movement and media interaction. The will also have wider applications to music education (through new motion-based interaction and creativity tools) and to medical and therapeutic applications from motion-based music-therapy to greater accessibility to a variety of apps using surface-based sensors. To advance the research and impact aims, the industry partners will need to demonstrate new developments and applications as a result of the collaborations, as a condition of their participation.
This project's artistic and technological innovations will contribute to the music industry and the Digital Economy. New approaches to interdisciplinary music and the technologies used, will influence the cross-media innovations of musicians across the industry, from traditional orchestras using multimedia to develop new types of interaction with audiences to pop, electronic dance and hip hop musicians who will have new tools for integrating their bodies into musical creation and interaction, to new online VR platforms at film festivals, looking to explore immersive audio-visual experiences for audiences. These innovations will reach a wide variety of audiences through being featured in tours to multiple international music festivals, professional concert films released online, 2 major festivals at RHUL, media articles and a documentary about the works.
The technological innovations, including new extensions to instruments, sensors, and software for new types of audio-visual interaction, will have applications to artists across the sector, from musicians performing popular electronic dance music, to choreographers and theatre directors exploring connections between movement and media interaction. The will also have wider applications to music education (through new motion-based interaction and creativity tools) and to medical and therapeutic applications from motion-based music-therapy to greater accessibility to a variety of apps using surface-based sensors. To advance the research and impact aims, the industry partners will need to demonstrate new developments and applications as a result of the collaborations, as a condition of their participation.
Publications
Dyer M
(2023)
The Role of Smart, Haptic Wearables in the Performance of Mensura
in Contemporary Music Review
Dyer M
(2023)
The Performer as Posthuman Assemblage: Performer-Machine Interactions in Contemporary Music
in Contemporary Music Review
Dyer M
(2023)
In Conversation with Jennifer Walshe: Performing with Intelligent Machines
in Contemporary Music Review
Dyer M
(2022)
Neural Synthesis as a Methodology for Art-Anthropology in Contemporary Music
in Organised Sound
Dyer M
(2023)
Scribe: Machine Learning, Parafiction and the Perversion of Practice
in Leonardo
| Title | Aeolian Fantasy by Ben Jameson and Harry Matthews (with Zubin Kanga and Mark Dyer) |
| Description | This is one of the early career artist collaborations (from winners of our Call for Proposals) being mentored by Zubin Kanga and Mark Dyer. The new work features software from industry partner, Vochlea. They create a digital aeolian harp as they feed Vochlea's audio-to-MIDI software Dubler 2 with prerecorded and live wind sounds. Beautiful and uncanny microtonal harmonies fill the space from small speakers, augmented by live performance on acoustic guitar and synthesisers. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The project demonstrates how early career artists can be mentored and trained in the use of innovative software, and their new work also demonstrates new uses of the Dubler 2 software (using field recordings) outside of its usual use case which will be fed back to the industry partner. On the impact on his practice, Jameson writes: "In most of my previous projects, I have come at the technology with a pre-conceived idea of what I wanted it to do, selecting equipment and software that I felt would help me fulfil my existing creative ideas. In the project for Cyborg Soloists, the software and its capabilities were chosen for us (although we did have the option to apply to work with either of two different software partners), and the compositional ideas followed our experimentation with the software, inverting the relationship I usually have with technology. This definitely led me to write music that I would not have thought of without the stimulus of the software and its capabilities. For example, our use of desk fans and microphones as musical instruments and field recordings to generate harmonies through Dubler 2 embraced aleatoric elements in a way that my music had not done before. Even within the more conventionally notated instrumental parts, the use of tunings was influenced by the capabilities of the software, and the 'random' pitch outputs it produced." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/f52e8a8368cb5c926042 |
| Title | Album on October House Recordings - In Den Träumen |
| Description | Album of works co-created by Claudia Molitor and Zubin Kanga, performed by Zubin Kanga on October House recordings. All works feature piano and electronics, exploring soundscapes and field recordings alongside non-standard notation. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Launch event attended by 120. |
| URL | https://octoberhouserecords.co.uk/albums/zubin-kanga-in-den-traumen-preview/ |
| Title | Answer Machine Tape 1987, co-created by Philip Venables, Ted Huffman and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This is a major (50-minute) full-concert work that utilises an experimental KeyScanner, created by the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, to turn the piano into a hybrid instrument. This MIDI-scanner sits above the keys, using optical scanning to convert the velocities to MIDI data. This data was then translated to print out text onto the screen, like a typewriter. The work explores the 1980s AIDS crisis through a turbulent period in the life of New York artist David Wojnarowicz leading up to the death of his close friend, fellow artist, and former lover Peter Hujar. Using the KeyScanner to transcribe messages from Wojnarowicz's answering machine tape, in a work that reflects on this devastating period in queer history. This was premiered at Time of Music Festival (Finland) was performed at November Music (Netherlands), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Paris Autumn Festival in Autumn 2022. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work was performed to audiences totalling over 1000 across 4 countries. It is the first significant work using the KeyScanner, demonstrating its viability, and impacting on the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, who altered their prototype in response to my feedback to them. It is one of few concert works that discusses the AIDS crisis and its effect on the arts. On the impact on his practice, the composer writes: "This project was a bit of a detour from my normal practice (as in I don't really have a broader practice that is tech-focussed), so it has made me think about projects I could do in the future of a similar format." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/65163c2a2475e7047b60 |
| Title | Bad Infinity by Ben Nobuto and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This work shows the integration of voice, TouchKeys instrument and a sampler keyboard to create a coherent rhythmic whole. It is influenced by online culture and in particular gifs. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates a novel use of TouchKeys in combination with the voice to create a combined 'cyborg' instrument. It will be premiered in April 2023, with further impacts expected after this. On the impact on his practice, Nobuto writes: "My piece for Zubin was called 'Bad Infinity' and incorporated TouchKeys (motion-sensitive keyboard), live speech, and MIDI keyboards triggering samples. Prior to this collaboration I had not used technology in my music except for simple setups involving fixed media and click tracks, so I found the collaboration exciting and thought-provoking. I had been thinking about speech patterns or speech melodies in music for a while and TouchKeys allowed me to explore that interest in a much deeper way than before, using touch-sensitive finger movements to mimic the pianist's vocal cadence and inflections. I also experimented in breaking up the electronics into individual fragments that the pianist could sample themselves via MIDI keyboard, to allow for more flexibility in performance. Initially, getting to know the technology felt like a daunting process, but overall I was pleased with the result and it has encouraged me to embrace newer, unfamiliar elements in my broader practice. In my music, I like combining human sounds with electronic sounds, finding a highly precise synthesis or hybrid amalgamation of both, in a way that feels uncanny or unhuman/post-human. In the past, I have explored this by incorporating fixed media in various solo or ensemble settings (e.g. string quartet + fixed media), but the Cyborg Soloists collaboration offered a new way of thinking about this dynamic. In 'Bad Infinity' the performer speaks and simultaneously plays on keyboard their speech melody (or something close to it) using TouchKeys. The idea was to create this intertwined relationship between performer and technology, as if the pianist is literally speaking through the keyboard, or as if by playing the notes the performer is modulating their voice in real time. It was an interesting way of closing what I see as a gap or distance between performer and fixed media in previous pieces I have written, a way of merging both entities into one. Obviously there are many ways to realise this hybrid 'human/electronic' sound and 'Bad Infinity' is a small and simple blueprint of one possible route, but writing the piece (and having access to the technology) opened up a way of thinking about the problem that felt exciting and new to me. This collaboration will definitely be a starting point for developing these ideas further; it's encouraged me to be more adventurous with the technology I use and the way I use it. In future, I'd like to find a way to merge various technologies to create a fully immersive, large-scale performance that involves live amplified instruments, electronics, video, and lighting. I'm interested in finding ways to precisely align lots of events simultaneously (lights, sound, image) and to make this as easy and intuitive for performers as possible. While I'm still far from realising this kind of event, the Cyborg Soloists collaboration has given me some new perspectives by introducing me to lots of potentially useful technology and all the various ways it can be used in a performance, and as such I feel more confident in making it happen." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/38bd318109fad668b1cb |
| Title | Car-Pig by Alex Paxton and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This is a virtuosic 9-minute work, demonstrating new approaches to the use of sampler keyboards. It layers dozens of sounds (from synths, to animal noises, to choirs, to bagpipes) in dense samples of different lengths, across two sampler keyboards as well as a LUMI keyboard (allowing for pitching bending of the samples). |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work has been recorded for a commercial release on the nonclassical label and will be launched in April 2023. Further impacts are expected from the work after this time. On the impacts on his practice, Paxton writes: "It expanded my creative ability to think about technology in new ways. The ground discovered in this collaboration has strongly influenced the pieces i have written since." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/43b204a642ed667df63d |
| Title | Concert film of A meditation on unnatural corporeality in three tableaux by Lola de la Mata and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of A meditation on unnatural corporeality in three tableaux by Lola de la Mata and Zubin Kanga Performed by Zubin Kanga, with Antonio Branco and Ricardo T Recorded live at Submerge Festival, Manchester (RNCM), 18 March 2022 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The video is being used to pitch the project to festivals and venues around the UK. |
| URL | https://youtu.be/UCgznNjj_9Y |
| Title | Concert film of Answer Machine Tape 1987, co-created by Philip Venables, Ted Huffman and Zubin Kanga (Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival) |
| Description | Concert film of Answer Machine Tape 1987, co-created by Philip Venables, Ted Huffman and Zubin Kanga from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Recorded live at Bates Mill, 22 November 2022 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 339 views on YouTube. Video led to a nomination of the work for Best Small Chamber Composition at the Classical Ivors Awards. |
| URL | https://youtu.be/JfkFryMni9c?si=3l26il_dhgxEU-pD |
| Title | Concert film of Answer Machine Tape 1987, co-created by Philip Venables, Ted Huffman and Zubin Kanga (Paris Autumn Festival) |
| Description | Concert film of Answer Machine Tape 1987, co-created by Philip Venables, Ted Huffman and Zubin Kanga. Recorded live at Paris Autumn Festival, 5 December 2022 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 283 views on YouTube |
| URL | https://youtu.be/ZBLcKK1IJPY?si=pYGuJ34K-Uzxic7l |
| Title | Concert film of Bad Infinity by Ben Nobuto and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of Bad Infinity by Ben Nobuto and Zubin Kanga Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix London Presented by nonclassical |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 138 views on YouTube |
| URL | https://youtu.be/BjJLgwX2cIk?si=kJjO-9gmt7kMwsrP |
| Title | Concert film of Escape TERF Island - CHAINES and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of Escape TERF Island - performed by Zubin Kanga and co-created by CHAINES and Zubin Kanga Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix London Presented by nonclassical 21 April 2023 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 72 views on YouTube |
| URL | https://youtu.be/MY_L1pY6pRA?si=t_bA_UYtSANct-xd |
| Title | Concert film of Hypnagogia (after Bach) |
| Description | Hypnagogia (after Bach) by Zubin Kanga Performed by Zubin Kanga Recorded live at Submerge Festival, RNCM (Manchester), 18 March 2022 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The video has received 120 views online |
| URL | https://youtu.be/3lmGtmoULLY |
| Title | Concert film of I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles), co-created by Nwando Ebizie and Zubin Kanga. Performed by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles), co-created by Nwando Ebizie and Zubin Kanga. Utilises the use of AI-generated speech, and new approaches to analogue synthesizers. Performed by Zubin Kanga (stage piano, Moog Subsequent 37 synth, electronics) Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix, London. Presented by Nonclassical 21 April 2023 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 72 people have viewed the video online. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUAs7B5WpJc |
| Title | Concert film of Interiterations, co-created by Amble Skuse and Zubin Kanga. Performed by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix, London. Featuring the MiMU sensor gloves, controlling the sound of the keyboards based on the location and angles of the hands. Performed by Zubin Kanga Presented by Nonclassical 21 April 2023 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 106 people have viewed the film online. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lXm24PM3y0 |
| Title | Concert film of Metamemory, composed by Zubin Kanga. Performed by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of Metamemory, composed by Zubin Kanga. Using AI-generated sounds, using a neural network created in collaboration with the PRiSM research centre at the Royal Northern College of Music. Performed by Zubin Kanga Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix, London. Presented by Nonclassical 21 April 2023 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 307 people viewed the video online |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5CyJogJl3g |
| Title | Concert film of Morrow by Robin Haigh and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of Morrow - Performed by Zubin Kanga and co-created by Robin Haigh and Zubin Kanga Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix London Presented by nonclassical |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 87 views on YouTube |
| URL | https://youtu.be/gZ6VAo3RFuc?si=j433g7fUVwe8g61C |
| Title | Concert film of Single Form (Swell) -Alex Groves and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of Single Form (Swell) - Performed by Zubin Kanga and co-created by Alex Groves and Zubin Kanga Recorded live at Machine Dreams (album launch) at Rich Mix, London Presented by nonclassical 21 April 2023 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 85 views on YouTube |
| URL | https://youtu.be/HJ-tDxugsUI?si=E6QAMlrKNFmGnfvJ |
| Title | Concert film of Star-Way, co-created by Zubin Kanga and Tansy Davies. Performed by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of Star-Way, co-created by Zubin Kanga and Tansy Davies. Featuring innovative new uses of analogue instruments. Performed by Zubin Kanga (Sequential Prophet Rev II synthesizer and live electronics) Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix, London. Presented by Nonclassical |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 161 people have viewed the film online. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_f39Ta_AH8 |
| Title | Concert film of Whatever Weighs You Down by Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Whatever Weighs You Down Composed by Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga Performed by Zubin Kanga Featuring Chisato Minamimura Recorded live at Gaudeamus Festival, Utrecht Videography by Flora Reznik Audio Recording by Jorrit van Rijn |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The video has received 40 views and is being used to pitch the project to international festivals. |
| URL | https://youtu.be/6f6kL30Q3iE |
| Title | Counterfeits (Siminica) by Laurence Osborn and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This work composed by Laurence Osborn in collaboration with Zubin Kanga, combines the TouchKeys technology on a keyboard, with vocal samples created by the composer to imitate the Romanian folk singer, Siminica. The TouchKeys keyboard facilitates the bending of pitch by sliding the finger across the key, which in this case is used to allow the keyboard to imitate the vocal sounds of a folk singer. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was a significant demonstration of the experimental TouchKeys technology in action, and has been used as a case study for engineering that can be used in high-level artistic outputs by both TouchKeys and its creator, Prof Andrew McPherson, who cited it in his inaugural professorial lecture at Imperial College, London. It has been performed at Kings Place in London, and recorded and released on an album with NMC Recordings. On the impact of the work on Osborn, he writes: "It has introduced me to the TouchKeys keyboard, sampling, and sample manipulation. It has also encouraged me to think of the electronic manipulation of sound as something supple and flexible, rather than as a binary on/off procedure." |
| URL | https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/publications/counterfeits-siminica-co-created-by-laurence-osborn... |
| Title | Cyborg Pianist - performance and album launch at Kings Place, London |
| Description | Performance of 6 Cyborg Soloists works at Kings Place, London on 30 September 2023. The concert also marked the launch of Zubin Kanga's Cyborg Pianist album. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The performance was presented to an audience of 110 members of the general public. It was also favourably reviewed in I Care If You Listen, who said "Many instrument builders and music technologists have explored ways of expanding the capabilities of the piano, but their ideas have been forgotten, or at best confined to a museum display, because no repertoire was created. Without composers writing for new technology, it will not survive. By collaborating with many composers of our time, Kanga is doing everything possible to create exciting repertoire for himself, and a lasting legacy for his research." |
| URL | https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/contemporary/zubin-kanga-cyborg-pianist/ |
| Title | Cyborg Pianist album on NMC Recordings. Featuring Zubin Kanga performing 6 new Cyborg Soloists works. |
| Description | Cyborg Pianist album on NMC Recordings. Featuring Zubin Kanga performing 6 new Cyborg Soloists works by leading UK composers, each using different technologies including MiMU gloves, ambisonic surround sound, AI-generated sounds, brain-sensor data and TouchKeys technologies. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Physical sales in the hundreds, reaching No. 12 in the UK on the Specialist Classical charts. 3481 online streams on Spotify. |
| URL | https://nmc-recordings.myshopify.com/products/zubin-kanga-cyborg-pianist |
| Title | Cyborg Soloists: Hidden Vortices - Royal Holloway, University of London |
| Description | Public performance at Royal Holloway, University of London on 9 March 2022. Featured the world premieres of: Full and Hollow by Joanna Ward, using Sam Underwood's new remote robotic piano mechanism, allowing the piano to be played remotely using solenoid powered hammers and magnetic resonators. Escape TERF Island by CHAINES, using ROLI devices (LUMI keyboards and lightpads) hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess by Luke Nickel, using Soundbrenner metronomes to syncronise the pianist with electronic sound, video and strobe lights. It also featured performances of Steel on Bone by Zubin Kanga (featuring MiMU motion sensor gloves) and a performance of Mark Dyer's Mensura by the student ensemble, the New Music Collective. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Audience of 60. The concert introduced the project to staff, students and local audience of the host organisation, showcasing a selection of the new works and collaborations with industry partners. The performance with students of Mark Dyer's work introduced students to this collaboration with an industry partner, and showcased the educational opportunities for students as part of the project. |
| URL | https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/music/events/cyborg-so... |
| Title | DEVIANCE by Emily Howard, Zubin Kanga, Bofan Ma and Erik Natanael Gustafsson |
