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Posts Tagged ‘MIR’

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March: Progress Update

In Reflections on March 3, 2010 at 1:10 pm

March is highlighted by chance opportunities and my ability to capitalize on them, while managing my regular commitments. I love the challenge of seizing up a short-lived opportunity, and creating the foundation of future work. Doing this requires a certainly level of comfort with putting different hats on, which is what a good generalist is able to do effectively. My mind has gotten into a groove that’s very much like the sweet spot every car engine has when it reaches a certain speed: maximum speed with the highest level of efficiency. It does require regular maintenance, like getting enough sleep, taking breaks away from work, and trusting your own ability to work ‘smarter’, not just ‘harder’.

At my KMDI talk, I met the co-founder of a tech start-up that deals with music and computation. My area of expertise is a little ‘softer’ compared to the technical know-how they have. I am interested in the flow of information from the ‘front’ end (interface design, visual communication, visual flow, etc) and the structure of information and knowledge for the user (information architecture, knowledge classification, etc.). Ultimately, we deal with the same ‘stuff’, just different objectives that compliment each other. Knowing how small the community dealing with technological research specific to the music domain is, it was a pleasure to learn that they are based in the city.

In other news, the On-Demand Book Service (ODBS) got a huge injection of money to move some of the current projects forward. The catch? We need to spend all of it before March 31st. I admit, it’s a nice problem to have.

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Idea: Musin’

In Design, music-esque, My Work on June 30, 2009 at 12:20 am

musin_screenshot

While taking the visual thinking class at the Knowledge Media Design Institute this summer, inevitably I wanted to explore its applications within the domain of music. It started as a vague idea followed by a search for something scholarly that Lysanne and I could ground it in. All the while, I had to reign in my tendency to go off in tangents and dreaming up ideas before the practical foundations have been laid. In that sense, Lysanne and I were great partners. The fact that she claims to have no musical inclinations except as an audience no doubt forced me to clarify some of my ideas to make sure it can be well understood. My lack of familiarity with creating models was also cause for exasperation at times. Yet in the end, I think we came up with something pretty cool.

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Visualizing Music: project update

In Design, music-esque, My Work on June 12, 2009 at 8:55 am

Our class is officially ending next week, where a ‘near final’ version of our artifact is to be handed in. Lysanne and I have managed to get a lot of the ground work done, and it’s a matter of actually creating the graphical elements of the poster now, and preparing them for review next Thursday.

This has become essentially a framework for a tool where both a general or amateur audience who is interested in music can explore vis-a-vis musicianship categories, and where more advance and self-aware musicians or students can share their knowledge, and learn from each other. We’re basing our model on Andy Arthur’s article entitled in part, “Transdisciplinary concepts and skills in artistic practice” (2006) and Michael Hannan’s article entitled, “Contemporary music student expectations of musicianship training” (2006). So here’s where we’re at.

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