After nearly three years of planning, we can finally welcome people to MusicLab Copenhagen. This is a unique “science concert” involving the Danish String Quartet, one of the world’s leading classical ensembles. Tonight, they will perform pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Schnittke and folk music in a normal concert setting at Musikhuset in Copenhagen. However, the concert is nothing but normal.
Live music research
During the concert, about twenty researchers from RITMO and partner institutions will conduct investigations and experiments informed by phenomenology, music psychology, complex systems analysis, and music technology. The aim is to answer some big research questions, like:
- What is musical complexity?
- What is the relation between musical absorption and empathy?
- Is there such a thing as a shared zone of absorption, and is it measurable?
- How can musical texture be rendered visually?
The concert will be live-streamed (on YouTube and Facebook) and it will also be aired on Danish radio. There will also be a short film documenting the whole process.
Real-world Open Research
This concert will be the biggest and most complex MusicLab event to date. Still, all the normal “ingredients” of a MusicLab will be in place. The core is a spectacular performance. We will capture a lot of data using state-of-the-art technologies, but in a way that is as little obtrusive as possible for performers and the audience. After the concert, both performers and researchers will talk about the experience.
Of course, being a flagship Open Research project, all the collected data will be shared openly. The researchers will show glimpses of data processing procedures as part of the “data jockeying” at the end of the event. However, it is first when all data is properly uploaded and pre-processed that data processing can start. All the involved researchers will dig into their respective data. But since everything is openly available, anyone can go in and work on the data as they wish.
Proper preparation
Due to the corona situation, the event has been postponed several times. That has been unfortunate and stressful for everyone involved. On the positive side, it has also meant that we have been able to rehearse and prepare very well. Already a year ago we ran a full rehearsal of the technical setup of the concert. We even live-streamed the whole preparation event, in the spirit of “slow TV”:
I am quite confident that things will run smooth during the concert. Of course, there are always obstacles. For example, one of our eye-trackers broke in one of the last tests. And it is always exciting to wait for Apple and Google to approve updates of our MusicLab app in their respective app stores.
Want to see how it went. Have a look here.