| Description | This work for piano, video and electronics began with an experiment about how the brain perceives unexpected changes in music. Using EEG brain-scanning equipment from Cyborg Soloists industry partner ANT Neuro, Dr Christiane Neuhaus (University of Hamburg) conducted an experiment on how listeners respond to Howard's music, including her orchestral work, Torus, and piano material derived from it. Neuhaus' experiment found that the volunteers heard the music in two parallel ways: one part of the brain perceived the work as a whole, while another perceived the moments of 'deviance': any change to a pattern that had been established by the preceding music. Particularly striking were brain responses to gradual shifts in tempi: accelerandos shifting into rallentandos. Howard's decided to explore these experimental results across different media, drawing together a number of collaborators. She writes: The 90-section structure of DEVIANCE involves a large-scale accelerando followed by ritardando superimposed upon its inverse: a large-scale ritardando followed by an accelerando. The work can also be viewed as 90 standard durations of 10 seconds. The piano material is entirely created from the original Torus expanding and contracting, between faster and slower deviations: always searching, ever circling. The live piano is fused with two intermittent deviant trajectories: sound design by Bofan Ma and video design by Erik Nataneal Gustafsson, each offering an alternative response to the original experimental brain data. Ma's electronics use AI-generated audio (created using PRiSM SampleRNN software in consultation with researcher, Christopher Melen) trained on the same piano and orchestral recordings used in the experiment, as well as the sonification of the brainwaves that were recorded by Neuhaus, creating a rich and complex texture through which the piano weaves. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work has been performed in London (at Kings Place) and Oxford (at the Festival of Science and Ideas) to 200 people, and the Oxford performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, as part of a New Music Show broadcast. It was recorded and released on the Cyborg Pianist album on NMC Recordings. Howard described the impact on her own work: This collaboration has led to the creation of my first concert work to combine acoustic materials, electronic audio (with AI) and visual. As a result, I feel more confidence about involving different kinds of technology simultaneously within my work. I frequently collaborate with scientists and exchange ideas with them in creative processes. What is new, here, is the fact that a scientist worked on a scientific experiment involving my previous work, which then became central to the creative process for this piece. This is new to me. It is a little too early to have carried it forward to other projects but I do think I will. The project has been a very clear and well documented example of a scientific analysis of my work (in this case, Torus), then itself influencing my creative process directly. I have not yet had the opportunity to bring this into my teaching, but it is something that I will lecture about on a US tour (April-May 24), and then find ways to bring into teaching at RNCM subsequently. The project has been a very strong example of successful multi-disciplinary collaboration. For me, it has been a shift towards allowing projects to evolve/emerge rather than pre- planning everything compositionally, as I perhaps would have done 10 years ago. It is also a venture into co-creation, as it involves other creative collaborators. And I view it as a step closer to working with live improvisation (which here featured early on in the pre- compositional creative process, when Zubin improvised some of the piano material based on Torus, that was then used in the scientific experiment). Trying to find meaningful ways to work with improvisation is something I am focusing on now, in a new project, and in part, this directly follows on from work in DEVIANCE. |
| URL | https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/publications/deviance-by-emily-howard-zubin-kanga-bofan-ma-and-e... |
| Title | Do You Share Coming Out Stories Still - Robert Reid Allan and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | A concert film of Do You Share Coming Out Stories Still, performed by Zubin Kanga and co-composed by Robert Reid Allan for Cyborg Soloists. Recorded at the Royal Northern College of Music, for Submerge Festival. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 111 views on youtube. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dj6HR2NtO8 |
| Title | Do you share coming out stories still? by Robert Reid Allan |
| Description | Do you share coming out stories still? by Robert Reid Allan is a work for TouchKeys (project partner) keyboard, live electronics and live video. It uses the TouchKeys keyboard to bend the pitch of the Ableton samples. It also uses a Max Patch which plays excerpts from an interview in response to particular chords. The interview itself is with an older mentor about being a gay man in the 1970s. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | 'Do you tell coming out stories still?' showcases the capabilities of TouchKeys to bend pitch and play vibrato on a keyboard instrument, as well as the use of Max/MSP to control live video from the keyboard. The work models these aspects for future works, both within Cyborg Soloists and beyond the project's scope. A custom Max patch created for this composition will enable other composers to implement Reid Allan's model in other works using this technology. The work will be premiered at a queer-themed festival on 18 March, SUBMERGE, at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and the patch will be made available for download from the Cyborg Soloists website shortly after the premiere." |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Do-you-share-coming-out-stories-still |
| Title | Early Career Artists' performance: Uncanny Bodies |
| Description | Concert featuring the outputs of Early Career Artists selected by Cyborg Soloists as part of our Call for Proposals. Presented two new works that featured industry partners Soundbrenner and Vochlea. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The audience of 80 people provided responses to the questionairre with numerous questions and changed opinions about the use of technology in music: "The technologies in the pieces did not seem at all invasive, nor foregrounded any more than instruments or performers. That said, as the works were introduced as focussing so much on specific technologies, I felt compelled to focus at times more on the tech than on the music.. something that wouldn't have happened if this was not so clearly indicated before the concert." and: "I'm not a musical performer- but it inspired me to rethink the use of breath, body, music and objects on stage" |
| URL | https://ra.co/events/1677882 |
| Title | Early Hours by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | After Hours is a synthesizer work by Zubin Kanga using 12 layered synths lines (created with a Korg Prologue) |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work shows how layered synthesizers can be used outside of popular music genres, allowing for a type of counterpoint and blending similar to a chamber orchestra. The work was released as a recording on Goliard Recordings. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/c0590579d61273450e13 |
| Title | Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees by Benjamin Tassie and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees uses the latest studio and keyboard technologies (including the 4D expressive ROLI Seaboard Rise 2 keyboard) to augment the sound and capabilities of some of the world's most significant historical organs. To make 'Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees', Tassie visited and recorded historical organs from across the UK and Europe, including the Van Straten Organ, a reconstruction of a late-Medieval Dutch organ (dating from 1479) in Amsterdam, period instruments at St Cecelia's Hall, University of Edinburgh, and the Wingfield Organ, a reconstructed English Tudor organ. 'Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees' is a monolithic, 70-minute tour de force, in which the audience is invited to immerse themselves in this sonically enveloping drone-composition. Performed by Kanga in the round using three different keyboards to trigger these organ sounds virtually, this piece of shifting and transforming tones creates a rich and enveloping sensory experience. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | Performed at the National Gallery in London to an audience of 800-1000 people. |
| URL | https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/publications/earth-of-the-slumbering-and-liquid-trees-co-created... |
| Title | Escape TERF Island by CHAINES (Cee Haines) |
| Description | Escape TERF Island by CHAINES (Cee Haines) is a solo work using ROLI devices (LUMI keyboards and touchpads). The work utilises MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) to allow the keyboardist to bend and transform the sound using touch sensors. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work was premiered at Royal Holloway on 9 March, and is being featured as part of a queer-themed festival in Manchester, SUBMERGE, on 18 March, as part of Zubin Kanga's performance: Cyborg Soloists: The Body Electric, and will be featured in major touring performances as well as an album release in 2022-2023. CHAINES' Ableton session provides a model for future collaborations using the ROLI devices, as well as any other devices that use MIDI Polyphonic Expression via a Digital Audio Workstation. It shows its usage across a variety of sounds, and with a variety of sonic manipulations (from bending in pitch, to timbral changes to the sound and its sustain). The session has been made available as a download from Github and will be made available on the website after the Submerge Festival performance. On the impact on their practice, Haines writes: "This collaboration has lead me to consider the various ways in which solo performers can make the most out of their gestures, and encouraged me to look at what tech is available on the market to help achieve what I want. It has made me think about the role I want technology to play in the pieces I write, and how I want practicality to feature in the pieces I write - when tech can offer a very full palette of sounds, what does it mean to have an electro-acoustic/electronic piece performed by solo or multiple players? I can now think about number of players less in terms of bodies I need to perform musical functions, and more what do those bodies bring to a live performance space. This is a theme that I'm beginning to explore in my own PhD research. " |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Escape-TERF-Island |
| Title | FAKE |
| Description | FAKE for piano and live electronics by Fergal Dowling. This work uses the AnteScofo software developed at IRCAM, that facilitates precise score-following by the computer. Dowling uses this to create games of cause and effect between the 'fake' (electronic) and real piano. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The work was premiered at Music Current Festival in Dublin, 8 November 2021. It showcases a modernist approach to the AnteScofo software, pushing it far beyond the accompaniment and educational applications it was built for. It forms a model for future uses of not just AnteScofo but all score-following software, allowing much more precise interaction with a live musician than conventional audio triggers. |
| Title | Fourfold by Kathryn Williams, Ed Cooper (with Zubin Kanga and Mark Dyer) |
| Description | This is one of two works by Early Career Artists, who are being mentored by Zubin Kanga and Mark Dyer. They have collaboratively created a new work featuring industry partner Soundbrenner's haptic metronomes. Using Soundbrenner's vibrating metronomes and their own heartbeats, the duo weave a dreamy soundscape with alto flute, electric guitar and fixed media. Active listening combines with performance and spoken word, constructing an augmented, bodily instrument. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The collaboration demonstrates how early career artists can learn and create new works using technology from industry partners, as well as innovating new approaches to these technologies. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/168e36614e409588cb35 |
| Title | From the Exquisite Dark - by Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear |
| Description | A collaboratively composed piece by Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear, for solo percussionist, objects and live electronics, created for percussionist Yuka Ohta of Ensemble Garage. Making use of the Bela Mini nanocomputer's extremely low-latency audio response and tiny physical footprint which allows it to be easily hidden from view during performance, From the Exquisite Dark explores a shift from the real to the simulated. Starting with the percussionist playing a length of chain, glass bottles, sandpaper and a metal container filled with nails and screws, the percussionist transitions to 'playing' four toys, while the sounds she produces remain the same. Using contact microphones to trigger playback of prerecorded samples of the 'real' sounding objects when the toys were activated (handled, struck, switched on), technology in this piece enables uncanny illusion and prompts us to question the 'real' in performance. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The technical solution for the piece resulted in the first iteration of a hardware/software device called the Exquisite Engine - developing what was needed for this piece has created a tool which can be adapted by others to create work which uses similar sonic illusions. Performance by Yuka Ohta, during Ensemble Garage's "Visitors" event with Bastard Assignments, Alte Feuerwache Köln, Cologne, Germany, 19 August 2022. This performance was attended by approximately 30 people. |
| URL | http://caitlinrowley.com/music/from-the-exquisite-dark/ |
| Title | Full and Hollow, co-created by Joanna Ward and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | The work utilises a new robotic system, created by Sam Underwood in collaboration with Cyborg Soloists. The work uses a graphic score to explore the different parts of this robotic mechanism, playing remotely using a MIDI keyboard, from the magnetic resonators to the solenoid-based hammers that can tap the piano remotely. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work was performed at Royal Holloway, University of London and at City, University of London. It demonstrates the use of a hybrid robotic instrument, and the combination of the freedom of the graphic score and the restraint of the robotics. On the impact on her practice, Ward writes: "It made me really interested in how extended instrumental technologies can create interesting and aleatoric outcomes in my own practice. I had a great experience of interdisciplinary collaboration which has definitely impacted my outlook going forward." |
| URL | https://www.cyborgsoloists.com/full-and-hollow |
| Title | Hammerklavier |
| Description | Hammerklavier by Michael Finnissy and Adam de la Cour. This work is the first major solo work by celebrated British composer Michael Finnissy using film as part of the performance. The film by Adam de la Cour is in counterpoint to the music. Both are related to an experience of Finnissy seeing the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter performing Beethoven at the Royal Festival Hall in 1975, and the later revelations that Richter was gay. The work explores queer artistry and interpretation through the interaction between a live instrument and visual media. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The work was premiered to a sold-out audience at the Royal Academy of Music, London, on 28 January 2022. The work was the subject of a long-form article by David Grundy in ArtForum, writing: "this is a queer music that puts minds and ears on edge, a bruising and exhilarating torrent of thought and feeling, quicksilver and dense, transparent and thick; a space not for the reinforcements of canons, traditions, and prejudices, but for a sustained questioning of what it means to listen at all." https://www.artforum.com/music/immortal-homosexual-poets-michael-finnissy-s-hammerklavier-87866 artforum.com's has 2.3 million users across the world, averaging 7 million page views per day (https://www.artforum.com/advertise). A performance film of the event was created and is being edited for release in April 2022. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/13d45da237ae8a7908cc |
| Title | Hammerklavier by Michael Finnissy and Adam de la Cour |
| Description | Hammerklavier by Michael Finnissy and Adam de la Cour - world premiere at Royal Academy of Music, London on 28 January 2022. This was the premiere of a new work featuring piano and film, created by one of the UK's leading composers, Michael Finnissy, with filmmaker Adam de la Cour. The work explores Michael's memories of pianist Sviatoslav Richter playing Beethoven, as well as exploring queer interpretation and artistry. The work uses experimental film techniques, combining the piano and film in a contrapuntal, audio-visual 42 minute epic. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Sell-out audience of 85 at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Audience feedback included: "truly inspiring", "one Michael's best works" A performance film of the event was created and is being edited for release and dissemination via our YouTube, social media and website channels. The Q&A allowed for deeper discussion of the collaboration between composer and filmmaker, and how the experimental approaches to music can find a corollary in film. It also discussed the history of queer representation in music and film, and the importance of celebrating queer artists from other eras. |
| URL | https://tickets.ram.ac.uk/sales/categories/friday-series/hammerklavier |
| Title | I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles) by Nwando Ebizie and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | The work explores Zubin Kanga's physical relationship to the piano and piano technique (in particular, the pianistic tradition originating with Frederic Chopin), combining interview materials and AI-generated speech with a Moog synthesizer and complex Afrofuturist electronic textures. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates the use of AI-generated text and speech into a concert work. It also shows audiences how Afrofuturist influences can be used to create a 'classical' notated work. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/729bb8232aa68870bee3 |
| Title | Interiterations by Amble Skuse and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Wearing MiMU gloves, the performers' gestures are tracked, and the computer provides audio responses to the gestures. The performer beings to learn 'where' in space the sounds are located and starts to respond, learning what gestures elicit what sounds, bringing us to a point where machine and human are controlling each other. The flow between the human and the computer in this work becomes interdependent. We ask ourselves how deeply we are intwined with technology, how our movements, gestures, decisions and thoughts are influenced by unknown algorithms, which in turn have been trained upon our thoughts, decisions, language and actions. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This work demonstrates how the practice of a disabled artist using a digital instrument can be integrated into a work for a non-disabled artist. Skuse's practice is informed by her movement disabilities, around which she has developed a sophisticated approach to using MiMU gloves. This also connects with other uses of MiMU gloves with disabled artists (including Whatever Weighs You Down) |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Interiterations |
| Title | Louise, gently falling by Francesca Fargion |
| Description | This work was co-created by Francesca Fargion with Cyborg Soloists for performances by Plus Minus Ensemble. It uses the Vochlea Dubler 2 software, allowing the instruments to trigger and control a virtual voice in the concert space, and also allowing a voice to control other electronic sounds. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was performed in 4 concerts by Plus Minus ensemble: Edinburgh, Birmingham, London and Copenhagen (Denmark) for Minu Festival. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewibLOIy2M0 |
| Title | Machine Dreams - performance and album launch at Rich Mix, London |
| Description | Zubin Kanga performed 10 new works commissioned as part of Cyborg Soloists. The 10 works used 10 different technologies and setups, across multiple keyboard and sensor instruments. The concert also launched the album Machine Dreams, released on nonclassical, that featured all the works. The concert also featured a new work by Joe Snape created with Cyborg Soloists for Heather Roche and Eva Zollner (clarinet and accordion) which was also premiered. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 150 people attended the concert at Rich Mix in London, and 1289 people have viewed the concert films of the works online. |
| URL | https://richmix.org.uk/events/machine-dreams-zubin-kanga-zollner-roche-duo/ |
| Title | Mensura - CoMA Manchester and CoMA Sheffield, Music in the Round |
| Description | Public performance at Channing Hall, Sheffield, as part of Music in the Round concert 'SOUNDS OF NOW: Contemporary Music for All,' 8 October 2022. This involved a collaboration between CoMA Manchester and CoMA Sheffield - two ensembles dedicated to making contemporary music accessible to everyone. The piece utilises the Soundbrenner Pulse wearable metronomes. The performance served as a public demonstration of Mark's collaboration with industry partner Soundbrenner and artistic partner CoMA Manchester, an amateur music ensemble for whom the piece was written. As such, the performance demonstrates the possibilities of the Soundbrenner devices outside of the professional music setting they are primarily deigned for. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This performance demonstrated how providing context for a newly created work utilising novel digital technologies can improve impact for performers - before the performance I gave a talk about the piece to both performers and audience, describing how the Soundbrenner devices work, as well as my creative processes and stimuli for writing the work. Touching on both early music and technology, the impact was demonstrated in a comment by a performer, who declared that this extra context revealed new insights into the work and that this new knowledge changed how she performed it. As the second performance of Mensura by CoMA Manchester, two of the nine musicians performing the piece had performed it previously. Their prior experience and increasing understanding of the work and the technology, and confidence with the devices meant that they were able to play an active role in supporting the new performers. This teaching within the group shows that an aspect of the impact of the work has been to increase confidence with these new technologies across the group and to equip them with the resources (personal skills and the ability to communicate those skills to inexperienced members of the group) to work with Soundbrenner metronomes in future with little trouble as several members now have considerable experience with how they work. The mixed audience (c. 12-15 members) comprised musicians, students, the general public and family and friends outside of music. These non-musicians would likely not normally see such devices in use, and as the devices are not common yet, not all the musicians in the audience had experience with them either, so this performance's impact included providing exposure to both a new technology and an unusual way of using that technology to these audience members. |
| URL | https://musicintheround.co.uk/events/sounds-of-now-contemporary-music-for-all/ |
| Title | Mensura - CoMA Manchester, Festival of Contemporary Music for All 2022 |
