Interdisciplinary Centre for Composition and Technology

ICCaT, based in the Department of Music at the University of Liverpool, investigates how music composition and sonic artforms intersect with new technology, performance, and perception.

Staff affiliated with the centre teach MRes and PhD students in composition, technology, and computer music. ICCaT works with external partners and musicians in support of future-facing musical projects and runs a seminar series focussed on practice-based and methodological research. ICCaT’s research falls into three main themes: Data-Driven Composition, Audiovisual Interactivity, and Augmentation and Hybridity.

Data-Driven Composition

Data-Driven Composition explores the application of low-level technologies to help music practitioners comprehend, explore, and creatively manipulate digital resources. One strand of this research involves employing MIR computer algorithms to analyse sound similarity in order to make large collections of sound browsable as well as offer insight into structural organisation and stylistic features. A second area of focus is on creating tools to help creative practitioners work with large collections of digital materials, enabling a fluid sense of musical expression while working with sound resources that might otherwise be prohibitively large. The ultimate goal is to create new and viable modes of digital authorship across a variety of practices, including electronic music and sound art as well as developing tools for computer assisted acoustic composition and mixed media composition.

Lead Member: Ben Hackbarth; see AudioGuide

Audiovisual Interactivity

Audiovisual Interactivity involves the use of digital technologies for real-time musical notation & representation as well as the design & creation of interactive musical experiences via digital interfaces. A core concept of this practice is the consideration of composition and improvisation as defining a continuum for all musical practices. This is sometimes referred to as 'comprovisation'. Through a semiotic lens, this perspective involves careful consideration of topics such as esthesis (interpretation and meaning), immersion/flow, cognition, and accessibility. A major strand of this theme is the creation of 'gameful' works—i.e. works that are intrinsically game-based and draw upon existing scholarship in game design and interface design (e.g. https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3182327).

Lead Member: Paul Turowski; see Embodied Musicking Dataset

Augmentation and Hybridity

This relates to timbres, bodies or instruments and specifically includes the fabrication of hyperinstruments as well as sound worlds that may be considered 'hybrid' or 'on a cusp'. Issues of embodiment, disembodiment and re-embodiment are relevant here, leading to consideration of associated stylistic, psychological, spiritual and philosophical matters.

Lead Members: Lee Tsang, Jonathan Crossley