On May 22nd 2019, I deliver a keynote on improv and noise, and my practice at the below conference in Ghent, Belgium. Nic Collins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and Nicholas Cook (University of Cambridge) are also speaking. The Orpheus institute is an international team of doctoral and visiting researchers doing and promoting high-quality research into music. The institute is a dedicated, artist-led educational and research centre, generating new knowledge in-and-through musical practice.

Music, Humans, and Machines

Orpheus Doctoral Conference 2019

This conference explores musician’s long relationship with their instruments and instrumentalities, questioning issues of autonomy and agency in the apparent dichotomy between tools and musical expression.

From the “mechane” of Greek theatres from which god figures were suspended, and Mozart’s description of the Stein fortepiano’s knee-lever as “Die Maschine”, to the epoch-defining technologies of recording, sound synthesis, and algorithmic composition of more recent times, performers and composers have relied on mechanical means to create magic in their art.

“Music, Humans and Machines” Orpheus Doctoral Conference, aims to offer the possibility to get a better understanding and to widen the perspectives about the complex relationship between musicians and their instruments, especially pertinent in this moment where human expressivity is entangled in inanimate “machines”. Although the disciplines may be diverse, the conference will focus on the interplay between artistic vision and its mechanical realisation, and through addressing this common thread, new and transdisciplinary ideas may arise.”