| Description | Premiere performance of 'Mensura' by CoMA Manchester as part of the Festival of Contemporary Music for All 2022. The performance served as a public demonstration of Mark's collaboration with industry partner Soundbrenner and artistic partner CoMA Manchester, an amateur music ensemble for whom the piece was written. As such, the performance demonstrates the possibilities of the Soundbrenner devices outside of the professional music setting they are primarily deigned for. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Audience responses after this performance demonstrated the impact of the new technology in this piece to create perceivable relationships between music and the human body for spectating audiences - one audience comment after the performance was that the piece had made the audience member think differently about how heartrates might relate to music. The performance enabled an audience of around 20 people, including non-musicians who would not normally see such devices in use, to experience them in performance for the first time. Musicians and students in the audience, who may have been aware of the Soundbrenner haptic metronome device, were exposed to an innovative use of the technology through this performance, a mode of use which is very different from those they may have encountered either through their own experience of these devices, or through the company's own marketing messaging. Four amateur musicians performed Mensura on this occasion, which gave them the opportunity to work with technology they would not normally have had access to. Two of these performers also performed in a subsequent performance of Mensura, where their experience in this performance impacted on the whole performing group as they were able to assist new performers with setting up and performing with the technology. |
| URL | http://www.coma.org/whats-on/events/festival/manchester/manchester-evening-concert/ |
| Title | Mensura by Mark Dyer |
| Description | Mensura explores two separate research aspects. The first, building upon Mark Dyer's earlier doctoral research, relates to his compositional practice of musical borrowing and asks, how can novel digital technologies be used to engage both explicitly and metaphorically with music from much earlier periods? In the instance of Mensura, physical gesture is used to relate the Soundbrenner haptic metronome to late medieval performance practices and repertoire. The second aspect relates to ensemble interaction and networking. In its distribution of the Soundbrenner metronomes amongst the ensemble, Mensura creates intimate relationships between performers and their biological rhythms and explores whether such interactions might induce group coordination or disorder. Such an exploration builds upon research in both musical networks and performer-technology entanglements. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The primary impact of this work is introducing novel digital technologies, namely the Soundbrenner haptic metronome, to amateur music-makers. The work was written for and with CoMA Manchester, an ensemble dedicated to making contemporary music accessible to all abilities, and their experiences with the technology informed the final work. The work is specifically written to be understood and accessed by those that might not normally encounter such technologies. Members of the ensemble commented that working on the piece developed their own awareness of their bodies and bodily rhythms in performance, with one performer describing the 'flow' she found between her heart rate, the vibrating device and other performers. The issue of accessibility is pertinent to music technologies as a result of costs and programming expertise. Members commented that, due to their amateur status, the ensemble simply wouldn't normally have access to such technologies, especially numerous devices. Given such access, the ensemble were able to create a sonic, visual and atmospheric spectacle in the premiere. The ensemble director commented that this was a unique experience for the ensemble. |
| Title | Metamemory |
| Description | Metamemory is a dialogue between real and artificial music memories. It features a sampler loaded with AI-generated audio, produced by a neural network trained on recordings I've made of works across the pianistic canon, including music by Berg, Messiaen, Debussy, Ravel, Takemitsu, and many others. The AI-sampler, playing these monstrous but strangely beautiful AI-created transformations, is combined with a Korg Prologue synthesizer that both articulates and comments on these scrambled and synthesized memories of the canon. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | This work demonstrates the use of AI-generated audio within a keyboard sampler, a new combination that points towards future uses of AI and its integration with current music technologies. It is featured on a commercial release by Nonclassical which will be launched in April 2023. Further impacts are expected after the premiere. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/409b20d65b39d5467cd4 |
| Title | Morrow by Robin Haigh and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Morrow uses a TouchKeys keyboard to allow piano samples to be manipulated, using a patch that maps movement across the keys to speed and dynamics. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work innovates new ways of using the TouchKeys hardware to go beyond the basic functionality around pitch bending. It demonstrates to other composers how to use TouchKeys (as well as MPE in general) to control musical functions beyond the basic timbral and pitch controls, allowing for more sophisticated hybrid instruments to be created. On the impact on his practice, the composer writes: "Working with Cyborg Soloists has given me a confidence that working with new technology can be a major part of my practice. Previously, I felt that it was far from my speciality and something not necessarily suited to me - having completed MORROW and received such positive feedback from it, I feel that working with new technologies could be something important and natural for me, even if I lack the technical skills to do it all on my own" |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/097396476b09d7666e7d |
| Title | Music Current Festival, Dublin |
| Description | Music Current Festival, 8 November 2021. Zubin Kanga gave a premiere performance of FAKE by Fergal Dowling featuring AnteScofo score-following software, a new piece by Nicole Lizée for piano, electronics and video, featuring piano and video and a short version of 'Hammerklavier' by Michael Finnissy and Adam de la Cour. The programme also contained Alexander Schubert's WIKI-PIANO.NET featuring this internet crowd-sourced work and Scott McLaughlin's in the unknown there is already the script for transcendence, featuring the use of custom-built magnetic resonators in the piano |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This was the first Cyborg Soloists event (and the PI's first event) in Ireland, reaching a local audiences as well as international visitors to the festival (including distinguished American composer, and pioneer of new interdisciplinary music, Steven Takasugi). The audience in the room numbered 50 people. There was a feature review in the Journal of Music by Ann Murray, who said: "For Kanga, electronics are clearly not an addition, but a fundamental part of working with his instrument, and the physicality of his performance a keystone rather than an afterthought. This programme saw him performing complex musical textures, bending over the piano strings armed with e-bows, speaking, and performing physical actions like pretending to sleep and clanking a spade. Ann Murray, Journal of Music https://journalofmusic.com/reviews/electric-performance The Journal of Music has an annual readership of 330,000 |
| URL | http://www.musiccurrent.ie/2021/zubin_kanga.html |
| Title | Packham & Frankland Duo |
| Description | Presenting a motion-based infrastructure for live improvisatory performance with drums and live electronics, utilising the Genki Wave ring to translate physical movement into musical gestures. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | Performance attended by combination of staff, students, and public. Demonstration of Genki Ring to show its particular affordances in a live improvisational setting. |
| URL | https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/events/new-sounds-cyborg-soloists/ |
| Title | Performance at Album Launch for In den Träumen, co-created by Zubin Kanga and Claudia Molitor |
| Description | This was a performance to launch the In Den Träumen album, held at St-Mary-at-Hill in London. Several works by for piano, electronics and video were presented. It was presented by October House recordings. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The concert was attended by 100 people. |
| URL | https://octoberhouserecords.co.uk/october-house-records-live/ |
| Title | Performance at Cafe Oto, London |
| Description | Performance of Whatever Weighs You Down, a 40-minute work by Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga, at Cafe Oto, London. This work features MiMU gloves, two video screens, electronics, interdisciplinary elements, and an onscreen performance by Deaf performance artist, Chisato Minamimura. Also on the programme were new Cyborg Soloists works, featuring motion sensors, AI-generated audio and video, and an analogue synthesizer Nina Whiteman - Cybird Cybird - Nwando Ebizie - I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles) (World Premiere) - Zubin Kanga - Steel on Bone |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | This performance for 120 people in London introduced the major collaboration with Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga to the audience, showcasing the use of MiMU gloves in a collaboration with a Deaf artist. An audience member who had previously been unaware of the MiMU glove technology used in this performance indicated that the experience of the concert had changed the way they considered technology in musical performance, responding "It sparked interest in the nexus between diverse technologies, in particular film, poetry & multiple strands of sound playing off each other" |
| URL | https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/zubin-kanga-neil-luck-whatever-weighs-you-down/ |
| Title | Performance at City, University of London |
| Description | Performance of a programme of Cyborg Soloists works, showcasing a wide range of technologies to an audience in London. Programme: Robert Reid Allan, Do you still share coming out stories still? (2022) Joanna Ward, Full and Hollow (2022) Georgia Rodgers, Ringinglow (2021) Zubin Kanga, Steel on Bone (2021) Louis d'Heudieres, Reflects dans Sequana (world premiere) Luke Nickel, hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess (2022) |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | An audience of 50 people experienced a wide range of technologies, including motion sensors, a hybrid robotic piano, keyboard sampler, AI-generated sound and video and haptic metronomes. Audience surveys were also collected, and the responses indicated that audience members' thinking changed as a result of the concert. The survey question 'How did the concert change how you think about the use of technology in musical performance?' yielded responses including "Hugely! Beyond anything I've seen with piano" and "I often had mechanical input producing signal for the speakers and raw data to be interpreted by a musician, but I never appreciated the possibilities of mechanical movement as output.". When asked what surprised them in the concert, one respondent answered "Almost everything", indicating that the experience for them was extremely novel and changed their thinking. |
| URL | https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2022/march/zubin-kanga |
| Title | Performance at Classical NEXT, Hannover |
| Description | Showcase performance at Classical NEXT, a major conference for the classical music industry. Alexander Schubert - WIKI-PIANO.NET Zubin Kanga - Steel on Bone Nicole Lizée - Scorsese Etudes |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Performance for an international audience of 200 delegates, at the closing ceremony - showcasing Cyborg Soloists innovations to the classical music industry. |
| URL | https://www.classicalnext.com/net/piranha_arts_1/event/zubin_kanga_1 |
| Title | Performance at Free Range (Canterbury) |
| Description | Performance at the main contemporary music series in Canterbury, featuring Cyborg Soloists works. Zubin Kanga, Steel on Bone (2021) Louis d'Heudieres, Reflects dans Sequana (world premiere) Alwynne Pritchard, Heart of Glass (2019/2022) Luke Nickel, hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess (2022) |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Performance for an audience of 100, with many families with children attending, allowing them to see gesture sensors, keyboard samplers, haptic metronomes and AI-generated audio/video up close. |
| URL | https://freerangecanterbury.org/fr227-zubin-kanga-hidden-vortices/ |
| Title | Performance at Jesus College, Oxford |
| Description | Performance at Jesus College, Oxford on 10 March 2023, featuring Cyborg Soloists work. Programme: Luke Nickel - hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess Alex Groves - Single Form (Swell) Zubin Kanga - Hypnagogia (after Bach) Alexander Schubert - WIKI-PIANO.NET |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | There was extended engagement with the audience after the concert, including with 7 composition students and two organ students, as well as discussions with the Principal of the College and staff from the Music Department. 10 other members of the general public also discussed how they had experienced all the technologies and their use in music for the first time, and the instruments were further demonstrated to them. There was particular interest in the MiMU gloves, and the ROLI keyboards, with students discussing how they function and the possibility of using them in their own works. |
| URL | https://www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/tag/recital/ |
| Title | Performance at Kettle's Yard (Cambridge) |
| Description | A performance of Cyborg Soloists solo works, including those by Christopher Fox, Luke Nickel, Georgia Rodgers, Louis D'Heudieres and Zubin Kanga. Christopher Fox's The Wind in the Trees (featuring a video generated through algorithmic processes on nature scenes) received its world premiere. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | These works, featuring analogue synthesizers, AI-generated audio.video, gestures sensors and keyboard samplers was performed for an audience of 120. |
| URL | https://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/zubin-kanga-piano-and-keyboards/ |
| Title | Performance at Kontraklang, Berlin |
| Description | Performance at Kontraklang, Berlin, (held at Kultur Büro Elisabeth: Villa Elisabeth) on 3 December 2021. Programme featured: Pretty Sound (Up and Down) by Simon Steen-Andersen, featuring new microphone techniques and custom-built playing tools inside the piano Steel on Bone by Zubin Kanga, featuring manipulation of the inside piano sound using MiMU motion sensor gloves. You touched the twinkle on the helix of my ear by Claudia Molitor, featuring close interaction with the composer's hands on screen. WIKI-PIANO.NET by Alexander Schubert - the Berlin premiere of this internet-based score. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Audience of 100 in Berlin. Many leading musicians and festival directors in attendance. Matthias Osterwold, influential German artistic director of new music festivals including MaerzMusik and Klangspuren Schwaz, in the audience stated "you bring a very human touch to the technology, making it accessible to the audience" A performance film of the event was created, and is being edited for release at the end of March. |
| URL | https://kontraklang.de/concert/physical-sounds/?fbclid=IwAR2SvBhqk0dt2HCUvT-OS3KuuEvUclIwBj9M5UhBKRu... |
| Title | Performance at Music in the Round (Sheffield) |
| Description | Performance at Music in the Round, a concert series in Sheffield, featuring Cyborg Soloists works. Included the premieres of works by Nina Whiteman and Alex Groves NINA WHITEMAN cybird cybird (world premiere) ALEX GROVES Single Form (Swell) (world premiere) ZUBIN KANGA Steel on Bone LUKE NICKEL hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess ALEXANDER SCHUBERT WIKI-PIANO.NET |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | An audience of 100 attended the event. There were notable impacts on the audience (who experienced a variety of new interactions between AI, new digital instruments, internet-based scores and motion sensors with music) and on the venue and their curation (in the featuring of this type of interdisciplinary work with technologies for the first time in their series). |
| URL | https://musicintheround.co.uk/events/sounds-of-now-cyborg-soloist/ |
| Title | Performance by Plus Minus of Cyborg Soloists works (Birmingham) |
| Description | Plus-Minus Ensemble presented a programme of three new compositions co-created with Cyborg Soloists that explore interdisciplinary interactions between music and new digital technologies, by Jessie Marino, Seán Clancy and Francesca Fargion. 7:00pm Friday 27 October 2023 The Lab, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire 200 Jennens Road, B4 7XR Birmingham |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 50 people attended this concert in Birmingham |
| URL | https://plusminusensemble.com/concerts/2023/1027-birmingham/ |
| Title | Performance by Plus Minus of Cyborg Soloists works (Copenhagen) |
| Description | Plus-Minus Ensemble presented a programme of three new compositions co-created with Cyborg Soloists that explore interdisciplinary interactions between music and new digital technologies, by Jessie Marino, Seán Clancy and Francesca Fargion. 8:00pm Saturday 18 November 2023 MINU Festival Ku.Be Dirch Passers Allé 4 Copenhagen |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 75 people attended this concert, and performance films were created of all works, reaching 414 people online |
| URL | https://minufestival.info/Cyborg-Soloists |
| Title | Performance by Plus Minus of Cyborg Soloists works (Edinburgh) |
| Description | Plus-Minus Ensemble presented a programme of three new compositions co-created with Cyborg Soloists that explore interdisciplinary interactions between music and new digital technologies, by Jessie Marino, Seán Clancy and Francesca Fargion. 7:00pm Wednesday 25 October 2023 UNESCO week of sound West Court Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 60 people attended this concert in Edinburgh |
| URL | https://digital.eca.ed.ac.uk/weekofsound/zubin-kangas-cyborg-soloists/ |
| Title | Performance by Plus Minus of Cyborg Soloists works (London) |
| Description | Plus-Minus Ensemble presented a programme of three new compositions co-created with Cyborg Soloists that explore interdisciplinary interactions between music and new digital technologies, by Jessie Marino, Seán Clancy and Francesca Fargion. 8:00pm Sunday 29 October 2023 Cafe Oto London |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 120 people attended this concert in London |
| URL | https://plusminusensemble.com/concerts/2023/1029-oto/ |
| Title | Performance by Zubin Kanga at Flagey Piano Days festival in Brussels |
| Description | Performance by Zubin Kanga of a selection of Cyborg Soloists works by himself, and co-created with Shiva Feshareki and Laura Bowler at Flagey Days Festival in Brussels. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | An audience of 120 people attended the event. |
| URL | https://www.flagey.be/en/activity/10366-zubin-kanga |
| Title | Performance by Zubin Kanga at Modulus Festival (Vancouver, Canada) |
| Description | Zubin Kanga played a headline performance, featuring Cyborg Soloists works, at Modulus Festival in Vancouver on 3 November 2023. Works co-created with Luke Nickel, Laura Bowler and Alexander Schubert were presented, along with Kanga's own Metamemory, using AI-generated recordings. It featured technologies from industry partners, Soundbrenner and MiMU, and the products of collaborations with AI researchers at RNCM. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 80 people attended the concert. A number of musicians, prospective industry partners and prospective researchers asked questions about the technologies and enquired about future collaborations. Future research with University of British Columbia, and with Canadian industry partners were discussed, as well as an ongoing relationship between Cyborg Soloists and the festival. |
| URL | https://www.musiconmain.ca/event/showtime-zubin-kanga/ |
| Title | Performance by Zubin Kanga at Oxford Contemporary Music/Oxford Science and Ideas Festival |
| Description | A performance by Zubin Kanga at Oxford Contemporary Music/Oxford Science and Ideas Festival on 18 October 2023, presenting Cyborg Soloists works co-created with Oliver Leith, Emily Howard and Zubin Kanga's own work, Steel on Bone. The concert concluded with the major co-created work by Philip Venables and Zubin Kanga, Answer Machine Tape, 1987. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 90 people attended the concert. Several requested further information about DEVIANCE and its use of AI, and on the KeyScanner used in Answer Machine Tape, 1987. The concert was recorded and broadcast across three different iterations of the New Music Show on BBC Radio 3. |
| URL | https://www.ocmevents.org/whats-on/zubin-kanga-answer-machine-tape-1987 |
| Title | Performance by Zubin Kanga at Submerge Festival, Manchester |
| Description | Performance at Submerge Festival, Manchester Featuring new works exploring queer themes, and featuring a variety of new technologies including: TouchKeys, LUMI keyboards, MiMU gloves, Movesense sensors, Holonic Systems app, Soundbrenner haptic metronomes and AI-generated audio and video. Robert Reid Allan - Do you share coming out stories still? (World Premiere) Alwynne Pritchard - Heart of Glass (2019) CHAINES - Escape TERF Island (World Premiere) Zubin Kanga - Hypnagogia (World Premiere) Lola da la Mata - A meditation on unnatural corporeality in three tableaux (World Premiere) Luke Nickel - hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess (World Premiere) |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | 120 people attended the concert, with lots of live engagement (videos and photos posted online) by audience members, as well as discussion and demonstration of the technologies after the concert, including the MiMU gloves, TouchKeys keyboard and LUMI keyboards. |
| URL | https://submerge.me/festival/programme/cyborg-soloists/ |
| Title | Performance by Zubin Kanga at the National Gallery in London |
| Description | Performance by Zubin Kanga, premiering is collaboration with Benjamin Tassie: Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees. Featuring technology from ROLI (industry partner). |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Approximately 900 people attended this event at the National Gallery in London, with many interacting with the work by lying on the floor, listening from different parts of the space, or taking videos. The concert was also filmed. One audience member said the concert allowed her to think in new ways about both technology and more philosophical questions about the work. |
| URL | https://www.alternativeclassical.co.uk/concerts-calendar/benjamin-tassie |
| Title | Performance by Zubin Kanga of Answer Machine Tape 1987 at Musica Festival, Strasbourg, France |
| Description | Performance of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 (co-created by Philip Venables and Zubin Kanga) at Musica Festival in Strasbourg, France. The work was performed twice in one evening on 18 September 2023. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was performed twice in one evening, to a combined audience of 180. Audience members discussed being moved by the subject matter, and asked to know more about the technology and to see a demonstration after the concert. The success of the event is leading to future plans for a co-commission between the festival and Cyborg Soloists. |
