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Speakers : 

Gil Weinberg

Title:

Georgia Tech's Robotic Musicianship’s Group

Abstract:

The Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech aims to facilitate meaningful musical interactions between humans and machines, leading to novel musical experiences and outcomes. In our research we combine computational modeling approaches for music perception, interaction, and improvisation, with novel approaches for generating acoustic responses in physical and visual manners. The motivation for this work is based on the hypothesis that real-time collaboration between human and robotic players can capitalize on the combination of their unique strengths to produce new and compelling music. Our goal is to combine human qualities such as musical expression and emotions with robotic traits such as powerful processing, the ability to perform sophisticated mathematical transformations, robust long-term memory, and the capacity to play accurately without practice. The talk will feature a number of computational approaches for improvisations using genetic algorithms, Markov Chains, and other mathematical processing which were implemented in different robotic platforms such as Haile, Shimon, Shimi and the robotic drumming prosthesis.

Bio:

Gil Weinberg is the founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, where he established the M.S. and Ph.D. programs in music technology. He is a professor in the School of Music and an adjunct professor in the School of Interactive Computing. Weinberg's research aims at expanding musical expression, creativity, and learning through meaningful applications of technology. His research interests include robotic musicianship, new instruments for musical expression, mobile music, and sonification. Weinberg received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and his bachelor of arts degree from the Interdisciplinary Program for Fostering Excellence in Tel Aviv University.