Running a hybrid conference

There are many ways to run conferences. Here is a summary of how we ran the Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop 2021 at RITMO this week. RPPW is called a workshop, but it is really a full-blown conference. Almost 200 participants enjoy 100 talks and posters, 2 keynote speeches, and 3 music performances spread across 4 days. A group photo of RPPW2021 participants, taken in a Zoom Room before the last poster session....

June 27, 2021 · 15 min · 3025 words · ARJ

Running a successful Zoom Webinar

I have been involved in running some Zoom Webinars over the last year, culminating with the Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop 2021 this week. I have written a general blog post about the production. Here I will write a little more about some lessons learned on running large Zoom Webinars. In previous Webinars, such as the RITMO Seminars by Rebecca Fiebrink and Sean Gallagher, I ran everything from my office. These were completely online events, based on each person sitting with their own laptop....

June 27, 2021 · 6 min · 1240 words · ARJ

New publication: NIME and the Environment

This week I presented the paper NIME and the Environment: Toward a More Sustainable NIME Practice at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) in Shanghai/online with Raul Masu, Adam Pultz Melbye, and John Sullivan. Below is our 3-minute video summary of the paper. And here is the abstract: This paper addresses environmental issues around NIME research and practice. We discuss the formulation of an environmental statement for the conference as well as the initiation of a NIME Eco Wiki containing information on environmental concerns related to the creation of new musical instruments....

June 17, 2021 · 2 min · 328 words · ARJ

Normalize audio in video files

We are organizing the Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop at RITMO next week. As mentioned in another blog post, we have asked presenters to send us pre-recorded videos. They are all available on the workshop page. During the workshop, we will play sets of videos in sequence. When doing a test run today, we discovered that the sound levels differed wildly between files. There is clearly the need for normalizing the sound levels to create a good listener experience....

June 17, 2021 · 3 min · 510 words · ARJ

Making 100 video poster images programmatically

We are organizing the Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop 2021 at RITMO a week from now. Like many other conferences these days, this one will also be run online. Presentations have been pre-recorded (10 minutes each) and we also have short poster blitz videos (1 minute each). Pre-recorded videos People have sent us their videos in advance, but they all have different first “slides”. So, to create some consistency among the videos, we decided to make an introduction slide for each of them....

June 15, 2021 · 4 min · 644 words · ARJ

Launching NOR-CAM – A toolbox for recognition and rewards in academic careers

What is the future of academic career assessment? How can open research practices be included as part of a research evaluation? These were some of the questions we asked ourselves in a working group set up by Universities Norway. Almost two years later, the report is ready. Here I will share some of the ideas behind the suggested Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM) and some of the other recommendations coming out of the workgroup....

June 1, 2021 · 4 min · 732 words · ARJ

Combining audio and video files with FFmpeg

When working with various types of video analysis, I often end up with video files without audio. So I need to add the audio track by copying either from the source video file or from a separate audio file. There are many ways of doing this. Many people would probably reach for a video editor, but the problem is that you would most likely end up recompressing both the audio and video file....

May 11, 2021 · 2 min · 254 words · ARJ

Strings On-Line installation

We presented the installation Strings On-Line at NIME 2020. It was supposed to be a physical installation at the conference to be held in Birmingham, UK. Due to the corona crisis, the conference went online, and we decided to redesign the proposed physical installation into an online installation instead. The installation ran continuously from 21-25 July last year, and hundreds of people “came by” to interact with it. I finally got around to edit a short (1-minute) video promo of the installation:...

April 26, 2021 · 1 min · 150 words · ARJ

The hybrid university

After a year of primarily online activities, we are slowly preparing for a new reality at the university. We will not go back to where we left off, but what will the new university be? The front page of the EUA report Universities without walls. This post is inspired by a tweet by Rikke Toft Nørgård and a presentation she held on the development of the post-pandemic hybrid university. In the presentation, she points to a recent EUA report envisioning how universities should develop towards 2030....

April 26, 2021 · 5 min · 909 words · ARJ

Splitting audio files in the terminal

I have recently played with AudioStellar, a great tool for “sound object”-based exploration and musicking. It reminds me of CataRT, a great tool for concatenative synthesis. I used CataRT quite a lot previously, for example, in the piece Transformation. However, after I switched to Ubuntu and PD instead of OSX and Max, CataRT was no longer an option. So I got very excited when I discovered AudioStellar some weeks ago. It is lightweight and cross-platform and has some novel features that I would like to explore more in the coming weeks....

March 18, 2021 · 4 min · 795 words · ARJ