| URL | https://festivalmusica.fr/telecharger/4867 |
| Title | Performance film of Car-Pig, co-created by Alex Paxton and Zubin Kanga. Performed by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Performance film of Car-Pig, co-created by Alex Paxton and Zubin Kanga. Features virtuosic and innovative uses of sampler keyboards. Performed by Zubin Kanga Recorded live at the Machine Dreams album launch, Rich Mix, London Presented by nonclassical 21 April 2023 |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The video has received 296 views online |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrRQnLu8xCY |
| Title | Performance for Digital Planet live broadcast (BBC World Service) |
| Description | A performance of WIKI-PIANO.NET and interview for the 21st birthday event celebrating the BBC World Service show Digital Planet. The event at Broadcasting House, London, included an audience of 400, and a potential worldwide audience of 1.2 million listeners |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Brought Cyborg Soloists' work to a large live London audience, as well as a very large online and radio audience on the BBC World Service of 1.2 million. This worldwide audience was introduced to the innovative research of Cyborg Soloists, focusing on the possibilities of internet-based scores. 30 audience members contributed to the internet score, WIKI-PIANO.NET, which was then performed in the event. 70% of the audience members who responded to our audience survey, gave warm responses about work. Their responses included comments on the unusual nature of the audience being able to contribute to the score of the piece, and the inclusive approach to composition that this feature of the work represents: "Inclusive, in the widest sense of the word. Innovative, unusual.", "Inspiring and enabling" (audience responses from survey). |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct31yv |
| Title | Performance of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival |
| Description | Performance of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at hcmf//, the UK's largest contemporary music festival. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Performance for 170 people. The work showcased the Keyscanner, as well as giving the audience insights into the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, through the eyes of artist David Wojnarowicz. After the performance, an impromptu demonstration of the KeyScanner was given for around 10 audience members, who expressed an interest in getting a closer view of the device. This enabled them to learn more about the technology and how it was used in this work. |
| URL | https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/answer-machine-tape-1987/ |
| Title | Performance of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at November Music, Netherlands |
| Description | Performance of this major work at November Music in Den Bosch, Netherlands. This is one of the two largest contemporary music festivals in the Netherlands. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Performance for 100 people. The work showcased the Keyscanner, as well as giving the audience insights into the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, through the eyes of artist David Wojnarowicz |
| URL | https://www.novembermusic.net/programma/zubin-kanga-philip-venables-130144 |
| Title | Performance of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Paris Autumn Festival |
| Description | Performance of this major work at one of the largest festivals in France |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Performance for 500 people, introducing this audience to the Keyscanner and its use to turn the piano into a hybrid instrument, as well as giving the audience insights into the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, through the eyes of artist David Wojnarowicz |
| URL | https://www.festival-automne.com/en/edition-2022/philip-venables-answer-machine-tape-1987 |
| Title | Performance of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Time of Music Festival, Finland |
| Description | Performance of this major work at Time of Music, Finland, the only annual contemporary music festival in Finland. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work showcased the Keyscanner, as well as giving the audience insights into the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, through the eyes of artist David Wojnarowicz |
| URL | https://musiikinaika.org/en/ |
| Title | Performance of SHOW(ti)ME at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival |
| Description | Performance of this interdisciplinary work at the UK's largest contemporary music festival. The performance took place at St Paul's Hall on 21 November. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Performance for an audience of 200. The audience was introduced to the use of MiMU gloves in an interdisciplinary setting around the piano (used while playing the piano as well as movement around the room). The gloves both allowed the use of gesture-based sampling, as well as the live manipulation of piano sounds. |
| URL | https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/zubin-kanga/ |
| Title | Performance of Whatever Weighs You Down at Gaudeamus Festival |
| Description | Performance of Whatever Weighs You Down, a 40-minute work by Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga, at Gaudeamus Festival, Utrecht. This work features MiMU gloves, two video screens, electronics, interdisciplinary elements, and an onscreen performance by Deaf performance artist, Chisato Minamimura. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Gaudeamus Festival is one of the two big contemporary music festivals in the Netherlands, and this performance introduced this international audience to the MiMU gloves, and how they could be used in a collaboration with a disabled artist. The performance was attended by an audience of 150. |
| URL | https://gaudeamus.nl/en/events/gaudeamus-2022-final-night/zubin-kanga-neil-luck/ |
| Title | Pretty Sound (Up and Down) |
| Description | Pretty Sound (Up and Down) by Simon Steen-Andersen. This new version of the work uses bespoke microphone techniques to turn acoustic effects inside the piano into uncanny, almost electronic-sounding effects. The work also uses custom-built playing implements (including precisely measured boards) with microphones attached. The boards were created by instrument designer, Sam Underwood. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This new version of the work was premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 22 November 2021 and performed at Kontraklang, Berlin on 3 December 2021, both to sold-out audiences. The work demonstrates new microphones techniques that can be applied across all percussion instruments, and these are being integrated into many new works for solo performer, percussion and for other instrumentalists in forthcoming Cyborg Soloists collaborations. The playing tools were especially designed to be transportable (breaking in half to fit in a suitcase, and then reassembled for each performance). This elegant solution to large performance tools has practical applications to many other playing tools used by pianists and percussionists, allowing for easy transportation of these tools that are otherwise very difficult to tour with. The work was broadcast on the New Music Show on BBC Radio 3 on 22 January 2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013ryv?fbclid=IwAR1m-2dU1_1CmmZhjR8PswtAbMCkOmbaTvyFYeDhiO-TsOfNYYPI9487t8w BBC Radio 3 as a weekly audience of 1,993,000 listeners (https://media.info/radio/stations/bbc-radio-3/listening-figures). The broadcast was available online on the BBC website for 4 weeks after the initial broadcast. |
| Title | Recording of Absorber on CTRL/Absorber (Coviello Recordings) |
| Description | Recording of Absorber, performed by Zubin Kanga and co-created by Laurence Osborn and Zubin Kanga, on a Coviello Recordings album: CTRL/Absorber. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Released digitally across all major streaming and digital platforms |
| URL | https://coviellocontemporary.bandcamp.com/album/ctrl-absorber |
| Title | Recording of Early Hours by Zubin Kanga on Goliard Recordings I |
| Description | Tape release of Goliard Recordings I, a compilation of ambient music, including a composition by Zubin Kanga, Early Hours, featuring multi-layered synthesizers. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | 41 limited edition tapes sold. The recording was also featured as an installation at Deal Festival, UK. |
| URL | https://goliardrecordings.bandcamp.com/merch/goliard-recordings-i |
| Title | Reflects dans Sequana, co-created by Louis d'Heudieres and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | The work combines mock-documentary footage with a keyboard sampler, re-sampling recordings by the performer to comment on the work and reception of French composer Claude Debussy |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates new approaches to the use of samplers, as well as new approaches to audio-visual interactions between stage and screen. It was performed in concerts in London, Canterbury and Cambridge, to audiences of 250. On the impact on his practice, d'Heudieres writes: "The piece I wrote for Zubin as part of Cyborg Soloists, Reflets Dans Sequana, took part over several stages. Firstly, we made a studio recording of Zubin playing two pieces of Debussy. I then sampled these pieces, making, effectively, a custom software instrument that Zubin played with a MIDI keyboard. I was very happy with the results, to the point that I am using two samplers in my next composition for NAMES Ensemble, slated for premiere in March 2023. The ideas behind the project - creating a speculative fiction around Claude Debussy's music - have led to an article being published, annotated scores being published as art editions, ongoing written research, and a lecture-performance based on this research. The project was therefore a very useful conceptual springboard that has provided an important strand to my creative practice since it was performed in 2022." |
| URL | https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/publications/reflects-dans-sequana-co-created-by-louis-dheudiere... |
| Title | Returns and Simulacra, co-created by Solomiya Moroz and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Returns and Simulacra combines sound and projections of video onto a screen with the performer's body on stage. It uses mini bee accelerometers and touch-sensor attachments as an instrument called Piano Hands. Through this instrument, the pianist controls a max/MSP patch interface and some elements in the projected video of the piece. The piece addresses the performer's multiple identities on stage, playing the line between the real and virtual performance while incorporating different footage from filmed videos of the pianist and archived cabaret performances of the British queer performers of the past. The digital score relies on the pianist's embodied gestural behaviour and his reaction to audio and video material. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was screened at the New Interfaces in Musical Expression conference in Mexico City in 2023 On the impact on her practice, Moroz writes: "It has allowed me to improve my technical skills in working with sensors and gestural controllers in order to compose a piece with Zubin. It has allowed me to build on composition with gesture, a concept and approach that I have started in my PhD. Work on this piece allowed me to experience my production skills because of the filming that was involved of Zubin as different piano characters. The work on this piece has put me in the place of a creative director rather than a composer. It has showed me other ways of working with the performer in a collaborative setting than traditionally expected in top-down hierarchical settings." |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOq41A-2uY |
| Title | Ringinglow |
| Description | Ringinglow is a new work for piano and electronics by Georgia Rodgers, created in collaboration with Zubin Kanga. The work plays with the psychoacoustic effects of combining sine tones with live instrumental sound, creating the illusion that the piano's pitch is bending. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The work was premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. It was also recorded for release on the portrait album, September, with the record label, Another Timbre. The use of sine-tones to produce psychoacoustic effects is the result of Rodgers' acoustic research and her collaboration with Zubin Kanga on piano techniques. The work demonstrates how these effects can be achieved using fixed media, and shows a musical application for this research, which emerged out of her health science research into psychoacoustics in public architectural design. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/441380eb61bc915ed6eb |
| Title | SHOW(ti)ME by Laura Bowler and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | A new interdisciplinary work featuring the piano with MiMU gloves, live and fixed video, live and fixed electronics, and theatrical elements. It explores musicians' private and public lives, from public social media personas to private anxieties about practice and performance. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work showcases the use of MiMU gloves in an interdisciplinary work, and also demonstrates the use of live and fixed video alongside each other in a concert work. On the impact on her practice, Bowler writes: "My collaboration with Cyborg Soloists has encouraged me to incorporate more technology into my work as a means to extend the physical language of the work as well as the aural experience. Having the opportunity to bring a dramaturg onto the project was hugely beneficial to the clarity of this densely multilayered work. I also benefited hugely from the workshops with Zubin, and will try to find time to ensure that this kind of collaboration happens more frequently in the future. It also encouraged me to venture further into unknown areas of technology which I have previously been very hesitant to do." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/c75d24fb2ea627013871 |
| Title | Scribe |
| Description | A multidisciplinary and multimedia project that includes machine learning, paeleography, transcription, composition and creative writing. The project involves the creation of a fake medieval music manuscript and composer. In collaboration with PRiSM RNCM, I trained a machine learning algorithm on a medieval music manuscript. I then compiled and transcribed the machine outputs into a faux edition, entitled "Marcel le Gan - Music for Three Voices: Marian Antiphons & settings of the Mass," in collaboration with EXAUDI vocal ensemble. The project speaks to two separate issues: how machine learning / AI technologies impact musical creativity; and how early music as a genre/discipline functions. The PRiSM software engineer and an anonymous peer reviewer commented that Scribe presented a unique approach to using machine learning technologies for music composition. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The impact of this work can be demonstrated in the areas of changed perceptions of musical genre and listening processes, and a resulting new mode of expressivity for performers who regularly work within the performance practice of early vocal music. In the early workshops of this piece with the performing ensemble EXAUDI, the musical director of the group commented that the experience of working on the piece was "illuminating", that the music "sheds a light on what we are listening for [in early music repertoire] and when it comes, you find yourself in quite an interesting relationship to what's come before". Similarly, a performer from the ensemble described how the fake edition prompted a unique conversation with a friend - a professional musician - who had been so successfully deceived by the work that they thought they had discovered a hitherto unknown composer (Marcel le Gan, a fictitious composer invented by Mark Dyer, and named as the composer of the work on the title page of the faux edition). This discussion prompted further contemplation by the performer of the potential for a musical score generated by AI (in conjunction with a human arbiter) to stand in for one created solely by a human. The performer suggested that this conversation and reflection enabled them to adopt a more expressive style of singing with the machine-generated score. |
| Title | Seahorses co-created with Jessie Marino |
| Description | This work by Jessie Marino, co-created with Cyborg Soloists, is an ensemble work for Plus Minus ensemble. It features the Vochlea Dubler 2 software, allowing vocal sounds and pitches to change the settings of the electronic sounds played by the keyboards. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was performed in 4 concerts by Plus Minus ensemble: Edinburgh, Birmingham, London and Copenhagen (Denmark) for Minu Festival. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jacGq6Hk1N0 |
| Title | September |
| Description | September is a portrait CD/digital release of Georgia Rodgers, released by the label Another Timbre. It features a recording of the piano and electronics work Ringinglow, performed by Zubin Kanga. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Peter Margarsak selected the recording to be in Bandcamp's top Contemporary Classical recordings of 2021. He said: "Ringinglow," which is also an actual place, is a dance between the perfect harmonics of sine tones and the less precise ones of a piano colliding and generating fascinating effects. Plenty of composers use their work as research, but not everyone makes those experiments so eminently listenable as Rodgers." |
| URL | http://www.anothertimbre.com/georgiarodgers.html |
| Title | Single Form (Swell) by Alex Groves and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This work uses LUMI keyboards to shape and control sounds from field recordings, using loops and effects to build massive textures. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates the use of LUMI keyboards with Ableton software and MPE to allow the performer to not just alter the dynamic and articulation of the sound, but to alter the timbre. It also demonstrates the use of field recordings on the LUMI keyboard, showing an innovative use of industry partners' technology. On the impact on his practice, Groves writes: "The collaboration has enabled me to work with new technologies (LUMI keyboards) and explore how they can be integrated into my practice. I've been able to create my first solely electronic work that is playable live and this is shifting my practice more into the realm of electronics with new pieces and releases planned." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/016faf6ab1ac9e57202a |
| Title | Solo performance at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival |
| Description | Solo performance as part of Short session 2 at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield Town Hall, 22 November 2021. This is the UK's biggest contemporary music festival, and one of the biggest in Europe. World premieres of: Steel on Bone by Zubin Kanga (featuring manipulation of the inside piano sound using MiMU motion sensor gloves), Pretty Sound (Up and Down) by Simon Steen-Andersen, featuring new microphone techniques and custom-built playing tools inside the piano, and Ringinglow by Georgia Rodgers, exploring the psychoacoustic effects of combining sine tones with live instrumental sound, creating the illusion that the piano's pitch is bending. It also featured Laurence Osborn's Absorber, which features a virtuosic interplay between piano and keyboard sampler. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Audience of 90 (full capacity). This was a high profile opportunity at the largest contemporary music festival in the UK to promote these Cyborg Soloists works. Two reviews, In the Times: "But it was impossible not to be gripped and fascinated by Zubin Kanga's Steel on Bone, featuring the adventurous composer-pianist all wired up with electronics, poking around in his piano's innards wearing expensive multi-sensor gloves that transfer hand movements into sound. Henry Cowell, the pioneering American piano basher famous for his cluster chords played with the forearms, would surely have loved the bravura and madness of Steel on Bone. I know I did." - Geoff Brown, The Times, 23 November 2021 In the Telegraph: "More rewarding musically was the set from pianist Zubin Kanga,in which spacey, clangorous sounds obtained by electronically distorting a piano were often laid alongside familiar musical gestures, including (in Laurence Osborn's Absorber) processions of guileless common chords, sullied gradually by foreign notes - a fascinating effect." Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph, 23 November 2021 Both of these newspapers have national readerships. The Times has a daily circulation of 365,880 and the Telegraph has a daily circulation of 317,817 All the works, and the performance were received favourably by the audience, with remarks including "I particularly liked your piece with the gloves" and "the end of Georgia's piece was amazing, with the illusion that the piano was detuning the electronics" The whole performance was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on the New Music Show: divided into broadcasts on 4 December 2021 and 22 January 2022 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00126tv?fbclid=IwAR2nHi5BBlOaIf3cRpIGqZlEOXqaVqTtdnKC-CpffVoypvSLi20VFs3md3M https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013ryv?fbclid=IwAR1m-2dU1_1CmmZhjR8PswtAbMCkOmbaTvyFYeDhiO-TsOfNYYPI9487t8w BBC Radio 3 as a weekly audience of 1,993,000 listeners (https://media.info/radio/stations/bbc-radio-3/listening-figures). Both broadcasts were available online on the BBC website for 4 weeks after the initial broadcast. |
| URL | https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/hcmf-shorts-2/ |
| Title | Star-Way by Tansy Davies and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Star-Way is a 10-minute work for solo synthesizer. It is written for the Sequential Prophet Rev II synthesizer, which fuses the circuitry of a classic analogue synthesizer with a digital overlay that allows for additional functionality. The work explores the full range of the synthesizer, including its arpeggiator, delay and multi-layering functions. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates new approaches to analogue synthesizer technologies, bringing a formal classical technique to these instruments which have primarily been used by rock/pop musicians (including Radiohead and James Blake). The work has been recorded for commercial release on the Nonclassical label and will be premiered on April 21 2023, with further impacts expected after this date. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/a177dc62712a7b96adfe |
| Title | Steel on Bone |
| Description | This new work by Zubin Kanga utilises the motion and gesture-sensing gloves by MiMU (Cyborg Soloists Industry Partner), using these to shape the sound generated from inside the piano. The work was premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 22 November 2021, and then performed at Kontraklang Berlin on 3 December 2021. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The work shows how MiMU gloves can be combined with Ableton Live, a common Digital-Audio Workstation used by musicians in the contemporary music scene. Both the MiMU programming patch, and the Ableton session are being published on the website at the end of March. The integration of theatre, performance art and music, in a work around motion-based technologies also provides a model for future collaborations around motion-based technologies with other Cyborg Soloists partners, including Plux and Holonic Systems. The work was favourably reviewed in The Times, who wrote: "But it was impossible not to be gripped and fascinated by Zubin Kanga's Steel on Bone, featuring the adventurous composer-pianist all wired up with electronics, poking around in his piano's innards wearing expensive multi-sensor gloves that transfer hand movements into sound. Henry Cowell, the pioneering American piano basher famous for his cluster chords played with the forearms, would surely have loved the bravura and madness of Steel on Bone. I know I did." - Geoff Brown, The Times, 23 November 2021 The performance at hcmf// was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on the New Music Show on 4 December 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00126tv?fbclid=IwAR2nHi5BBlOaIf3cRpIGqZlEOXqaVqTtdnKC-CpffVoypvSLi20VFs3md3M BBC Radio 3 as a weekly audience of 1,993,000 listeners (https://media.info/radio/stations/bbc-radio-3/listening-figures). The broadcast was available online on the BBC website for 4 weeks after the initial broadcast. |
| Title | Unstuck In Time by Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi |
| Description | New work co-created with Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi for Distractfold Ensemble that uses the Vochlea Dubler 2 software to control live video |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Live performance at Another Sky Festival and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmwIuHgDM-0 |
| Title | Vicentino, love you - studies for keyboard by Oliver Leith and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This work composed by Oliver Leith in collaboration with Zubin Kanga uses the TouchKeys technology to play microtonally on a keyboard. This is connected to an analogue synthesizer, combining new touch-sensor technology with retro analogue technologies (thus working across two major Cyborg Soloists themes). |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was a significant demonstration of the experimental TouchKeys technology in action, and has been used as a case study for engineering that can be used in high-level artistic outputs by both TouchKeys and its creator, Prof Andrew McPherson, who cited it in his inaugural professorial lecture at Imperial College, London. |
| URL | https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/publications/vicentino-love-you-studies-for-keyboard-co-created-... |
| Title | Whatever Weighs You Down by Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Whatever Weighs You Down is a new, 45-minute multimedia work for piano, video, electronics, and movement that builds on two previous, critically successful, small-scale pieces for Zubin Kanga. These were 2018 (2016), which explored a sci-fi world of genetically engineered pianists, and Modern Times and Forms of Love (2019), which explored our many relationships to technology, through parodies of advertising and intimate odes to memories of keyboards past. Whatever Weighs You Down explores fissures of communication within media environments through the rhetoric of 'object-based' broadcasting; techniques for making multimedia environments accessible for audiences with visual or hearing impairments. This flexible approach to the creation of broadcast media allows its individual elements (i.e. audio, video, captioning) to be reconfigured, re-mixed, re-formatted. Kanga's live performance is underlined, outlined, and extrapolated out into electronic sound diffusion, video clips, subtitles, textual descriptions and performed gestures. The performance will mix piano performance, theatre, and live and pre-recorded video and electronics sculpted using MiMU's motion/gesture-sensor glove technology. Central to the piece, Chisato Minamimura, a Deaf performance artist who integrates British Sign Language into her practice, who will appear on screen a parallel performer. Whatever Weighs You Down disorientates and elucidates for the listener/viewer the slipperiness, truths and fallacies of multimedia constructs. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates how new digital instruments can facilitate collaborations between disabled and non-disabled artists. This impacted on all the collaborating artists (including Chisato Minamimura and her Deaf-centred practice). This aspect of the work was featured in a New York Times article, bringing the findings of the research to a worldwide audience. The work also demonstrated to audiences how the MiMU glove can be integrated into an interdisciplinary work, forging a connection between gesture on stage and an on screen. This work was performed to audiences of 250 across the two performances in the UK and the Netherlands. On the impact on his practice, Luck writes: "It's certainly made me more open to the possibilities of integrating new technologies into my work. Specifically the collaboration fostered a consideration of the semiotics of hardware and technology in live work. how to integrate devices/hardware dramaturgically into live situations. The lessons from this, I am carrying on into future work." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/600de12b256573cb356d |
| Title | Where the Paths End by Seán Clancy |
| Description | This is a multi-part work, co-created by Seán Clancy in collaboration with Cyborg Soloists. The work exists as a set of soundwalks utilising the Echoes geo-location software, allowing participants a guided sonic experience around three different UK cities. It also exists as a concert piece for Plus Minus Ensemble, utilising the same sounds used in the soundwalks, creating these cityscapes in a concert space. Each soundwalk takes about 40 - 50 minutes to experience, and they are located in areas of cultural importance within reasonable walking distance of the venues of the Reid Concert Hall (Edinburgh), Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Birmingham), and Cafe Oto (London), where live performances of this piece first occurred. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The work was performed in 4 concerts by Plus Minus ensemble: Edinburgh, Birmingham, London and Copenhagen (Denmark) for Minu Festival. |
| URL | https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/4CMm5JEWHM5Orr4A |
| Title | Whirling Dervishes by Shiva Feshareki |
| Description | Whirling Dervishes is a new 45-minute wor inspired by the ancient Sufi tradition where dancers spin until they reach a simultaneously meditative and ecstatic state. The electronics were created out of Feshareki's spatial turntable improvisations, edited together and distributed into a 360° sonic space using cutting-edge ambisonic technology. The reinvented sounds of her previous compositions, cathedral choirs, warped pianos and Shiva's own voice swirl around the audience, infinitely transforming in a constant state of flux. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates new innovations around the use of analogue technologies, taking sounds from turntables and making them move around the room using ambisonic surround sound. The work is due to be premiered in late 2023, with expected further impacts on audiences and other musicians. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/78d7117b59e6ab252a48 |
| Title | cybird cybird by Nina Whiteman and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This work combines AI-generated audio, AI-generated text an speech and AI-generated avatars in a work exploring how birdsong is evolving due to urban sounds. It also uses motion sensor technology from industry partners, Movesense and Holonic Systems to allow the performer to control sound through hand movements. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates the use of AI-generated audio, created with Cyborg Soloists collaborating research Christopher Melen from PRiSM, Royal Northern College of Music. It also demonstrates the use of motion sensors with a commercial app to create an interdisciplinary work, using movement through the air to control sound. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/a99968b762ad57e8cf32 |
| Title | hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess by Luke Nickel |
| Description | hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess by Luke Nickel is a groundbreaking work using five Core devices (haptic metronomes) by project partner Soundbrenner. It links these to 3D rollercoaster visuals, creating constantly changing tempi that are haptically transmitted to the pianist's arms, and into the piano strings, from devices placed directly on the strings, creating a virtuosic game of constantly shifting rhythms. The visuals and sounds are transformed using AI systems (including those by Holly+) to create uncanny versions of the original textures. Finally, the Soundbrenner devices are linked to strobe lights, with all of them controlled using a 3D motion sensor - the Wave by Genki Instruments. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work combines Soundbrenner Core devices, 3D visuals, AI manipulation of sound and video, strobe lights and a motion sensor, in a virtuosic and spectacular work. It was premiered on 9 March 2022 at Submerge Festival, Manchester, with 9 performance in total (London, Canterbury, Cambridge, Ludomusicology conference, Convergence Conference at DMU, Leicester, Music in the Round (Sheffield) and Jesus College, Oxford). The work has produced a technical output - a patch that facilitates communication between the app and the No Limits visual programming software. It is a model for future collaborations using Soundbrenner devices - both syncing with video, electronic sound and lights, and being controlled by a 3D accelerometer. And it is also a model for future interdisciplinary collaborations, using a single device outside of its originally intended setting to create an interdisciplinary and entirely original approach to the combination of product, music, other arts and other technologies. Finally, the requirements of the work have resulted in experimental features of the app (in a testflight version used for the development of this work) being implemented by Soundbrenner into their commercial app - these include the ability to control multiple Soundbrenner devices individually using MIDI, which significantly widen the scope and musical possibilities for these devices into the future. On the impact on the composer, Nickel writes: "My collaboration with Cyborg Soloists profoundly impacted my practice with technology. During the project I deepened and solidified my understanding of Max/MSP as it relates to live performance; developed rudimentary coding skills in Python and R; experimented with AI image and audio generation using a variety of tools; and learned about integrating haptic wearables into a pipeline of creation and performance. I am more confident in my use of technology and, interestingly, now identify as a composer who "works with technology"." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/7311de9e9a57c0830fb2 |
| Title | hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess by Luke Nickel and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Concert film of hhiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, co-created by Luke Nickel and Zubin Kanga Recorded live at Submerge Festival, Manchester, 18 March 2022. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The video has received 335 views across Zubin Kanga and Cyborg Soloists' youtube accounts. |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXkfz_QDwI0 |
| Title | one hundred random demons by Jasmin Kent Rodgman |
| Description | This work combines MiMU gloves, table objects, tape players and modular synthesizers with light sensors in one hundred random demons, a work inspired by Japanese folklore where tools and manmade objects have acquired a 'kami' or spirit, becoming 'tsukumogami'. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | The work shows how MiMU gloves can be used to control external analogue instruments, such as a synthesizer. It also demonstrates the integration of digital instruments (MiMU gloves), modular synthesizers and tabletop percussion (such as a kalimba). It will be premiered in April 2023, with further impacts expected after this. On the impact on her practice, Rodgman writes: "Writing 'one hundred random demons' has certainly pushed me to integrate new technologies more or be bolder with the technologies used within my work. The collaboration has reiterated how creative and symbiotic the 'discovery' of new music and technologies can be between composer and performer. That discovery, and the many questions and tendrils of thought that are born from this collaboration, have set in motion an approach to music-making that I hadn't thought of before. At the same time, although the physical, neurological or linguistic processing/effects that technology can bring to music are endless, it also reminds me that 'new technologies' have always been at the heart of music-making whether that be the evolution of an instrument or the evolution and extension of performance technique. Watching the other Cyborg Soloist projects come to life was equally as inspiring. Discovering the other composers' approaches and ideas (from performance technique to orchestration to musical material) has been an incredibly fruitful experience and I am grateful to have been part of the wider project. I take some of the ideas that have sprung from my listening into my future work with much excitement! In that regard, Cyborg Soloists has expanded my 'world view' on what music-making can be defined as, and leaves me extremely motivated about the possibilities of our industry and culture going forwards. Practically, I've learnt how I best like to create and develop a piece with the performer at this point in my career, particularly if it uses new technology that neither of us are totally familiar with. Zubin's generosity with his time and workshopping material and ironing out the kinks meant that not only did it provide me with valuable insight into his role as performer, but also outline how I'd like to work with new music and projects going forwards. The integration of the performer into the writing process throughout the Cyborg Soloists project, in such a purposeful and planned way, has bolstered how I approach new projects and collaborators. My practice is already highly collaborative. Whilst not always the most 'expedient' process (collaboration takes time), it's important to acknowledge the value of going slow and allowing space for both parties to digest the academic, creative and physical demands of the technologies Zubin and the CS project research and use. This ethos is something I'm taking forwards with me to new projects. During the creative process, the notion of the body as extension of the instrument is sometimes evolved to such a degree that the body of the performer is the instrument itself. In reality, I suppose our body is the most complex technology one can find, and so to tap into that line of thinking and those possibilities going forwards is definitely something carried forwards to new projects. Practically, it has taught me that aside from the performer, the recruitment and collaboration with a sound engineer - to tackle and aid the integration of technology into the piece - helps massively unless I am completely au fait with the technology in question. Since 'one hundred random demons' I have worked with a sound engineer twice integrating new technology into my work/projects, such as motion sensors and L-ISA surround sound mixing. This partnership has really helped that integration and allowed me to understand the language and functionality of the technology better, whilst writing and later performing the work." |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/16a26fedcbf6954a9a66 |
| Description | The most significant achievements from the award cover a wide range of innovations in the way live musicians and technology can interact, emerging from our main Workstreams. 1. Extending The Body. There have been multiple major findings in this Workstream: a. Brain Sensors: Collaborating with a Brain-Computer Interaction researcher at the University of Essex, and our industry partner ANT Neuro, we have successfully translated not just brainwaves, but brainwave-based control mechanisms, from EEG sensor technology into music software. This new finding has the potential to change the way music is composed and performed through direct interaction with the brain, and is being used in a collaboration with leading interdisciplinary composer, Alexander Schubert, in a work with a that will reach fruition in the coming months. These innovations also have the potential for impact back on to brain sensor industry and its use with people with disabilities. b. Motion and Gesture Sensors There have been a number of major new works created using motion and gesture sensors, each one innovating new approaches to these wearable devices. Most notably, Zubin Kanga's collaboration with Neil Luck on Whatever Weighs You Down, which featured interactions between MiMU sensor gloves and Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura. The project used gestures derived from British Sign Language, and sonified these using the gloves, creating multiple layers of communication and interaction, and demonstrating how technology can facilitate new types of collaboration with disabled artists and audiences. Zubin Kanga's work Steel on Bone used the MiMU gloves to shape and control live piano sound, showing how these digital instruments can be used as a controlling and shaping device with traditional acoustic instruments. And Lola de la Mata's collaboration with Kanga attached motion and biosensors to both the pianist and to two dancers, creating an additional live electronic layer of interaction to this interdisciplinary work, with the performers' movements and heartrates controlling the sound. c. Wearable Metronomes A major work created by Luke Nickel and Zubin Kanga, hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, innovated new ways of using haptic metronomes by controlling multiple devices on the performer's body at once, allowing Kanga to perform tempo curves with both hands in time with on-screen rollercoasters. The resulting control of multiple devices independently has applications to a wide variety of large ensemble uses, as well as for complex session recording - with potential impact on a wide variety of musicians. 2. Remaking the Old A number of new works have innovated new approaches to analogue technologies by combining them with newer digital devices or techniques. Whirling Dervishes uses electronics generated by turntables, but combines this with cutting-edge ambisonics technology to project these in surround sound. one hundred random demons combines both keyboard and modular synthesizers with the MiMU gloves, using a new digital instrument to control older analogue devices. And in a collaboration with senior composer, Tansy Davies, a classic Prophet keyboard synthesizer, used previously by pop musicians, has been reimagined using Davies' orchestral techniques. 3. Video-Body Interactions Many works explore new uses of the video on stage - in Whatever Weighs You Down, Deaf Performance Artist Chisato Minamimura appears as a co-performer onscreen, her BSL gestures interacting with the action on stage. Alwynne Pritchard collaborated with Zubin Kanga to have him duetting with multiple onscreen versions of himself, all playing the same audio score. And Robert Reid Allan worked with Zubin Kanga to use a TouchKeys keyboard to trigger video samples, showing how a new digital instrument can be used to not just control sound, but video. 4. Hyperinstruments A major work was created with the KeyScanner, a new experimental instrument that converts a piano into a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. This was used in Philip Venables and Zubin Kanga's Answer Machine Tape, 1987, allowing the pianist to type onto screen using the piano, in a work exploring the 1980s AIDS crisis. Cyborg Soloists collaborated closely with Prof Andrew McPherson (Augmented Instruments Laboratory) in honing the design and implementation of the prototype KeyScanner, creating improvements over an iterative process and feeding back the results from the artistic work - these are being implemented into the planned commercial models of the device. There have also been a number of works with instruments from industry partners ROLI and TouchKeys, including those co-created with Alex Groves, CHAINES, Robin Haigh and Robert Reid Allan, with each one innovating new ground in how sensors attached to keyboard instruments can be used to expressive ends. And a new robotic piano mechanism (co-created with Sam Underwood) can allow composers to create sounds using hammers and electromagnets inside the piano, remotely, demonstrating how traditional instruments can be extended, while still utilising their acoustic properties. 5. AI Collaborating with Dr Christopher Melen at the Centre for Practice and Research in Science and Music (RNCM), a number of groundbreaking works were created using AI-generated audio (trained on field recordings, as well as performers' own recordings) and on musical scores (using medieval scores from the British library). These projects, including Kanga's Metamemory (AI audio) and Dyer's Scribe (AI scores) show how AI can be used to explore our music history, creating new works that bring a fresh perspective to the historical models the AI is trained on. 6. Hybrid Works A number of collaborations have resulted in hybrid staged works, the most notable being the collaboration with Laura Bowler on SHOW(ti)ME, which explores musicians' private and public lives (including performance anxiety, contrasted with social media personas). The work combined MiMU gloves, two live videos, pre-made films, live and fixed electronics, speech and theatre, creating a work that broked new ground in how interdisciplinary interactions around music can be expanded and controlled using new technologies. -- Besides the work created, there have been numerous article and conference papers published/delivered around the, as well as more than two dozen technical outputs: downloads of the patches and applications generated, which can be used as tools and models for composers and performers. Objectives All the objectives are being met, with further plans for the future: - To create a Creative R&D hub for interdisciplinary music at Royal Holloway, facilitating the collaboration of a diverse range of composers, performers and technological innovators, to develop the next stage of interdisciplinary music works. Cyborg Soloists has become a vibrant hub of activity with 40 composers, 4 researchers, 15 industry partners (and more joining) and 8 solo performers or ensembles involved in the project. The musicians include many of the leading composers in the UK. We also pride ourselves on the diversity of the collaborators, with a commitment to ensuring gender and racial diversity, as well as inclusion of artists with disabilities. - To develop new electronic musical instruments in dialogues between instrument builders and target performers. As noted above, there have been new instruments built (including he robotic piano mechanism) instruments where the artistic work has influenced their design (the KeyScanner) and existing instruments that have been used in entirely different ways to how they were designed, far from their standard use cases (including the Soundbrenner metronomes, LUMI and TouchKeys keyboards, MiMU gloves, and analogue synthesizers. - To develop new modes of audio and video interaction with live performers. As noted above, there have been many different innovations in the use of video with live performers onstage, from hybrid works where gesture onscreen produces sound onstage when mirrored by the live performer to the use of new digital instruments to control video. Future projects will further innovate in this field, including using brain sensors to control video and lights onstage. - To develop new modes of creative practice using live performers and vintage/analogue technologies. As noted above there have been multiple projects innovating new approaches to synthesizers (both through the compositional technique, and in the combination with digital instruments to control them) and turntables (using ambisonics to use project these in surround sound). - To disseminate the new innovations, both to an academic audience as well as to other musicians, technological innovators in related fields and to the wider public through a range of published and film-based outputs. The innovations have been disseminated to academic audiences through 16 conference papers and publications, and to thousands of members of the public through concerts across the UK and to five countries across Europe. Concert films have been created of all works, which are being posted to the Cyborg Soloists channels and social media channels, as well as smaller demonstration videos showcasing the new technologies. The wider public has also been reached through media interviews and feature articles, including with the BBC World Service, The New York Times, The Times (UK), The Wire, and Limelight Magazine. - To create a series of major musical works, for soloists and chamber groups with other artists featuring the new technological innovations, with outputs featured at major international festivals. The project has created 26 works (with another 14 about to reach completion in the coming months) each innovating in a different way with how live musicians and new technologies can interact. These have been featured at international festivals including: Paris Autumn Festival, Gaudeamus Festival (Netherlands), November Music (Netherlands), Time of Music (Finland), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Kontraklang (Germany) and Music Current (Ireland). |
| Exploitation Route | These outcomes can be used by musicians, not just in the field of contemporary music, but across all genres. The innovations with haptic metronomes have applications to session musicians recording film scores. The innovations with gesture-based instruments could be used by popular musicians doing movement-based stage shows. And the new hybrid and digital instruments have the potential to open new ways for conventional instruments to be expanded, with not just artistic but educational and therapeutic applications. And musicians (both students and professionals) can also learn from the compositional models of the works created, understanding how music and technology can combine to create hybrid interdisciplinary works that foreground a new type of cyborg performer. The academic field is being influenced by the project, as one of the few examining new music projects using experimental technologies, with a Special Issue, a Research Forum and a Symposium planned to further disseminate our examination of this new field to a wider academic audience. The AI-based outcomes can be used as models for future uses of AI on curated historical datasets, forging a different approach to the most recent online uses of AI which uses internet-trawled data. And the brain sensor-outcomes have the potential be game-changing not just in how brain sensors are used in art, but how people with disabilities can engage with and create art, both for creative and therapeutic uses. As noted in the impacts section, the project findings are affecting the design and implementation of technologies created by our collaborators and partners, and for technology researchers, our findings could be used by future instrument designers to create instruments that are both flexible and easy to use. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://www.cyborgsoloists.com |
| Description | The Cyborg Soloists project has generated impacts at a local, national and international level, reaching professional musicians, technology creators, students and the wider public. We are also beginning to create important impact within academia. The 46 composers and six performers/ensembles involved in the project so far (excluding the Cyborg Soloists team) have all reported that their participation in the Cyborg Soloists project has resulted in changes in how they approach technology. For example, one composer credits the project with their "now identifying as a composer who 'works with technology'", while multiple others have stated that their participation has "made [them] more open to the possibilities of integrating new technologies into [their] work". Other changes reported include the development of new knowledge and skills for those musicians that they are applying to future works. The technical innovations covered by this group include the use of body-mounted sensors, new digital instruments, hybrid instruments, new video interactions, new approaches to electronics, new approaches to analogue technologies, and AI. The innovations of the new, completed pieces by these composers are also influencing other composers. We are seeing Cyborg-Soloists-commissioned works being used as models for innovation and as points for the adaptation and extension of software innovations for use in other works. For example, the conversion of rollercoaster data into musical scores and tempi, developed in collaboration with Soundbrenner, is being used by Luke Nickel in his upcoming work for the Bozzini Quartet, Robin Haigh was able to use the prior TouchKeys software settings and Ableton session used by Robert Reid Allan for his own work, Morrow, and Research Administrator, Caitlin Rowley was able to use CHAINES' Ableton Live set for Escape TERF Island to transfer understanding of how to work with field recordings on a ROLI LUMI to apply to an older ROLI Seaboard Block. She has plans to use this knowledge in a new piece for keyboard duo. Solomiya Moroz has used her Cyborg Soloists collaboration, Returns and Simulacra, as a central case for her own Digiscores research and future practice with multimedia scores, and Laurence Osborn's use of the ROLI Seaboard RISE 2 in his upcoming concerto has been informed by the mechanisms of MIDI control used by Benjamin Tassie in his work, Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees. Early Career composers and performers (chosen through public calls) have been mentored by the Cyborg Soloists team and benefited from the publicity surrounding their work for the project. This has taken the form of profiles on the project website, mentions on our social media channels with links to artists' own channels where available, blog posts and performances. We hosted the premieres of two new works by early career composers in May 2023, programming them alongside a well-known performer also involved in the project. This performance gained a sizeable, receptive audience to be introduced to these less established artists' work. Audience members reported that they had their "perceptions changed by the aesthetic qualities of body, tech, performer, sound" in this performance, and the Early Career composers and performers reported that the project will influence their future practice, including Ben Jameson who said, "I will take my experiences from the Cyborg Soloists project with me when working on future projects involving technology, as I will be more open to letting the technology guide me to new approaches, rather than simply treating it as a tool to achieve my own goals". In 2024, our student call resulted in three new pieces using technologies by ROLI and ShowSync by postgraduate and undergraduate composer-performers. These composers' works were performed in March 2024 in a concert in Royal Holloway, University of London's New Sounds Festival to an audience of students, staff and the public. The impact on musicians has been facilitated through their direct work with the project, through encountering the works in concerts, through viewing concert films, and through public workshops and demonstrations. Comments from musicians in the audiences for our performances indicate that attendance has impacted how they think about technology, with comments such as "I often had mechanical input producing signal for the speakers and raw data to be interpreted by a musician, but I never appreciated the possibilities of mechanical movement as output" and "I would like to explore autonomy of objects and interacting with this - hidden orchestra of things". As we add more downloads to our GitHub repository, this will expand to include impact generated from making patches and apps created for the projects' works available to download. Surveys of our audiences across the UK have demonstrated changed perceptions of how technology can be used in music, as well as their perception of the technologies themselves (such as AI, motion sensors and innovative software), with audience members reporting being 'inspired', 'intrigued' and 'entertained'. Audience members have come from diverse occupations including Software Developer, YouTuber, Engineer, Senior Product Manager, GP and Therapist, Programmer and Procurement Officer with positive responses to works and technologies indicating that we are having a positive effect on the general public's experience and understanding of technology in music. The impact on the public can also be seen through the wide media attention the project has received, including a feature article in The New York Times (8.6 million subscribers), a live performance and interview on BBC World Service's show Digital Planet as well as a panel interview on Music Life (1.2 million listeners), a video interview for New Scientist (4.2 million weekly visits), multiple broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, (1.7 million weekly listeners), and interview and live broadcast on Times Radio (492,000 weekly listeners), feature interviews in The Wire, Limelight, Classical Music Magazine, International Arts Manager, Presto Music, The Big Issue, and Readers Digest, and reviews of project performances in The Times, The Wire, I Care If You Listen, All About Jazz, Classical Music Magazine, BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, Limelight, The Quietus, The Telegraph, The Cusp, Nieuwe Noten (Netherlands) and AltaMusic (France). Our performances and recordings are bringing the innovations of Cyborg Soloists musicians and industry partners to a large international audience. Live events have demonstrated these technologies to 4050 people across the UK, Europe and Canada (eight countries so far), including performances at many of the world's biggest contemporary music festivals, including Paris Autumn Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Gaudeamus Festival (Netherlands), November Music (Netherlands), Flagey Piano Days (Belgium), Time of Music (Finland), MINU Festival (Denmark), Modulus Festival (Canada), Musica Festival (France). In 2023, Cyborg Soloists has for the first time reached audiences for live performance in Canada, through Zubin Kanga's performance at Modulus Festival. Kanga's performance at Gaudeamus in 2022 led to an approach from their Artistic Director, confirming a performance at the 2024 festival and the co-commissioning of a new Cyborg Soloists work for this performance. The Artistic Director has indicated that they are interested in a long-term relationship with Kanga and the project based on the success of 2022's performance. This emerging relationship will enable the further development of audiences for interdisciplinary music in the Netherlands and provide more opportunities to expose those audiences to the developments being created through Cyborg Soloists. Live performances and recordings have also been broadcast, livestreamed and posted online, reaching over 5 million audience members from countries including Canada and Australia as well as the UK. With the release of two solo albums consisting entirely of Cyborg Soloists-commissioned works in 2023, the works on these albums have received considerable airplay and attention on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, Resonance FM, The Wire, Women's Radio Station, and Time Radio Our performances have provided an opportunity for audience members to engage with the technology after concerts, with demonstrations taking place at many events. Audiences at 13 concerts have been able to see the Soundbrenner haptic metronomes at close quarters and learn how they work, while six large festival audiences have been able to examine and discuss the KeyScanner used in Philip Venables' Answer Machine Tape, 1987, including discussions about the wide range of possible future applications of this hybrid instrument, using MIDI data generated by an optical scanner attached to a piano to control light or live sound interaction. This technology is also being utilised in the upcoming co-commission with Gaudeamus Festival in the Netherlands. There have also been discussions and demonstrations of the MiMU gloves after performances of Neil Luck and Zubin Kanga's Whatever Weighs You Down, Amble Skuse's Interitations, Laura Bowler's SHOW(ti)ME and Zubin Kanga's Steel on Bone, at both performances and presentations to students, with discussions emerging about how the MiMU gloves work with common music software, how other Deaf artists might be able to use the technology, about the influence of British Sign Language in Whatever Weighs You Down, and its use of the gloves, and how these types of instruments can be used as accessible instruments for disabled artists. Audience members have expressed high levels of interest in seeing how these technologies work, including in demonstrations and discussions after performances. Through the performances and demonstrations, members of the public have gained a deeper understanding about the breadth of ways in which music can benefit from new technologies. This also supports the growing interest in the field as a whole that we are seeing, with one audience member stating, "it sparked interest in the nexus between diverse technologies, in particular film, poetry & multiple strands of sound playing off each other". This increasing audience interest has benefits for this technologically focused sector of the music industry. Our website and social media channels are providing insights into the creative process around making new musical works with cutting-edge technologies. We have worked with our artists to create new blog posts around the work done on certain pieces, which have included a how-to guide from early career composer Ed Cooper, a post about translating a concept into reality from Luke Nickel and a post from Ben Jameson about how to extend the capabilities of the software used in Aeolian Fantasy. Individual artists are also posting on their own channels about the work they are doing, and we are using 'retweet' and 'repost' facilities on social media to help them reach a wider audience. Between our own accounts and our artists', our promotional work on social media is sharing these insights with often thousands of people across multiple social media platforms, introducing this audience to the innovations and new ideas being created within Cyborg Soloists. Our online recordings and videos have also had significant reach. Performances have been viewed by 5602 people across 6 countries. 8,220 have viewed performance videos online, 10,100 have listened to online recordings and our website has received 7,818 visitors. Our technology collaborators and partners have also reported being impacted by their involvement in our research. Soundbrenner, for example, have increased the capabilities of their existing app based on the requirements of Cyborg Soloists research, facilitating the independent control of devices with different tempi as a result of Luke Nickel's requirements for his piece, a change which expands the future capabilities of their technology and brings with it an opportunity for further market expansion for this partner, which currently has 7,900 users of this app. The Augmented Instruments Laboratory have refined the design of their Keyscanner technology through alterations and updates to their prototype instruments based on consultation with Cyborg Soloists and the real-world use of the device in our performances. PRiSM have gained new knowledge about the capabilities of their Sample RNN Neural Network software through its application on medieval scores for Mark Dyer's piece Scribe, and through the use of the large dataset in Zubin Kanga's Metamemory. This new knowledge is being implemented in Emily Howard's new solo work for Cyborg Soloists, Deviance. Our impact on academia has also been significant. We have identified that the use of technology within 'Music in the Expanded Field' (music with interdisciplinary interactions) has been little studied, and our work resulted in an invitation from Contemporary Music Review to create a Special Issue of this journal on the post-human performer. This was published in 2023 and its articles have received over 2,300 views in its first three months of publication. We have also reached many UK students, through guest seminars, lectures and demonstration workshops around the UK, and through their participation in new works. To date we have received invitations to present at the Guildhall School of Music, Royal College of Music, Kings (University of London), University of Nottingham, Kingston University, and University of Malta, demonstrating the importance of this work to the current generation of students. We have also undertaken presentations/demonstrations for school students at Waldegrave School (London) and Xavier College (Manchester). We are seeing several projects and developments emerging that are starting to show strong potential for future impacts, including developments, such as the translation of brain sensor data from ANT Neuro hardware into OSC, which is used by music software. These developments make the latest technological hardware and software easier to use and provide models for their use, demonstrating to our technology partners ways in which they can evolve their products to reach potential new audiences - in this case, allowing ANT Neuro brain sensor caps to be used by artists for the first time. The Innovation Forum we hosted brought together the leading researchers in practice research around new technologies (with the support of funding from the National Centre for Research Methods) and has resulted in a position paper which has recently been published on the NCRM's website. This is the first publication on the topic of methodologies for practice-based research in contemporary classical music which engages with technology, and we were delighted to find that every researcher in the forum was excited to be involved in preparing this output from the forum. We - and the other participants - are now promoting this publication and are looking forward to observing the discussions and further work it prompts from others and within the consultation group. To address the challenges to both accessibility and expertise that can prevent musicians from engaging with new technologies, we are planning workshop sessions to explore a variety of technological tools as well as further outreach and activities to school students and Higher Education students and Early Career artists, providing access to both the tools and the findings from the first three years of the project. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Description | Innovation Forum on Practice Research around New Technologies |
| Geographic Reach | Europe |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| URL | https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/about/engage/music.php |
| Description | Augmented Instrument Laboratory |
| Organisation | Queen Mary University of London |
| Department | Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Working with the Augmented Instrument Laboratory - created the first new works with their prototype Keyscanner. Changes to the design and implementation of this hybrid digital device were fed back by Zubin Kanga to the researchers to aid in their iterative design process. The first major work using the Keyscanner was also created, Answer Machine Tape, 1987, which toured to major festivals in Finland, the Netherlands, UK and France. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Technical advice, repairs and updates to equipment, and troubleshooting of technical problems using the Keyscanner. |
| Impact | New Work: Answer Machine Tape, 1987 by Zubin Kanga and Philip Venables Performances: Time of Music Festival (Finland), November Music (Netherlands), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Paris Autumn Festival (France) Software Outputs: Max patch for MIDI-to-text translation to allow the piano to type onto screen using the Keyscanner Media: Feature articles in Limelight Magazine, The Wire and reviews in European press |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Engineering Laboratory |
| Organisation | University of Essex |
| Department | School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Zubin Kanga worked with researcher Serafeim Perdikis (Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Engineering Laboratory) to create a package of software that allows brainwave data to be taken from ANT Neuro equipment and translated into music software, using EEG Steady State phenomena. The Systems Analysis, testing and coordination with the industry partner were done by Zubin Kanga and Cyborg Soloists. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Serafeim Perdikis provided programming of the software package in response to the systems analysis, providing software for data translation, as well as for control of the music software via stimuli to the visual cortex. Perdikis also provided additional support and programming changes in response to the Cyborg Soloists team to allow it to better work in live musical implementations. |
| Impact | New software package: Allowing the control of music software via EEG brain sensors. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Collaboration with ROLI Luminary |
| Organisation | ROLI |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Developments in collaboration with Cee Haines (CHAINES) and Alex Groves using LUMI keyboards and touchpads. Further development work in process with Benjamin Tassie using the ROLI Seaboards. |
| Collaborator Contribution | A 25 key Seaboard block keyboard was given to the project. Further advice on integration of the ROLI keyboards with other software was provided. |
| Impact | New Work: Escape TERF Island by Cee Haines (CHAINES) and Zubin Kanga Performance: Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London Software output: Ableton patch for use of MPE with ROLI devices New work: Single Form (Swell) by Alex Groves and Zubin Kanga Performance: Music in the Round (Sheffield) and Jesus College, Oxford Software output: Ableton patch for the use of MPE with LUMI devices |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | PRiSM |
| Organisation | Royal Northern College of Music |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Collaboration with the PRiSM research centre at the Royal Northern College of Music. The Cyborg Soloists team have created a number of new works using AI-generated audio and visuals, using PRiSM's software and collaborating with their software engineer. Zubin Kanga, Nina Whiteman and Mark Dyer have provided PRiSM with datasets from which to build neural networks. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Christopher Melen (software engineer at PRiSM) has generated neural networks using datasets provided by Cyborg Soloists and collaborating artists, sending back the generated audio and visuals. The results have been AI-generated music and musical scores. He also provided a training day for the Cyborg Soloists team and invited members of the RHUL music department. |
| Impact | New Work: cybird cybird by Nina Whiteman and Zubin Kanga Performances: Music in the Round (Sheffield) and Cafe Oto (London) New work: Metamemory by Zubin Kanga New work: Scribe by Mark Dyer |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Plux |
| Organisation | PLUX - Wireless Biosignals |
| Country | Portugal |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | The research team has facilitated a new work with Plux systems to create a new work combining their sensors with a bespoke control system. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Plux has provided a number of Bitalino systems to Cyborg Soloists, including two of their Revolution board kits, and 3 Bitalino plugged kit systems (including many combinations of bio sensors including EEG, EMG and ECG). |
| Impact | New Work: Signs of Life by Joe Snape |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Title | Ableton Live patch for Escape TERF Island - using ROLI devices |
| Description | Ableton Live patch for Escape TERF Island - using ROLI (project partner) devices (LUMI keyboards and touchpads). The session uses MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) in combination with the ROLI devices and bespoke sounds to allow the performer to alter the sounds through touch sensors on the keys. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This Ableton Live patch will be a model for future uses of MPE with the ROLI keyboards and touchpads by Cyborg Soloists composers |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Escape-TERF-Island |
| Title | Ableton and Glover patches for Whatever Weighs You Down |
| Description | These patches allow the control of an Ableton session to play and manipulate a set of patches, using the MiMU sensor gloves. The Glover patch implements this digital instrument with a wide range of functions to allow multiple types of gestural interaction. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This software demonstrates the use of MiMU sensor gloves to control sound, using gestures that have been developed with Deaf Performance Artist, Chisato Minamimura, using elements of British Sign Language. It thus shows how this technology can be used for collaborations with D/deaf artists, and artists with other disabilities. |
| Title | Ableton and Glover patches for one hundred random demons created by Jasmin Kent Rodgman and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | These patches allow the use of MiMU gloves to control an external analogue synthesizer, as well as controlling live audio from modular synthesizers. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | These patches demonstrate the use of MiMU gloves with older analogue technologies (both keyboard and modular synthesizers). It thus shows how new digital instruments can be used to control different generations of instruments, as well as showing new uses and applications of analogue synthesizers. |
| Title | Ableton sessino for Vicentino, love you |
| Description | Ableton session for Vicentino, love you, co-created by Oliver Leith and Zubin Kanga. Demonstrating the use of a TouchKeys keyboard to perform a microtonal work. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Being used as a model by other composers using the TouchKeys, as well as composers writing for other microtonal-capable instruments. The work was also used by a case study by the Industry Partner to demonstrate the successful use of their product in significant artistic outputs. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Vicentino-love-you |
| Title | Ableton session for Counterfeits |
| Description | Ableton session and TouchKeys presets for Counterfeits (co-created by Laurence Osborn and Zubin Kanga), facilitating the use of pitch-bend on vocal samples played on a TouchKeys keyboard. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The Ableton session is being used by Osborn himself for an upcoming Cyborg Soloists work, as well as for other composers using the TouchKeys technology as a model. It was also used as a case study by the industry partner to demonstrate the successful use of their product in high-level artistic outputs. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Counterfeits |
| Title | Ableton session for Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees |
| Description | Ableton session for Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees, co-created by Zubin Kanga and Benjamin Tassie. Demonstrating the use of a ROLI Seaboard Rise to control the speed of Low Frequency Oscillators. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The patch is being used as a model for future composers using the ROLI Seaboard RISE to understand the methods, and limits, of control. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Earth-of-the-Slumbering-and-Liquid-Trees |
| Title | Ableton session for Metamemory by Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This Ableton session shows the loading of AI-generated audio content into a sampler, to be played on a MIDI keyboard. It shows how AI can be used to build instruments, rather than just being utilised in the original form produced by a neural network. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The work will be premiered in April 2022, with large impacts expected after this. There has already been interest from composers (including Luke Nickel) to integrate the same approach into their own work. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Metamemory |
| Title | Ableton session for Single Form (Swell) by Alex Groves and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This patch demonstrates the use of LUMI keyboards (from ROLI) to control sound using pressure, using MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The patch demonstrates how a LUMI keyboard can be used outside of its original educational use case, functioning as a sophisticated expressive instrument using MPE. |
| Title | Ableton, Max for Live and Glover patches for SHOW(ti)ME |
| Description | This set of patches is for the control of sounds and loops in SHOW(ti)ME using a MiMU sensor glove and control pedal (for looping). |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This patch demonstrates the use of MiMU sensor gloves in a theatrical interdisciplinary work, showing how they facilitate a much wider range of interactions on stage compared to other (older) accelerometer-based sensors. |
| Title | Brain-sensor-data-conversion software suite |
| Description | Software suite of patches and apps for the conversion of brain sensor data from ANT Neuro EEG caps into OSC, so it can be used by music software. It also controls analysis patches in Max/MSP for frequency of analysis within the music software. This type of conversion, facilitating conscious brain control of music software, is groundbreaking. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The software is being used for a major work by Alexander Schubert that will be premiered in 2023-2024, using the brain-sensors to control light and sound in an interdisciplinary work. It also has wide potential impacts not just across the music industry but onto therapy and tools for people with disabilities. |
| Title | Exquisite Engine - PureData patch |
| Description | Exquisite Engine is a software-based system written using Pure Data, intended for use with the Bela Mini nanocomputer (with multichannel expansion) with multiple contact microphones. The patch detects attacks on the active channels to trigger and/or manipulate playback of recordings in real time. The first iteration was created for From the Exquisite Dark (created in collaboration with Josh Spear), where the contact microphones were used to trigger playback to give the illusion that non-sounding objects were producing sounds when interacted with by a percussionist. These interactions included striking, stroking, dropping and switching a power switch on/off, and an option was developed to allow the velocity of the interaction to alter the pitch of the sample played back. Components also exist to allow performers to switch between banks of sounds assigned to the channels in use using either a Trill Bar touch sensor or a MIDI pad controller. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This tool was used to create sonic illusions in Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear's co-composed piece 'From the Exquisite Dark'. This piece was performed in Cologne for an audience of 30 people in August 2022. |
| Title | Glover patch and Ableton Live session for Steel on Bone |
| Description | This is a patch in Glover (the tool used to map inputs/outputs of MiMU sensor gloves) and Ableton Live (which takes the data from the gloves and turns these into live sound manipulations). The pair were used in Steel on Bone, which uses the gloves to control the speed of multiple delay lines, granulate the sound to different degrees, and also sample recordings from the inside of the piano, using gesture to trigger the samples, and motion to control filters applied to them. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The Glover patch has formed the basis for new patches being used by Neil Luck and Laura Bowler in their upcoming major works as part of Cyborg Soloists, using MiMU motion sensor gloves. The patches also have applications to the integration of disabled artists into interdisciplinary collaborations, including using the patches translate the movements and British Sign Language gestures of deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura into sound, and allowing physically disabled composer Amble Skuse to compose a work based on large movements. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Steel-on-Bone |
| Title | Logic session for Bad Infinity by Ben Nobuto and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This Logic session is for the control of a Logic sampler instrument using the TouchKeys hardware/software to bend pitch. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This Logic session shows how the TouchKeys hardware/software can be applied outside of Ableton to a range of DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) including Logic. It thus shows the flexibility of the technology for different musical applications. |
| Title | Max patch and Ableton Session for Interiterations by Amble Skuse and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | Max patch for score generation and control of sound using MiMU gloves, and Ableton session for production of the sounds. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This patch demonstrates how control using the MiMU gloves can also be synced with live score generation to create a constantly evolving work. It also demonstrates the output of a collaboration with a disabled artist, whose practice with the gloves has been influenced by their movement disability. |
| Title | Max patch and ableton session for Morrow by Robin Haigh and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This Max/MSP patch and Ableton session allow for bespoke control of sound using the TouchKeys hybrid instrument, using the touch surfaces to control the speed and volume of samples. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This Max/MSP patch shows the versatility of the TouchKeys instrument, with a bespoke application allowing for control of sound outside of the usual pitch-bending use case. The Max patch is also a useful model for any future patches of this type connected to the TouchKeys instrument. |
| Title | Max patch for Answer Machine Tape, 1987 by Philip Venables and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | This Max patch works with a Keyscanner attached to a full size piano - it converts the resulting MIDI signals into text to be typed onto screen. There are controls for the layout of the text, the speed of the tickertape, as well as the cueing of the tape part. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The patch demonstrates the use of MIDI-to-text conversion, which could be applied to a wide range of MIDI instruments and applications. It is also the first use of the Keyscanner in an applied setting (outside of laboratory testing), showcasing this experimental piece of technology. |
| Title | Max/MSP patch and QLab session for hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess by Luke Nickel |
| Description | Max patch and QLab files for hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess by Luke Nickel. The QLab allows the Soundbrenner Core devices to be synced with audio and video, and the Max/MSP patch facilitates the use of a 3D accelerometer ring as a control device for both the Soundbrenner Cores and strobe lights. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The QLab session provides a template for future uses of multiple Soundbrenner devices, controlled by MIDI, and synced with other media. This control system was created as part of an experimental beta version by Soundbrenner, but has now been implemented into their commercial app. The Max/MSP patch allows the Soundbrenner devices and strobe lights to be controlled using a 3D motion sensor (in this case a Wave ring from Genki Instruments). This can be adapted for future projects for the use of any controlling instrument or MIDI controller, with applications to future collaborations with Soundbrenner, as well as any future live control of strobe lights in multimedia works. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/hhiiddeenn-vvoorrttiicceess-performance-patches |
| Title | Max/MSP patch for Fake for piano and electronics |
| Description | Score, patch and other accompanying files for Fake for piano and electronics, created by Fergal Dowling in collaboration with Zubin Kanga. Fake uses AnteScofo software built by IRCAM that follows the score as the pianist plays it, allowing close interaction between pianist and electronics. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The patch demonstrates the innovative possibilities of score-following software (outside its educational applications) and points to future work using AnteScofo and similar software. It will be a model for future work in Cyborg Soloists using score-following apps. |
| Title | Max/MSP patch for connecting the No Limits 2 rollercoaster design software to Soundbrenner haptic metronomes |
| Description | The patch was created as part of the collaboration between Zubin Kanga, Luke Nickel and Julian Vogels, the founder of Soundbrenner (project partner). The patch created by Vogels for the project, allows the speed and location data from the rollercoasters built using this design software to be transferred live into the Soundbrenner Core devices, allowing the tempo to be matched in real-time. This data was recorded by Luke Nickel multiple times with different rollercoaster designs, creating his final piece, hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess, which uses up to 5 tempi at once across 5 Soundbrenner Core devices, attached to the pianist and the piano. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The Max patch will be a basis for future integration of the Soundbrenner devices with a range of external software, and will be used with future Cyborg Soloists works featuring the Soundbrenner devices. The requirements of the work have resulted in experimental features of the app (in a testflight version used for the development of this work) being implemented by Soundbrenner into their commercial app - these include the ability to control multiple Soundbrenner devices individually using MIDI, which significantly widen the scope and musical possibilities for these devices into the future. This is a commercially-relevant impact of the experimental collaboration. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/hhiiddeenn-vvoorrttiicceess |
| Title | Max/MSP patch, TouchKeys preset and Ableton set for Do you share coming out stories still? by Robert Reid Allan |
| Description | This collection contains a Max/MSP patch, TouchKeys preset and Ableton set for Do you share coming out stories still? by Robert Reid Allan. The TouchKeys preset pairs with the Ableton set to facilitate pitch-bends and vibrato using a TouchKeys keyboard. The Max/MSP patch runs separately, and triggers video samples in response to the depressing of selected chords. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | This new work will be a template for future collaborations around the TouchKeys keyboards and software. The Max/MSP patch is also an excellent model for live video triggering. |
| Title | Patches and instructions for use of Movesense and Holonic Systems sensors/apps in cybird cybird by Nina Whiteman and Zubin Kanga |
| Description | These patches allow for the integration of Movesense motion sensors with the Holonic Systems phone app to allow for mobile gestural control of sound. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | These patches demonstrate how Movesense motion sensors can be integrated with the Holonic Systems app - they facilitate the connectivity between two different types of technologies, and how this can be applied to an interdisciplinary work. |
| Title | Pretty Sound (Up and Down) - Ableton Session |
| Description | This Ableton session was developed in collaboration with the composer Simon Steen-Andersen for his work, Pretty Sound (Up and Down). It uses close-microphone techniques on surfaces around the piano as well as on playing tools (a piano-sized wooden board, built for this work by Sam Underwood, and a metal guitar slide). Using specific compression, gate and reverb techniques, this approach to amplification makes the piano sound like an entirely different instrument, with the illusion of electronic sounds created using acoustic playing techniques. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | These microphone techniques will be used in future works that feature extended techniques in the piano, allowing these techniques to be highglighted, and play a larger variety of roles in works by giving options for foregrounding/backgrounding and manipulation of colour within the mix. |
| URL | https://github.com/ZubinKanga/Pretty-Sound-Up-and-Down |
| Title | Remote Robotic Piano Action |
| Description | The Remote Robotic Piano Action was designed and created by Sam Underwood and Richard Sewell in collaboration with Zubin Kanga. The device allows the insides of the piano to be played from a remote location (away from the piano keys) using magnetic resonators and different types of motorised hammers. This is an innovative approach to instrument-building creating a hybrid instrument that uses the sonic possibilities of the piano, but creates many sounds not usually possible. The below link shows photographs of the mechanism in action. |
| Type Of Technology | Systems, Materials & Instrumental Engineering |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The work demonstrates how good design and engineering can achieve a hybrid instrument that is transportable and transferrable between pianos. It has been used by composer Joanna Ward for a new work, and will be used in future works demonstrating its capabilities as a hybrid instrument. It also shows the use of basic robotics in musical instrument design, providing a model for both instrument design and automated performance. |
| URL | https://figshare.com/s/1291618b3b3d54d06d2b |
| Description | Broadcast of Digital Planet programme on BBC World Service, featuring Zubin Kanga performance and interview |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Brought Cyborg Soloists' work to a large live London audience, as well as a very large online and radio audience on the BBC World Service of 1.2 million. This worldwide audience was introduced to the innovative research of Cyborg Soloists, focusing on the possibilities of internet-based scores. 70% of the audience members who responded to our audience survey, gave warm responses about work. Their responses included comments on the unusual nature of the audience being able to contribute to the score of the piece, and the inclusive approach to composition that this feature of the work represents: "Inclusive, in the widest sense of the word. Innovative, unusual.", "Inspiring and enabling" (audience responses from survey). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct31yv |
| Description | Broadcast of Morrow on BBC Radio 3's The New Music Show |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Broadcast of Morrow, co-created by Zubin Kanga and Robin Haigh (featuring TouchKeys technology) on BBC Radio 3, for the New Music Show on 1 April 2023 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Broadcast of Star-Way on BBC Radio 3's The New Music Show |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Broadcast of Star-Way, co-created by Tansy Davies and Zubin Kanga, using a Prophet analogue synthesizer on The New Music Show (BBC Radio 3). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 of Zubin Kanga's performance at hcmf// |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Broadcast of Zubin Kanga's 2021 performance at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on the New Music Show, BBC Radio 3, including his own work Steel on Bone featuring MiMU sensor gloves, and the Ringinglow by Georgia Rodgers, featuring her research into psychoacoustics. BBC Radio 3 has a weekly audience of 1.8 million |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013ryv |
| Description | Broadcast on The Wire show, Adventures in Sound and Music |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Broadcast of SHOW(ti)ME, co-created by Laura Bowler and Zubin Kanga, on the Adventure in Sound and Music show, hosted by Emily Bick, broadcast by The Wire |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/on-air/emily-bick-presents-adventures-in-sound-and-music-69552 |
| Description | Feature Article in International Arts Manager Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Feature article in International Arts Manager Magazine. Includes: "Pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga celebrates the release of his first solo album Cyborg Pianist later this month with a concert at Kings Place in London (30 September). Kanga commissioned five fellow artists - Laura Bowler, Laurence Osborn, Shiva Feshareki, Oliver Letih and Emily Howard - to create new solo piano works which integrate cutting-edge technologies provided by his Cyborg Soloists industry partners." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://internationalartsmanager.com/zubin-kanga-the-cyborg-pianist/ |
| Description | Feature Article in The Big Issue |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Feature article and interview in The Big Issue magazine. Includes: "Wearing black gauntlets and clasping long metal batons, Zubin Kanga's look is a cross between a medieval knight and Edward Scissorhands. The pianist-composer activates unseen spaces in the belly of a grand piano, whipping invisible waves and playing the strings like a drum. Although plenty of avant-garde musicians have created sound from the piano's guts - rather than the keys - Kanga's style is different. As well as the sensor gloves, he incorporates technologies such as AI, a soundworld unveiled in his new album Cyborg Pianist." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.bigissue.com/culture/music/zubin-kanga-cyborg-pianist-classical-music-future/ |
| Description | Feature interview in Classical Music Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Feature interview in Classical Music magazine (winter issue) focusing on Cyborg Soloists and its research. The magazine is published internationally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.classical-music.uk/news/article/winter-2023-issue-out-now |
| Description | Feature interview in Limelight Magazine (March 2023) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Feature interview in Limelight Magazine (readership of 20,000 print and 72,000 online). Focus was on the collaboration with Philip Venables on Answer Machine Tape, 1987, including a demonstration of the Keyscanner as a hybrid instrument that facilitates new ways for instruments to be used on stage (to type and control text and spoken audio). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://limelightmagazine.com.au/march-2023/ |
| Description | Feature interview in The Wire (magazine) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Feature article in this magazine with a readership of 20,000. The interview covered many Cyborg Soloists projects, with a particular focus on the major works toured in the autumn (Whatever Weighs You Down and Answer Machine Tape, 1987). The story has led to greater engagement and attendance at performances later in the season (including at hcmf// in November 2022) and interest by composers and research collaborators to participate in the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/466 |
| Description | Guest lecture at the University of Cambridge |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A guest lecture delivered to students of the Computer Science department at the University of Cambridge on 25 November 2021. 30 students attended, with a high level of engagement with the approaches to performance discussed, and particularly, the use of sensors in new works. There was a discussion about how sensors allow a dimension of theatricality to enter electronic music, and many students had not yet previously considered the role of the performer in the new works they are creating. This was a significant student engagement activity outside of a music department, demonstrating that the research activities are significant to computer science students, and to education in programming and software engineering, and their applications. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2122/L312/materials.html |
| Description | Host for Music Life interview and broadcast (BBC World Service) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Zubin Kanga was the host of a panel interview with Cyborg Soloists composers on the BBC World Service for the Music Life programme. The panel discussed their approach to composing and performing with new technologies, including in their Cyborg Soloists works. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4mh1 |
| Description | Interview and live performance on Times Radio |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Interview and live performance on Ed Vaizy, broadcast on Times Radio. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Interview for Presto Music magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Interview for Presto Music magazine. "The idea of incorporating electric and electronic elements into piano playing is not that new; the very first such instruments date from the 1920s and the technology has been evolving ever since, with today's digital pianos offering a high level of fidelity to the traditional sound. But to take the electronics out of the piano, and attach them to the pianist - that's a bit different. That's what Zubin Kanga's new album Cyborg Pianist does - the instrument itself remains as acoustic, pristine and untouched as any purist could wish for, but through the use of wearable electronics and synthesisers, Kanga takes its sound in a huge variety of exciting directions. I spoke to him about how this technology works, its limits and its potential, and some of the innovative works featured on the album." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/5543--interview-zubin-kanga-the-cyborg-pianist |
| Description | Interview on Future Classic Women's Awards - Women's Radio Station (UK) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Long form interview on Women's Radio Station about Machine Dreams album. Discussing the works by women featured on the album. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://womensradiostation.com/future-classic-women-awards-zubin-kanga-machine-dreams/ |
| Description | London Live TV - morning show interview |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Interview on the morning show on London Live TV, discussing the Machine Dreams album |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Machine Dreams review in The Quietus |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Machine Dreams album in The Quietus. It includes "As Holly Herndon recently remarked on Twitter, truly innovative art based on AI will not be found in repetition and echoes of past works but in "approaches we don't have words for yet". The music of Zubin Kanga has been heading there for a while." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://thequietus.com/articles/32850-zubin-kanga-machine-dreams-review |
| Description | Music Ex Machina conference, co-hosted by Cyborg Soloists and the Technology in Musical Performance working group. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Music Ex Machina conference, co-hosted by Cyborg Soloists and the Technology in Musical Performance working group. The conference brought together researchers exploring the use of new technologies in their practice, in a live conference at Royal Holloway, University of London. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/music/events/music-ex-... |
| Description | New York Times feature article |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This New York Times article featured Zubin Kanga and Cyborg Soloists as part of a discussion about the use of new technologies to allow disabled artists to create music and engage with non-disabled artists. It focused on Zubin Kanga's collaboration with Neil Luck and Deaf Performance Artist, Chisato Minamimura. The article had potential reach of 8.6 million digital subscribers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/arts/music/technology-disability-music.html |
| Description | Presentation about Cyborg Soloists at the University Open Day |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This presentation at Royal Holloway's Open Day looked at a number of AI innovations being used in Cyborg Soloists, as well as our research into Brain-Computer Interaction |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Presentation as part of Royal Holloway Open Day |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Presentation on recent developments in AI and music at an Open Day at Royal Holloway, University of London |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Presentation at Waldegrave School about Cyborg Soloists |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | A presentation to Sixth Form students at Waldegrave School about Cyborg Soloists and research at Royal Holloway, University of London. The students were highly engaged and several attended Open Days at the University held after this as a result. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Presentation at the Research Colloquium of the University of Nottingham Music Department |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Research Colloqium, University of Nottingham Music Department, 14 December 2021: "Towards Musical Cyborgs: Developing New Technological Extensions to the Piano and Pianist". This was an invited talk at the regular research colloquium, addressing the whole music department. I discussed recent works with sensors, including Steel on Bone, created using sensor gloves by industry partner, MiMU. The audience of 60 attendees had lots of questions about the role of the performer in working with new technologies, the engagement with WIKI-PIANO (the internet score), the future plans with Cyborg Soloists, and the approach to collaboration and distributed creativity in the new works. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/humanities/departments/music/documents/2021/autumn-21-term-poster.pdf |
| Description | Project Website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The project website has been created to feature and showcase the research outputs of Cyborg Soloists, including project events and news about project developments and individual pieces. It also documents all the artists working with the project and the works being created. Photographs and videos of work in progress as well as performance documentation are being added gradually, providing a rich resource around the pieces being created for the project. Current partners and collaborators are featured on the site, and potential partners and collaborators can review the scope of our past work and contact us through various channels including email and social media. The site launched in Februrary 2023 and across its 13-month lifetime it has received 8,100 views from 2,700 visitors. Our Google Analytics statistics show our social media channels are effectively directing engaged traffic to our website, especially from Facebook. We have now published ten blog posts, some announcing project news such as our Call for Collaborative Music Projects (viewed by 268 visitors over the 9 months since publication) while others relate directly to pieces created for the project, such as Luke Nickel and Caitlin Rowley's co-authored post 'Roller coaster resonance: Translating speed to pulse', about Nickel's piece 'hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess'. These posts are useful both for enriching the record of the works focused on, but also to draw more attention to the piece, the composer and the industry partner(s) involved. Blog posts are promoted via our social media channels and offer an opportunity to engage these audiences by offering insights into pieces. The site features a rapidly expanding record of Cyborg Soloists activity, including 22 past events (performances and public talks), nine conference papers, seven publications and one recording, and lists 39 artists participating in the project, most with biographies and links to their own websites. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://cyborgsoloists.com |
| Description | Project social media channels |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Cyborg Soloists' social media channels (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and - launched in 2022 - Mastodon and YouTube) are building an international audience for our work and all steadily increasing in reach. We have established connections with our artists' and industry partners' accounts on these channels, allowing us to tag relevant contacts, which creates more mentions of our project, mutual sharing of content and increases the reach of our work. Twitter is our most active and effective channel in terms of reach, engagement and follows, with Instagram posts also proving useful, most notably for short-form video content - short trailers for pieces and demonstrations of technology in particular. Mastodon is a new channel for us in 2022, and while metrics are difficult to access here, we are gradually reaching and retaining an audience that largely comes from a music technology background who we are not particularly reaching through other channels, so while this one is slow to develop, it has a unique audience that does not overlap very much with our other channels. We have also launched a YouTube channel in 2022, to host our performance videos and short-form video content for blog posts and social media. We have just published our second performance video here - the first, of Zubin Kanga performing Luke Nickel's 'hhiiddeenn vvoorrttiicceess' at Submerge Festival in Manchester, has received 149 views since it was released in October 2022. Our short-form video content is also receiving attention - the 4-seconds-long 'short' demonstrating the Augmented Instruments Lab KeyScanner device (used in Philip Venables' Answer Machine Tape, 1987) has received 2,900 views and 62 'likes', reaching an audience mostly in Asia and gaining 3 new subscribers for this new platform for us. Each channel has applied our project's visual identity and is presenting consistently branded communications, with posts being adjusted for tone and detail as appropriate to each channel. All channels are proving an important avenue for engaging with artists, researchers and industry about the project's activities and we are regularly sharing content including text announcements of current activity, photographs and short videos of work being developed or workshopped, blog posts published on our website, information about performances and - in the case of the faster-moving Twitter and Mastodon channels, retweeting news items of interest to our audience, such as relevant conference announcements from other institutions. This additional content helps to keep our audience engaged with us and to build awareness of Cyborg Soloists among the academic community in our areas of interest in particular. We have seen encouraging responses through social media to two projects launched in the past year: our Call for Collaborative Music Projects and the Call for Proposals for our upcoming symposium. Our announcements of the Call for Collaborative Music Projects gained around 7,000 impressions on Twitter alone, with our team's short demonstration videos gaining 179 plays on Instagram - we ultimately received a strong field of 37 applications to this call - 21% of which gave 'social media' as the source they found out about the call from. In February 2023, we launched our Call for Proposals for our upcoming symposium, 'Music Ex Machina: Methods and Methodologies for Technology-centred Practice-Based Research in Contemporary Music'. Our first announcement of this call on Twitter was engaged with 84 times, for a total of 3,667 impressions and 17 new follows. twitter.com/CyborgSoloists Instagram.com/CyborgSoloists facebook.com/CyborgSoloists musicians.today/@cyborgsoloists youtube.com/@cyborgsoloists |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022,2023 |
| URL | http://twitter.com/CyborgSoloists |
| Description | Public lecture at the LightSounds Festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 30 people attended a public lecture as part of the LightSounds Festival, held at Rich Mix in London. The festival celebrated new approaches to the combination of music, light and sound, across many genres. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://lightsounds.uk/artists/zubin-kanga/ |
| Description | Radio interview for RTE Lyric (Ireland) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Radio interview for RTE Lyric (Ireland) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22362291-zubin-kanga-cyborg-soloist-culture-file/ |
| Description | Research Colloqium at Kings College, London |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Presentation to 40 students and 5 staff members at Kings College, London. Students reported changed views on the possibilities of digital instruments, and how they could apply these to their own practice. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/cyborg-soloists-music-technology-and-collaborative-practice |
| Description | Research Seminar at City, University of London |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 15-20 students and 3-4 staff attended a presentation at the City, University of London Music Department Seminar Series. The presentation covered a range of current Cyborg Soloists research. The event took place on 13 April 2022 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/2022/april/the-cyborg-performer-the-performers-role-in... |
| Description | Research Seminar at Kingston University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A research presentation at Kingston University for postgraduate students. 3 students attended and 2 staff. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Research Seminar at the Royal College of Music |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A presentation to 35 postgraduate students, and 1 staff member. Gave an overview of the Cyborg Soloists project and then discussed two case studies in more detail. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Researchworks presentation at Guildhall School of Music and Drama |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This presentation on 19 June 2023, to around 60 research students, staff and members of the public, provided an overview of Cyborg Soloists, before examining two case studies in detail. There were many questions around the issues of collaborating with disabled musicians, the future of digital instruments and the digital tools available to composers. Students provided feedback that they had discovered new ideas about integrating technology into their music, and requested further information about Cyborg Soloists opportunities be sent to them. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/whats-on/researchworks-cyborg-soloists-music-and-technology-in-the-expanded-f... |
| Description | Review in The Times (UK) - 23/11/21 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Review in the The Times (daily readership of 843,766) covering Zubin Kanga's performance at hcmf// in 2021. Kanga's work (featuring MiMU sensor gloves) Steel on Bone received particular praise: "'But it was impossible not to be gripped and fascinated by Zubin Kanga's Steel on Bone, featuring the adventurous composer-pianist all wired up with electronics, poking around in his piano's innards wearing expensive multi-sensor gloves that transfer hand movements into sound. Henry Cowell, the pioneering American piano basher famous for his cluster chords played with the forearms, would surely have loved the bravura and madness of Steel on Bone. I know I did." - Geoff Brown, The Times. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/london-sinfonietta-review-a-riotous-trip-to-catalonia-with-the-mu... |
| Description | Review of Cyborg Pianist in BBC Music Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Cyborg Pianist album (featuring 6 Cyborg Soloists works) in BBC Music Magazine |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Review of Cyborg Pianist in Gramophone magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Cyborg Pianist album (featuring 6 Cyborg Soloists works) in Gramophone magazine. Includes: "It's not uncommon these days for new releases to be saddled with adjectives like groundbreaking or cutting-edge. But from time to time, as on this debut NMC solo disc by Australian pianist and composer Zubin Kanga, those adjectives are warranted. 'Cyborg Pianist' is a result of Kanga's multi-year music research project Cyborg Soloists, hosted at Royal Holloway, exploring technological extensions of the piano. The double-disc release features associated music by a cohort of exciting British composers, and my overall impression is of a new wave of experimentalism, very much modern British in character, influenced by the likes of Jennifer Walshe and Matthew Shlomowitz and having little to do with traditional musical Britishness." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/cyborg-pianist |
| Description | Review of Cyborg Pianist in International Piano Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Cyborg Pianist (featuring 6 Cyborg Soloists works) in International Piano magazine |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Review of Kings Place concert by Zubin Kanga in I Care If You Listen magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review in I Care If Yo Listen magazine of Kings Place performance of Cyborg Pianist (album launch). Includes: "Many instrument builders and music technologists have explored ways of expanding the capabilities of the piano, but their ideas have been forgotten, or at best confined to a museum display, because no repertoire was created. Without composers writing for new technology, it will not survive. By collaborating with many composers of our time, Kanga is doing everything possible to create exciting repertoire for himself, and a lasting legacy for his research." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://icareifyoulisten.com/2023/10/cyborg-soloist-zubin-kanga-mimu-gloved-hands-technology-virtuos... |
| Description | Review of Machine Dreams in All About Jazz |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Machine Dreams album in All About Jazz magazine. Includes: "Most pertinently, Kanga provides a rare opportunity for a diverse range of composers to test their abilities and see if they can make these tools exciting, which is an added bonus to the purely sonic realm of this album. By exploring these technologies in the hands of talented composers, we can gain a better understanding of what they have to offer." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.allaboutjazz.com/machine-dreams-zubin-kanga-nonclassical |
| Description | Review of Machine Dreams in Classical Music Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Machine Dreams in Classical Music Magazine. Includes: "The concept behind pianist, composer and technologist Zubin Kanga's album Machine Dreams was to bring together international experimental composers under the umbrella of a ten-track recording, illustrating sci-fi and contemporary themes. Among the cutting edge toys were pioneering sensor technology, the use of artificial intelligence, biosensors and a range of keyboard and hybrid instruments." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/instrumental/machine-dreams-zubin-kanga |
| Description | Review of Machine Dreams in Limelight Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Review of Machine Dreams album in Limelight Magazine magazine (Australia). Includes: "A futuristic soundtrack in want of an imaginary Ridley Scott film illuminated by moments of euphoria, Zubin Kanga's Machine Dreams is an immediately disconcerting listen, but one that rewards repeated hearings. The Sydney-born, London-based pianist and composer brings his interest in electronic music to the fore in a compendium of new pieces, inspired by classic science-fiction, by 10 composers blending "cutting-edge [motion] sensors, new digital instruments and AI-generated sounds", all filtered through analogue synthesizers and keyboard samplers." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/machine-dreams-zubin-kanga/ |
| Description | Video interview for New Scientist magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Video interview for New Scientist magazine. Focusing on the Cyborg Pianist album and concert project. 1,800 online views. Viewer comments include: "Fascinating. I often wondered what "new" music could sound like after "modern" music. I think these artists show the way!" |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.newscientist.com/video/2402298-cyborg-pianist-transforming-classical-music-with-ai-and-b... |
| Description | When Music Talks - Feature Article in Limelight Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Feature long-form article and interview with Limelight Magazine (Australia), discussing a range of Cyborg Soloists outputs including Answer Machine Tape, 1987 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://limelightmagazine.com.au/features/zubin-kanga-when-music-talks/ |